Facets of the Early Home Literacy Environment and Children’s Linguistic and Socioemotional Competencies

The Home Literacy Environment as a Mediator Between Parental Attitudes Toward Shared Reading and Children’s Linguistic Competencies

“…Parental attitudes toward shared reading were fairly stable across t1 to t3, with r 12 = 0.60, r 13 = 0.73, and r 23 = 0.71. The four items assessing cognitive attitudes toward shared reading had been used in previous studies (e.g., Park, 2008;Niklas et al, 2016a;Wirth et al, 2019).…”

The Home Learning Environment in the Digital Age—Associations Between Self-Reported “Analog” and “Digital” Home Learning Environment and Children’s Socio-Emotional and Academic Outcomes

“…Rather, families’ HLE seems to follow differential developmental patterns, as their children grow older. Therefore, as shown in many studies before, the HLE is no unitary construct and needs to be differentiated (e.g., Skwarchuk et al, 2014 ; Wirth et al, 2019 ; Lehrl et al, 2020a ). The present study gives further evidence that the medium through which stimulation in the home takes place is another variable that distinguishes dimensions of the HLE.…”

“…In addition to the well-documented positive effects of the HLE on language and academic outcomes, there is also evidence that HLE effects are not limited to these domains but are also important for children’s socio-emotional and self-regulation skills ( Huntsinger et al, 2016 ; Rose et al, 2018 ; Wirth et al, 2019 ). In a longitudinal study, Rose et al (2018) investigated the predictive role of the early HLE on children’s cooperative behavior, physical aggression, and emotional self-regulation at age 8, mainly mediated through early language competencies (see Wirth et al, 2019 for similar results). Further, intervention studies showed that enhancing the quality of the HLE also impacts on very young (i.e., 12 months old; O’Farrelly et al, 2018 ) and older (i.e., 4 years old; Bierman et al, 2015 ) children’s socio-emotional competencies.…”

“…As the quality of the analog HLE is associated with children’s socio-emotional competencies (e.g., O’Farrelly et al, 2018 ; Wirth et al, 2019 ), it is to be expected that the digital learning environment in families should also influence these competencies. However, research evidence regarding this point is mixed, and thus further studies and analyses are needed.…”

Editorial: Children's Competencies Development in the Home Learning Environment

“…Consequently, the HLE acts as a mediator between more distal family characteristics and child outcomes. Further, research indicates that the HLE may not only predict concurrent children's early literacy and numeracy competencies (e.g., Burghardt et al, 2020, Napoli andPurpura, 2018), but also later achievement in school (e.g., Niklas and Schneider, 2017;Lehrl et al, 2020a) as well as more general cognitive abilities (e.g., Howard et al, 2017;Niklas et al, 2018) and socio-emotional outcomes (e.g., Rose et al, 2018;Wirth et al, 2020). Despite the research on the HLE and the findings in recent years, we still do not know how best to operationalize the HLE, through which specific mechanisms the HLE impacts children's learning, and which facets of the HLE are the most important.…”