Parental language and verbal responsiveness to children in crowded homes.

Abstract

This article is a secondary data analysis of the University of Kansas Language Acquisition Project, which intensively studied, on a regular basis, parent and child language from age 6 months to 30 months. The association between residential density and parent-child speech was examined. Parents in crowded homes speak in less complex, sophisticated ways with their children compared with parents in uncrowded homes, and this association is mediated by parental responsiveness. Parents in more crowded homes are less verbally responsive to their children. This in turn accounts for their simpler, less sophisticated speech to their children. This mediational pathway is evident with statistical controls for socioeconomic status. This model may help explain prior findings showing a link between residential crowding and delayed cognitive development.

Telling Stories and Making Books: Evidence for an Intervention to Help Parents in Migrant Head Start Families Support Their Children's Language and Literacy

“…Because overcrowding has been shown in the literature to be an important indicator of resources for many Latino families, density was included as a covariate in these analyses (Donley, 2001). Previous research has indicated that parents living in crowded settings use less complex vocabulary and fewer verbal responses than parents living in uncrowded settings when talking with their young children (Evans, Maxwell, & Hart, 1999). Subsequently, children living in these crowded conditions had lower verbal and cognitive scores compared with their counterparts living in uncrowded settings.…”

Relation of maternal personality to perceptions of environmental chaos in the home

“…A number of studies supporting this hypothesis have related higher home chaos to reduced or less appropriate parental responsiveness, parental involvement, verbal stimulation of the child, object stimulation, discipline strategies, parental self-efficacy beliefs or promoting child sleep routines (Billows et al, 2009;Corapci & Wachs, 2002;Dumas et al, 2005;Evans, Eckenrode, & Marcynszyn, 2010;Evans & Hygge, 2007;Evans, Maxwell, & Hart, 1999;Matheny, Wachs, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995;Repetti & Wang, 2010;Wachs & Camli, 1991).…”

Household size is associated with unintelligible speech in children who have intellectual disabilities: A South African study

“…Other research 13,14,26 likewise found that household crowding evidences a negative influence on child development. It should, however be noted that only 17% of the children in the sample had unintelligible speech.…”

“…Evans and colleagues 14 found that families in crowded homes tend to speak less and use less complex language with their children, which results in smaller vocabularies and lower IQs 15 . Lack of language exposure may explain, in part, the strong associations that have been found between household crowding and children's cognitive development 13 .…”