Association between longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment experiences and adolescent substance use.

BACKGROUND: Although there is a well-established link between child maltreatment and adolescent substance use, it remains unclear if and how longitudinal patterns of maltreatment experiences are associated with substance use in adolescence. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to examine how distinct patterns of longitudinal maltreatment experiences are associated with adolescent substance use. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: The participants were 899 adolescents from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). METHODS: We conducted repeated measures latent class analysis (RMLCA) to identify patterns of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect from birth to age 17 and their relations to tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use at age 18. RESULTS: RMLCA identified three physical abuse classes (Stable low physical abuse; School age peak physical abuse; Physical abuse primarily in infancy/toddlerhood), two sexual abuse classes (Stable no/low sexual abuse; School age peak sexual abuse), and three neglect classes (High neglect in childhood; Neglect primarily in infancy/toddlerhood; Neglect primarily at school age). Adolescents in the school age peak physical abuse class showed greater alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use, compared to other physical abuse classes. Similarly, adolescents in the school age peak sexual abuse class showed greater substance use than those in the stable no/low sexual abuse class. Lastly, adolescents in the neglect primarily in infancy/toddlerhood class showed significantly less substance use than those in the other two neglect classes. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the importance of early intervention and ongoing maltreatment prevention.

Early childhood language gains, kindergarten readiness, and Grade 3 reading achievement.

In this preregistered study, we used latent change score models to address two research aims: (1) whether preschool-aged children's language gains, over a year of early childhood education, were associated with later performance on state-mandated, literacy-focused kindergarten readiness and Grade 3 reading achievement assessments, and (2) whether gains in language, a more complex skill, predicted these outcomes after controlling for more basic emergent literacy skills. There were 724 participating children (mean = 57 months; 51% male; 76% White, 12% Black, 6% multiple races, and 5% Hispanic or Latino). We found that language gains significantly predicted kindergarten readiness when estimated in isolation (effect = 0.24 SDs, p < .001), but not when gains in letter knowledge and phonological awareness were also included.

Small-Group, Emergent Literacy Intervention Under Two Implementation Models: Intent-to-Treat and Dosage Effects for Preschoolers at Risk for Reading Difficulties.

Preschool-age children identified as at risk for later reading difficulties can benefit from supplemental, small-group emergent literacy intervention. As such interventions become commercially available and marketed to preschool programs, it is important to understand their impacts when implemented by intended end users under routine conditions. In this study, we examined the effects of the Nemours BrightStart! (NBS!) intervention on children's emergent literacy skills when implemented by teachers and community aides in authentic preschool classrooms. We randomly assigned 98 classrooms to one of three conditions (NBS! teacher-implemented, NBS! community aide-implemented, or control). Children enrolled in these classrooms who met eligibility criteria and were identified as at risk via an early literacy screener (n = 281) completed pretest and posttest emergent literacy assessments; those assigned to NBS! conditions received intervention from their classroom teacher or a community aide affiliated with a local kindergarten-readiness initiative. Intent-to-treat analyses showed no significant impacts of NBS! on any outcome, and an instrumental variable, as-treated approach showed one significant intervention effect on letter writing. Consequently, we did not replicate results of prior highly controlled efficacy trials. Findings have implications for revising the NBS! theory of change, conducting dosage and as-treated analyses, and moving research-based interventions toward scale-up.

The Differential Relations Between ADHD and Reading Comprehension: A Quantile Regression and Quantile Genetic Approach.

This paper extends the understanding of the relation between ADHD and reading comprehension, through examining how this relation differs depending on the quantile an individual falls in for each. Samples from three twin projects around the United States were used (Florida Twin Project, Colorado component of International Longitudinal Twin Study of Early Reading Development, & Western Reserve Reading and Math Projects). Phenotypic analysis using quantile regression showed relations between ADHD related behaviors and reading comprehension to be stronger in the lower quantiles of reading comprehension in two of three samples. A new method was developed extending this analysis into the bivariate genetic space. Results of this quantile genetic analysis revealed that overlapping common environmental influences accounted for a larger proportion of variance in the lower quantiles of these variables in two of three samples. Finally, in all three samples the phenotypic relation was strongest when shared environmental influences accounted for a larger proportion of the overall variance.

Data Sharing in Education Science.

Many research agencies are now requiring that data collected as part of funded projects be shared. However, the practice of data sharing in education sciences has lagged these funder requirements. We assert that this is likely because researchers' generally have not been made aware of these requirements and the benefits of data sharing. Furthermore, data sharing is usually not a part of formal training, so many researchers may be unaware how to properly share their data. Finally, the research culture in education science is often filled with concerns regarding the sharing of data. In this article, we address each of these areas, discussing the wide range of benefits of data sharing, the many ways data can be shared, provide a step by step guide to start sharing data, and responses to common concerns.

Exploring the Influence of Early Childhood Education and Care on the Etiology of Achievement.

The present study used a genetically-sensitive quantile regression approach to examine the relation between participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and subsequent school performance in literacy and numeracy at grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. The sample consisted of 1255 twin pairs (596 MZ; 659 DZ) with information on both ECEC and the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) scores from the Twin Study of NAPLAN. Results indicated variation in heritability estimates across the distributions of achievement, suggesting that different patterns of etiological influences may exist among children of different ability levels. Additionally, the results provided no evidence that ECEC significantly influenced achievement, and in the genetically-sensitive analyses, no evidence that ECEC moderated the influences of heritability of achievement for typically advantaged children. These results suggest that ECEC may not provide the levels of environmental support for later achievement that advocates claim, although we acknowledge that ECEC quality, which was not measured in the current study, may make a difference in whether or not ECEC influences achievement.

Triple Alignment: Congruency of Perceived Preschool Classroom Social Networks Among Teachers, Children, and Researchers.

Classroom social networks are influential to young children's cognitive, social-emotional, and language development, but assessment and analyses of social networks are complex. Findings have been mixed regarding whether different informants (teachers, children, researchers) are congruent in perceiving classroom social networks. There is also a lack of discussion about the roles of network transformation (converting value networks into binary networks), a required data step for widely used statistical network analyses. This study addressed these issues based on network data of 16 preschool children containing 240 potential dyadic interactions collected from teacher ratings, child nominations, and researcher observations across 44 observation cycles over four school days. Results showed that the three informants were congruent in perceiving the classroom social network, whereas the level of congruency between the teacher-report and the researcher-report networks was the highest. Binary transformation of social networks tended to decrease the level of congruency across informants, although the level of congruency tended to be higher when more stringent binary transformation thresholds were selected.

When do preschoolers learn specific mathematics skills? Mapping the development of early numeracy knowledge.

Children's mathematics skills undergo extensive development during the preschool years. Opportunities for engaging in mathematics in the preschool classroom, however, are limited, and activities and instruction are often targeted below children's skill levels. Although researchers have developed general learning trajectories of children's mathematics skills, no fine-grained trajectories across a broad range of mathematics skills exist. Such a fine-grained trajectory of when specific numeracy skills develop would allow preschool and kindergarten instruction to more appropriately match and scaffold children's mathematics capabilities. The current study examined preschool children's item-level performance on eight numeracy subtests at half-year age points throughout the preschool period. Data were compiled across six studies, and participants comprised 801 preschool children (age range = 3.12-5.99 years, M = 4.63, SD = 0.68). Children were grouped into six age categories (3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, and 5.5 years). Linear regression analyses were used to investigate the number of children who correctly answered each item of a specific subtest within a particular age group. Findings provide clear trajectories of children's early mathematics skills that can be used to inform preschool classroom practices and facilitate the design of intervention studies.

Improved soil biological health increases corn grain yield in N fertilized systems across the Corn Belt.

Nitrogenous fertilizers have nearly doubled global grain yields, but have also increased losses of reactive N to the environment. Current public investments to improve soil health seek to balance productivity and environmental considerations. However, data integrating soil biological health and crop N response to date is insufficient to reliably drive conservation policy and inform management. Here we used multilevel structural equation modeling and N fertilizer rate trials to show that biologically healthier soils produce greater corn yields per unit of fertilizer. We found the effect of soil biological health on corn yield was 18% the magnitude of N fertilization, Moreover, we found this effect was consistent for edaphic and climatic conditions representative of 52% of the rainfed acreage in the Corn Belt (as determined using technological extrapolation domains). While N fertilization also plays a role in building or maintaining soil biological health, soil biological health metrics offer limited a priori information on a site's responsiveness to N fertilizer applications. Thus, increases in soil biological health can increase corn yields for a given unit of N fertilizer, but cannot completely replace mineral N fertilization in these systems. Our results illustrate the potential for gains in productivity through investment in soil biological health, independent of increases in mineral N fertilizer use.

Food Insecurity and Depression among Economically Disadvantaged Mothers: Does Maternal Efficacy Matter?

BACKGROUND: Nearly 13 million American children experience food insecurity. Research suggests that maternal depression is associated with food insecurity, such that mothers who experience depression are more likely to be food insecure. Maternal self-efficacy may be an important protective factor against depression during the postpartum year, interrupting the link between depression and food insecurity. We extend prior research by examining food insecurity in households with infants and investigating the potential for maternal efficacy to moderate the relation between depression and food insecurity. METHODS: Data were drawn from the Kids in Columbus Study, a longitudinal study of diverse, economically disadvantaged mothers and their young children in Columbus, Ohio (N = 219). Data for this study were drawn from data collected between July 2014 and June 2016. RESULTS: Over one-third of families experienced food insecurity. Further, depression was positively and significantly related to household food insecurity; this relationship, however, was dependent on maternal efficacy. When maternal efficacy was high, the relationship between depression and food insecurity was nonsignificant; when maternal efficacy was low, there was a significant, positive association between depression and food insecurity. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing maternal self-efficacy during the postpartum period may reduce food insecurity in low-income mothers who are experiencing depression.

Relations of Maternal Depression and Parenting Self-Efficacy to the Self-Regulation of Infants in Low-Income Homes.

There is increasing recognition that young children's self-regulation provides a foundation for overall wellness later in life. Yet, infants reared in poverty may exhibit less-developed self-regulation compared to their more advantaged peers. Factors associated with poverty that may influence early self-regulation include maternal depression and parenting self-efficacy. However, few researchers have examined how both parenting self-efficacy and maternal depression may affect young children's self-regulation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations among maternal depression, parenting self-efficacy, and infant self-regulation for a racially diverse sample of 142 mother-infant dyads living in low-income households in the United States. Maternal depressive symptomatology was determined with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depressive Scale. Parenting self-efficacy was determined with a self-report measure, reflecting caregivers' mindset or feelings reflecting competency as a parent of an infant. Infant self-regulation was measured by parental report of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Short Form Effortful Control subscale. While maternal depressive symptomatology and self-efficacy were directly and significantly correlated with infant self-regulation, results of a mediation model suggested that parenting self-efficacy mediated the relationship between maternal depressive symptomatology and infant self-regulation. Lower maternal depressive symptomatology predicted better parenting self-efficacy, in turn predicting better infant self-regulation. This study increases our understanding of how early factors shape the self-regulation of infants reared in low-income homes - highlighting the potential role of targeting parenting self-efficacy for parenting interventions for mothers experiencing depressive symptoms.

Neighborhood Influences on Perceived Social Support and Parenting Behaviors.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of our study is to explore the relationships between neighborhood context, perceived social support, and parenting for low-income mothers with young infants. METHODS: Data were collected during the first three time points from the Kids in Columbus Study, a 5-year longitudinal study on low-income families. Mother-child dyads (n = 228) were recruited from five Women, Infants, and Children Centers located in a Midwestern Metropolitan area. Data for the present study represents mother-child dyads that had completed time point 1 (infant age birth to 3-months), time point 2 (infant age 4 to 7 months), and 3 (infant age 9- to 12-months old). RESULTS: Social support and neighborhood quality were associated with both maternal perceptions and observed parenting outcomes. Social support positively predicted maternal perceptions of self-efficacy whereas neighborhood quality was positively related to parent involvement. DISCUSSION: Overall, social support and neighborhood quality were related to aspects of parenting in the first year of children's lives. There was no evidence that the association between social support and parenting varied as a function of neighborhood quality. This finding suggests the neighborhood qualities captured in our study do not influence mothers' ability to access social support during infancy.

The preschool classroom linguistic environment: Children's first-person experiences.

The linguistic environment of the classroom is influential to young children's language development. To date, however, literature on the linguistic environment of child-care centers has largely examined teacher practices or children's aggregate environment, overlooking the child's first-person experiences and differentiated experiences within the classroom. In this study we used a new method in the educational setting that captures the learner's perspective: head-mounted cameras. Thirteen children in one preschool classroom wore a head-mounted camera to capture their first-person experiences in one morning session, including interactions with others and the features of the child-directed speech (CDS) addressed to them. Results revealed that, from children's personal view, the linguistic environment of the classroom is more dynamic from what previous studies have reported. Children interacted for longer with their teachers than their peers and heard more CDS from them, but for some children peers served as an additional source of language. Further, our analysis highlighted within-classroom variability in language experiences in terms of the properties of the CDS addressed to target children and how they were exposed to this input over time. Results are discussed with respect to peer influence on children's learning, heterogeneity in learning opportunities in classrooms, and the variability of the linguistic environment over time.

Identifying Children With Clinical Language Disorder: An Application of Machine-Learning Classification.

In this study, we identified child- and family-level characteristics most strongly associated with clinical identification of language disorder for preschool-aged children. We used machine learning to identify variables that best classified children receiving therapy for language disorder among a sample of 483 3- to 5-year-old children (54% affected). Using a dichotomous outcome based on receipt of language therapy, we applied the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) classification approach to a range of background data available on the children, including teacher and caregiver ratings of communication and social skills. The sample was randomly split into a training (67% of children) and test sample (33% of children) to examine out-of-sample classification accuracy. The full model had excellent classification accuracy based on area under the curve (AUC) of .87 and .85 on the training and test sets, respectively, when utilizing all available background data. Variables most strongly contributing to accurate classification of language-therapy receipt were cognitive impairment, age, gender, and teacher- and parent-reported communication, social, and literacy skills. Use of machine-learning approaches to classify children receiving language services in school settings may provide a valuable approach for identifying those factors that best differentiate children with and without language disorders from a clinical perspective.

When Children Are Not Read to at Home: The Million Word Gap.

OBJECTIVE: In the United States, there are numerous ongoing efforts to remedy the Word Gap: massive differences in heard vocabulary for poor versus advantaged children during the first 5 years of life. One potentially important resource for vocabulary exposure is children's book reading sessions, which are more lexically diverse than standard caregiver-child conversations and have demonstrated significant correlational and causal influences on children's vocabulary development. Yet, nationally representative data suggest that around 25% of caregivers never read with their children. METHOD: This study uses data from 60 commonly read children's books to estimate the number of words that children are exposed to during book reading sessions. We estimated the total cumulative word exposure for children who are read to at varying frequencies corresponding to nationally representative benchmarks across the first 5 years of life. RESULTS: Parents who read 1 picture book with their children every day provide their children with exposure to an estimated 78,000 words each a year. Cumulatively, over the 5 years before kindergarten entry, we estimate that children from literacy-rich homes hear a cumulative 1.4 million more words during storybook reading than children who are never read to. CONCLUSION: Home-based shared book reading represents an important resource for closing the Word Gap.

Why do early mathematics skills predict later reading? The role of mathematical language.

A growing body of evidence indicates that the development of mathematics and literacy skills is highly related. The importance of literacy skills-specifically language-for mathematics development has been well rationalized. However, despite several prominent studies indicating that mathematics skills are highly predictive of literacy development, the reason for this relation is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to identify how and why early mathematics is predictive of early literacy development. Participants included 125 preschool children 3-5 years old (M = 4 years 3 months). Participants were assessed on mathematics, literacy, and cognitive measures in both the fall and spring of their preschool year. Mediation analyses indicated that the relation between early mathematics and literacy skills is mediated by children's mathematical language skills. These findings suggest that, in prior research identifying mathematical performance as a significant predictor of later literacy skills, mathematical performance may have acted only as a proxy measure for more complex language skills such as those assessed on a mathematical language measure. (PsycINFO Database Record

Child language and parent discipline mediate the relation between family income and false belief understanding.

Achieving false belief understanding is an important cognitive milestone that allows children to understand that thoughts and reality can differ. Researchers have found that low-income children score significantly lower than middle-income children on false belief understanding but have not examined why this difference exists. We hypothesized that children's language and parent discipline mediate the income-false belief relation. Participants were 174 3- to 6-year-olds. False belief understanding was significantly correlated with family income, children's vocabulary, parents' self-reported discussion of children's behavior, discussion of emotions, and power assertion. Family income had a significant indirect effect on false belief understanding through children's vocabulary and parent discipline when examined independently, but only through children's vocabulary when using parallel multiple mediation. This study contributes to our knowledge of individual differences in false belief understanding.

Establishing Language Benchmarks for Children With Typically Developing Language and Children With Language Impairment.

Purpose: Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers (i.e., stakeholders) have vested interests in children's language growth yet currently do not have empirically driven methods for measuring such outcomes. The present study established language benchmarks for children with typically developing language (TDL) and children with language impairment (LI) from 3 to 9 years of age. Method: Effect sizes for grammar, vocabulary, and overall language were calculated for children with TDL (n = 20,018) using raw score means and standard deviations from 8 norm-referenced measures of language. Effect sizes for children with LI were calculated using fall and spring norm-referenced language measures for 497 children with LI receiving business-as-usual therapy in the public schools. Results: Considerable variability was found in expected change across both samples of children over time, with preschoolers exhibiting larger effect sizes (d = 0.82 and 0.70, respectively) compared with school-age children (d = 0.49 and 0.55, respectively). Conclusions: This study provides a first step toward establishing empirically based language benchmarks for children. These data offer stakeholders an initial tool for setting goals based on expected growth (practitioners), making informed decisions on language-based curricula (policymakers), and measuring effectiveness of intervention research (researchers).

Intensity of language treatment: contribution to children's language outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Treatment intensity is an important factor in designing and delivering treatments to children with language impairment (LI). However, to date very little is understood about cumulative intervention intensity for children with LI in the US public school system. AIMS: To examine treatment intensity (dose: time spent on language; frequency: number of sessions; duration: one academic year) as delivered to children with LI within US public schools and to explore its relation to children's language outcomes. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A total of 233 children with LI on the caseloads of 73 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) participated. Direct child measures, weekly treatment logs and videotapes were collected to characterize children's language outcomes and treatment experiences. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Children on average received 36 min of treatment during 1.3 treatment sessions per week. Children's language severity did not predict children's treatment intensity. Structural equation modelling indicated a significant interaction between frequency and dose of treatment: children receiving high frequency and low dose, or low frequency and high dose treatment had better outcomes than children receiving high frequency, high dose or low frequency, low dose treatment. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Findings suggest that more intensive language treatment, measured as time, is not necessarily associated with better treatment outcomes.