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This article examined longitudinal relations among socioeconomic risk, maternal language input, child vocabulary, and child executive function (EF) in a large sample (N = 1,009) recruited for a prospective longitudinal study. Two measures of maternal language input derived from a parent-child picture book task, vocabulary diversity (VOCD), and language complexity, showed variation by socioeconomic risk at child ages 15, 24, and 36 months. Maternal VOCD at child age 24 months and maternal language complexity at child age 36 months mediated the relation between socioeconomic risk and 48-month child EF, independent of parenting sensitivity. Moreover, 36-month child vocabulary mediated the relation between maternal language input and child EF. These findings provide novel evidence about mechanisms linking socioeconomic risk and child executive function.

Path analysis was used to investigate the longitudinal associations among parenting and children's executive function and externalizing behavior problems from 36 to 90 months of age in the Family Life Project (N = 1,115), a study of child development in the context of rural poverty. While controlling for stability in the constructs, semistructured observations of parenting prospectively predicted performance on a battery of executive function tasks and primary caregivers' reports of externalizing behavior. Furthermore, the association between early parenting and later externalizing behavior was longitudinally mediated by executive function, providing support for a process model in which sensitive parenting promotes children's self-regulation, which in turn reduces children's externalizing behavior.

Objective: The current study examined the contributions of cultural and economic contexts and family, child, and parent characteristics to explain variation within and between mothers' and fathers' mental state talk (i.e., cognition, desire, modulation of assertion, and other mental state talk) to their 6-month-old infants. Background: Growing evidence supports the importance of mental state talk for children, yet few studies have examined factors that might contribute to this type of verbal input. Method: In a sample of 582 African American and European American mothers and 582 African American and European American fathers living in low-wealth rural areas, we explored the extent to which cultural context (ethnicity), economic context (income), family characteristics (partners' use of mental state talk), child characteristics (gender, attention, distress to novelty), and parent characteristics (parental sensitivity) contribute to mothers' and fathers' use of mental state talk in a series of multilevel models. Results: Results suggest that parental sensitivity was positively associated with mental state talk for both mothers and fathers, and child attention was positively associated with mental state talk for mothers with significant but small effect sizes. Fathers' mental state talk contributed positively to mothers' mental state talk, but this was true only for African American families. Conclusion: Our identified main effects and significant interaction enhance our understanding of factors that contribute to mothers' and fathers' mental state talk with their preverbal infants.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), a professional development and early reading intervention program delivered via webcam technology, could support the early reading progress of English learners (ELs). Participants for the current study were drawn from a larger three-year randomized controlled trial and included 108 ELs from 47 classrooms randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. Teachers in treatment classrooms used the TRI in one-on-one sessions in the regular classroom for approximately 15 minutes per day. Weekly, and later biweekly, webcam coaching sessions between a TRI coach and each classroom teacher allowed the coach to interact with both the teacher and students in real time and allowed classroom teachers to receive real-time feedback from the coach. Two-level hierarchical linear models suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read in intervention classrooms significantly outperformed their peers in control classrooms on word-level measures of early reading, with effect sizes of .43 and .45, but not on text-level measures. Results also suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read were gaining at the same rate as their nonstruggling peers but were unable to catch up within the study year.

This article describes four key principles from Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention), an evidence-based early reading intervention and professional development program. Focused on accelerating the growth of students not yet meeting grade-level expectations, one-on-one 15-minute daily TRI lessons engage students in developing phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and beginning reading comprehension. Four key principles guide TRI, which can be applied to classroom reading instruction. First, all work is done in the context of real words and connected text, placing meaning at the heart of instruction. Second, lessons keep it moving, as they follow a consistent structure, use activities to achieve multiple objectives, and make use of all available resources. Third, TRI teachers let the student do the work, engaging students in productive struggle. Fourth, explicit teaching of skills such as blending provides students with unique strategies to become confident independent readers.

Using an epidemiological sample (N = 1,117) and a prospective longitudinal design, this study tested the direct and indirect effects of preverbal and verbal communication (15 months to 3 years) on executive function (EF) at age 4 years. Results indicated that whereas gestures (15 months), as well as language (2 and 3 years), were correlated with later EF (φ s ≥ .44), the effect was entirely mediated through later language. In contrast, language had significant direct and indirect effects on later EF. Exploratory analyses indicated that the pattern of results was comparable for low- and not-low-income families. The results were consistent with theoretical accounts of language as a precursor of EF ability, and highlighted gesture as an early indicator of EF.

This monograph describes some of the initial findings of the Family Life Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal study that used an epidemiological sampling frame to recruit a sample of 1,292 infants and their families residing in one of six poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Arguments are laid out for why the Family Life Project was unique and for how it has contributed to the understanding of children's development in the rural context.

The current study used latent profile analysis (LPA) to examine the implications of fathers' experiences of work stress for paternal behaviors with infants across multiple dimensions of parenting in a sample of fathers living in nonmetropolitan communities (N = 492). LPA revealed five classes of fathers based on levels of social—affective behaviors and linguistic stimulation measured during two father—infant interactions. Multinomial logistic regression analyses suggested that a less supportive work environment was associated with fathers' membership in multiple lower quality parenting classes. Greater work pressure and a nonstandard work schedule also predicted fathers' membership in the latent parenting classes, although these associations differed depending on the number of hours fathers spent in the workplace.

Child conduct problems (CP) reflect a heterogeneous collection of oppositional, aggressive, norm-violating, and sometimes violent behaviors, whereas child callous–unemotional (CU) behaviors reflect interpersonal styles of interactions reflecting a lack of guilt and empathy as well as uncaring and shallow emotional responses to others. Taken together, high levels of child CP and CU behaviors are thought to identify a relatively homogenous group of children at elevated risk for persistent and more severe problem behaviors across childhood and into adulthood. Although a large body of research has examined the developmental etiology of CP behaviors, only recently has a developmental psychopathology approach been applied to early CU behaviors. The current study examines multiple levels of contextual influences during the first years of life, including family socioeconomic status, household chaos, and parenting behaviors, on CP and CU behaviors assessed during the first-grade year. Whereas previous studies found associations between parenting behaviors and child problem behaviors moderated by household chaos, the current study found no evidence of moderation. However, path analyses suggest that the associations between child CP and CU behaviors and the contextual variables of socioeconomic status (family income and parental education) and household chaos (disorganization and instability) were mediated by maternal sensitive and harsh–intrusive parenting behavior. Analyses are presented, interpreted, and discussed with respect to both bioecological and family stress models of development.

This study examines observed maternal sensitivity, harsh-intrusion, and mental-state talk in infancy as predictors of conduct problems (CP) and callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors in middle childhood, as well as the extent to which infants' resting cortisol and cortisol reactivity moderate these associations. Using data from the Family Life Project (n = 1,292), results indicate that maternal sensitivity at 6 months predicts fewer CP at first grade, but only for infants who demonstrate high levels of cortisol reactivity. Maternal harsh intrusion predicts fewer empathic–prosocial behaviors, a component of CU behaviors, but only for infants who demonstrate high resting cortisol. Findings are discussed in the context of diathesis–stress and differential susceptibility models.