Examining Effects of Poverty,Maternal Depression,and Children’s Self-Regulation Abilities on the Development of Language and Cognition in Early Childhood: An Early Head Start Perspective

Early childhood poverty is a prevalent social issue, both in the United States and in the wider international community. It has been well established that factors associated with poverty, including familial income and parental education level, can negatively affect children’s language and cognitive development, which can result in academic achievement deficits that compound across the lifespan. Additional environmental factors, specifically maternal and children’s own social–emotional development, have also been shown to impact these sensitive early childhood developmental processes. Although individual components that relate to language and cognitive development in young children have been identified, additional examination of potential associative relationships between these components is warranted. Therefore, this study explored socio-economical, health, and developmental relationships between 122 caregiver–child dyads enrolled in an Early Head Start Program where children were 1–36 months old. Results indicated strong bidirectional correlations between children’s cognitive and language development. Multiple linear regression path analysis indicated that children’s cognition and social–emotional wellbeing have a significant direct effect on their language development. Additionally, language and fine motor development were found to have a significant direct effect and social–emotional wellbeing mediated an indirect effect through language on children’s cognitive development. In light of socioeconomic and sociocultural challenges, the importance of nurturing children’s social–emotional development in relation to language and cognitive development is discussed.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory: results based on a sample of Chinese mothers in Hong Kong

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether or not the original six-factor structure of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory suggested by [Milner, J.S. (1986). The Child Abuse Potential Inventory: Manual (2nd ed.). DeKalb, IL: Psytec. Inc.] can be confirmed with data from a group of Chinese mothers in Hong Kong. METHOD: Eight hundred and ninety-seven mothers from 13 child care centers in Hong Kong successfully completed a set of structured questionnaires consisting, among others, of the 77-item Abuse Scale of the CAP Inventory. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to determine whether the data fits the factorial structure of the CAP Inventory identified by Milner (1986). RESULTS: The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of the model epsilona) is 0.031, indicating a close fit of the model in relation to the degrees of freedom. On testing the close fit against the null hypothesis that Ho: epsilona相似文献