The Role of Fathering in the Language Development Among Young, Low-Income African American and Latino Children Abstract Recent studies of low-income children have revealed significant variations in the quality of parent-child communication as well as the quantity of parent input that are important for successful child language development. Shared aspects of early parent- child communication including joint engagement with symbols and the interaction?s flow predict language outcome above measures of parent verbal input (15) or the child?s joint attention skills. The importance of early joint engagement for language development is demonstrated in diverse race-ethnic groups. However, the majority of this research has focused on mothers. More research on ethnic minority fathers is critical to document the heterogeneity in as well as the unique cultural ecology of the early language environments of low-income, ethnic minority children as well as to foster innovation in the development of preventive interventions to support language development and early academic success. We propose to leverage a longitudinal study of low-income African American and Latino children that includes video recordings of 216 2-3 year old children interacting with their fathers and their mothers. By leveraging an existing archive of videos, we extend the original NICHD investment as well as lower costs enormously relative to the cost of launching a new longitudinal study.
Our aims are as follows:
Aim 1 : To describe father-child interactions in low-income African American and Latino families encompassing both broad characteristics as well as culturally distinct patterns of father language input and quality of joint engagement.
Aim 2 : To compare language input and the quality of joint engagement among African American and Latino low-income children in early father-child and mother-child interactions.
Aim 3 : To examine the relation between early language input, joint engagement, and culturally distinct patterns of father-child interaction with language development and literacy achievement in early elementary school among African American and Latino low-income children.
Aim 4 : To explore whether father-child interactions, father-child language, and/or the relation of these with child language development and early literacy achievement differ by child gender.
The Role of Fathering in the Language Development Among Young, Low-Income African American and Latino Children Project Narrative Recent studies of low-income children have revealed significant variations in the quality of parent-child communication as well as the quantity of parent input is important for successful child language development. However, the majority of this research has focused on mothers, and more research with ethnic minority fathers is critical for the development of preventive interventions to support language development and early academic success. In this study, we will use video-recorded data from an existing study to refine a rating system to capture characteristics of the father-child joint engagement in a sample of low-income African American and Latino fathers and their young children to examine relations between the quality of the father-child joint engagement and language input and later child language development and school readiness using data already being collected as part of the parent longitudinal study.
