Forecasting youth adjustment at age 15 from school readiness profiles at 54 months

ABSTRACT

A person-oriented approach examined the extent to which patterns of school readiness across social and cognitive domains in 944 typically-developing 54-month-old children forecast academic achievement, social-emotional development, risk taking, and executive functioning at age 15. Prior work identified six distinct profiles of school readiness at 54 months that predicted group differences in achievement in first grade, as well as achievement and social-emotional outcomes in fifth grade. After controlling for demographics, early language skills, and home and school factors, the 54-month readiness profiles demonstrated different performance on risk-taking and executive function behaviors assessed at age 15. Children with attention problems at 54 months were most likely to believe that peers were engaging in risky behaviors and to have smoked more than 2 cigarettes by age 15. Children with low working memory and low to average social skills at 54 months were outperformed by their peers on working memory and executive function tasks at age 15. Results are discussed in terms of continuity in forms of developmental function.

Acknowledgment

We express our appreciation to the generous programs and teachers who participated in this study.

Notes

¹Regression models predicting age 15 outcomes with only the original linear school readiness variables were compared to models with linear school readiness variables and dummy coded cluster variables to assess if the person-centered approach provided predictive validity beyond that of a variable centered approach. Cohen’s effect sizes (f²) suggest the R-square change scores were small (.02 to .07) but significant for six of the twelve age 15 outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

The work reported in this article was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), through a cooperative agreement (U10-25449), which calls for a scientific collaboration between the grantees and NICHD staff. The first author was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, and Grant R305B130013 to the University of Virginia. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education.