Language Production in Children With and At Risk for Delay: Mediating Role of Parenting Skills

Abstract

The current study examined the effect of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a parent-training intervention for child behavior problems, on child language production. Participants were 46 children (ages 20–70 months) with externalizing behavior problems and with or at risk for developmental delay. Parent–child dyads were randomly assigned to a waitlist control or immediate treatment group. Parenting skills learned during PCIT (i.e., “do skills”) and children's word tokens and word types were measured at baseline and 4 months later. Findings suggest an indirect effect of parent do skills on the relation between group and child word types, such that more parent do skills predicted more child word types for families receiving PCIT. The present study found that mothers' use of child-directed skills played an important role in the growth and improvement of child language. Results suggest that parent-training interventions targeting child behavior problems may also foster child language production.

Notes

¹The main paths of importance are the paths from group to Time 2 maternal do skills and from Time 2 maternal do skills to Time 2 different words. The path from Time 2 maternal do skills to Time 2 different words reflects contemporaneous change, as each of these variables were measured at the same point in time. We therefore ran analyses two ways, once where the paths flowed from Time 2 maternal do skills to Time 2 different words and once where paths flowed in the reverse direction. In both models, changes in maternal do skills covary with changes in different words, with the only difference being the direction of the effects. The paths between Time 2 maternal do skills and Time 2 different words were significant only in the model where paths flowed in the direction of do skills to different words. Because this result suggests the effects flow in the direction of the initial hypothesis, which is also consistent with previously conducted research (Weisleder & Fernald, 2013), we presented results using this model (see in Figure 1).