Dissertation
Associations between parent mental health, child-directed speech, and child language outcomes in preterm and full-term children
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.006957
Abstract
Background: Child language skills are crucial for later outcomes, and preterm-born children (PTB) demonstrate worse language skills than term-born children (TB). Although biological factors play a role in these discrepancies, the caregiving environment plays a role as well. PTB may even be more sensitive to their environments than TB, so it is crucial that we examine specific, modifiable aspects of the caregiving environment that play a role in child language outcomes. Parent mental health and child-directed speech are two aspects of the caregiving environment that have repeatedly been shown to predict child language outcomes in TB, but this relation requires further investigation in PTB. Furthermore, the relation between parent mental health, child-directed speech, and child language skills has yet to be examined in the same model and has yet to be rigorously evaluated for both PTB and TB. In the current study, we characterize the relation between parent mental health and child language skills, with a specific focus on the mechanistic role of child-directed speech. Method: Participants included 248 parent-child dyads. Children were 3-5 years of age, and they were born across the full range of gestational ages. During study visits, children completed cognitive assessments, parents completed questionnaires about their mental health, and parent-child dyads completed a 15- minute interaction together. We used structural equation modeling to examine relations between prematurity, child language outcomes, parent mental health, and child-directed speech. We used multi-group analyses to examine potential variations in the indirect effects of parent mental on child language, via child-directed speech. Results: Both early PTB and late PTB had lower verbal comprehension score than TB. Parents of early PTB talked more than parents of TB, but parents of PTB and parents of TB did not differ in the quality of their speech. Moreover, variations in the quantity of child-directed speech did not predict child language outcomes, but variations in quality, specifically parent syntactic complexity, did. Parent anxiety was negatively related to child language outcomes, but child-directed speech did not mediate this relation. Parent depression was negatively related to parent syntactic complexity, and parent syntactic was positively related to child language outcomes. However, the indirect effect of parent depression on child language, through parent syntactic complexity, did not reach statistical significance. None of the indirect effects we probed varied across preterm groups. Conclusion: Discrepancies in language between PTB and TB remain salient during preschool years. The language outcomes of both PTB and TB appeared to respond to the role of certain predictors, namely parent anxiety and parent syntactic complexity. The roles of parent anxiety, parent depression, and parent syntactic complexity in child language outcomes warrant attention in future studies.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Associations between parent mental health, child-directed speech, and child language outcomes in preterm and full-term children
- Creators
- Francesca A. Scheiber
- Contributors
- Özlem Ece Demir-Lira (Advisor)Molly Nikolas (Committee Member)Isaac Petersen (Committee Member)Kelli Ryckman (Committee Member)Emily Thomas (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Psychology (Clinical Psychology)
- Date degree season
- Summer 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.006957
- Number of pages
- xiii, 74 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Francesca A. Scheiber
- Grants
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 07/24/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, tables
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 67-74).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- Early child language skills are essential for later outcomes, and preterm children (born before 37 weeks gestation) tend to display worse language outcomes than full-term children (born at or after 37 weeks gestation). Although biological factors play a role in these discrepancies, the caregiving environment plays a role as well. In fact, certain environmental exposures (e.g., parent stress) might have a greater effect on preterm children than they do on full-term children. In the current series of papers, we examine the role of two important aspects of the caregiving environment that have been linked to child language outcomes—parent mental health and child-directed speech. We characterize the relation between parent mental health and child language skills, with a specific focus on the mechanistic role of child-directed speech.
In the first section, we investigated associations between prematurity, parent mental health, and child language outcomes. Preterm children had lower verbal comprehension scores than full-term children. However, parent mental health was neither associated with child language outcomes for preterm children nor for full-term children. In the second section, we investigated associations between child-directed speech and child language outcomes. We found a significant positive association between the use of longer utterances, a measure of language quality, and child language outcomes for both preterm and full-term children. In the third section, we examined whether child-directed speech helped explain any associations between parent mental health and child language outcomes. We found direct associations between parent anxiety and child language outcomes, parent depression and parent speech, and parent speech and child language outcomes. However, none of the indirect effects we probed were significant. Our findings suggest that parent anxiety, parent depression, and parent speech quality warrant attention in future studies of child language.
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984454186402771
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