Modeling the early paths of phonological awareness and factors suopporting its development in children with and without familiar risk of dyslexia

The development of phonological awareness (PA) before school age was modeled in association with the development of vocabulary and letter knowledge, home literacy environment (HLE), children's reading interest, and beginning reading skill in children with and without familial risk of dyslexia. A total of 186 children were followed from birth to the age of 6.5 years. Of these children, about half had a familial background of reading difficulties (the at-risk group), and the other half came from families without such background (the control group). The data from several measures and assessment time points were analyzed within an SEM framework, and a latent analysis of growth curves was employ…

Nonstandard Work Hours and Single Versus Coupled Mothers’ Work-to-Family Conflict

Objective: To compare single and coupled mothers’ experiences of time-based work-to-family conflict (WFC) and work-to-family positive affective spillover (PAS) in the context of maternal nonstandard work hours.Background: Despite having become one of the central topics of work–family research, studies examining the relationship of maternal work schedules and family roles have mainly focused on North American samples or dual-earner families. Although qualitative studies have highlighted the problems faced by European single mothers in relation to the combination of nonstandard work hours and family life, there are no quantitative or cross-national comparative studies on the association.Metho…

Effects of Multidomain Risk Accumulation on Cognitive, Academic, and Behavioural Outcomes

This longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between cumulative multidomain risk factors and cognitive (IQ), academic (reading fluency), and social adaptive outcomes at 8 to 9 years among 190 children with or without familial risk for dyslexia. Other risk factors included parental and neurocognitive risks assessed when the children were 1 to 6 years of age. Risks accumulated more among children with familial risk for dyslexia than among children without familial risk. A higher number of risks was associated with poorer performance in all outcome measures as postulated by the cumulative risk model. However, when the effects of individual risk variables were controlled for at …

Interest in early shared reading: Its relation to later language and letter knowledge in children with and without risk for reading difficulties

Children’s interest in shared reading (14 and 24 months) and its relation to their later language and letter knowledge (age 3;6) were investigated in a follow-up study. The participants were 156 children and their mothers. Half of these children ( N = 74) came from families where one or both of the parents were diagnosed as reading disabled (the at-risk group), the other half ( N = 82) belonged to the control group. The results revealed that children with and without familial risk for reading difficulties did not differ from each other in the interest they showed towards shared reading. Interestingly, only children in the control group appeared to benefit from shared reading interactions i…

Mentalization-based Families First Group Intervention for First-Time Parents: Parents’ Perspective

The study investigated, first, the benefits reported by first-time parents after attending a Families First mentalization-based group intervention and, second, looked for indicators of mentalization. A total of 367 mothers and 183 fathers completed a web-based questionnaire. Data analysis concentrated on parents’ responses to seven open questions that were subsequently processed by qualitative thematic analysis. Also a chi-square test was performed to study the differences between mothers and fathers on the benefits reported. Four main benefits were reported by the parents: peer support, understanding of the baby, insights into oneself as parent and parent-child interaction, and family invo…

Task-related variation in communication of mothers and their sons with learning disability

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether mother-child communication patterns vary as a function of the type of the task. Groups of learning disabled (LD=30) and normally achieving boys (NLD=30) were videotaped interacting with their mothers in two different tasks. The children were matched for age (8 to 11 year-olds) and for parent’s SES. The results indicated that the teaching task differentiated the groups more than did the story task. Academic character of the teaching task increased mothers’ task involvement in both groups. Mothers of the LD group showed, however, significantly more dominance and expressed less emotionality while teaching their child. Mothers’ interaction…

Infertility as a lonely struggle? : Coping stories of previously infertile women

In this narrative study, we explored the meaning infertile women attribute to social support in coping with their infertility-related challenges. Written accounts and episodic interviews with 26 previously infertile Finnish women were used as data. Two different coping story types emerged: coping alone and coping with support. In the coping alone type women neither sought nor received support. Their coping appeared as a lonely struggle. In the coping with stories, women turned to their spouses, peers, or professionals, but still emphasized that they would have needed more support. Based on our findings, we underline the need for individually tailored support. peerReviewed

Communication Deviances and Clarity Among the Mothers of Normally Achieving and Learning-Disabled Boys.

The main purpose of the study was to reexamine the association between maternal communication deviances and learning disabilities in children. In this study, we adapted and extended the procedure used by Ditton, Green, and Singer (1987). A two-part experimental task was used: one in which the child could not request any clarification of mother's instructions, and another in which the mother and child could communicate. Both communication deviances and the clarity of mothers' communication were analyzed. The subjects were 60 mother-child pairs in which half of the children had learning disabilities and the other half were normally achieving children matched for age and parents' SES. The dyad…

Social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence as predictors of language development and their associations with maternal attention-directing strategies

Abstract Children’s early social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence were studied at 14 months in a sample of 111 mother-infant pairs. The categories of social interactional behaviors, joint visual attention, socially coordinated and object oriented interactions were assessed via observations of mother-infant joint play. An index of symbolic play was derived from the child’s solitary play, which was assessed independently. We examined both the interrelations of these two types of early language predictors, and their relation to children’s language skills and maternal attention-directing strategies. Measures of children’s language comprehension and production were obtained u…

Predicting delayed letter name knowledge and its relation to grade 1 reading achievement in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia

The authors examined the developmental trajectories of children's early letter knowledge in relation to measures spanning and encompassing their prior language-related and cognitive measures and environmental factors and their subsequent Grade 1 reading achievement. Letter knowledge was assessed longitudinally at ages 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.5 years; earlier language skills and environmental factors were assessed at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years; and reading achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of Grade 1. The analyses were conducted on a longitudinal data set involving children with and without familial risk for dyslexia. Emerging from the trajectory analysis of letter knowledge were 3 …

Early development of children at familial risk for Dyslexia—follow-up from birth to school age

We review the main findings of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) which follows the development of children at familial risk for dyslexia (N = 107) and their controls (N = 93). We will illustrate the development of these two groups of children at ages from birth to school entry in the skill domains that have been connected to reading and reading disability in the prior literature. At school entry, the highest score on the decoding task among the poorer half (median) of the at risk children--i.e. of those presumably being most likely genetically affected--is 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Thus, the familial risk for dyslexia shows expected consequences. Among the e…

Early intentional communication as a predictor of language development in young toddlers

Interrelations between various types of early intentional communi cation measures, and their relations to children's concurrent and subsequent language skills and maternal interactional sensitivity were studied in a sample of 111 mother-infant pairs. Intentional communication was assessed at 14 months of age using a composite of early actions and gestures derived from parental reports (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories, MCDI), and measures of early joint attentional behaviours obtained via observations of parent-child play interaction. The sum of actions and gestures and the measures of joint attentional behaviours correlated significantly with each other suggesting that the …

Shared reading interaction in families with and without genetic risk for dyslexia: implications for toddlers’ language development

Shared reading represents a unique context for language learning. Little is known, however, about the quality of shared reading and its developmental implications in families with reading disabilities. In the present study, these questions were addressed in the context of a longitudinal follow-up. Maternal interactional behaviors and children's participation in a book reading situation were analyzed at 14 months of age in a subsample involving 39 mothers who were diagnosed as reading disabled and had a familial background of reading difficulties (the RD group) and 89 normally reading mothers (the NR group) and their children. Information on the children's concurrent and subsequent vocabular…

The role of linguistic and cognitive factors in emotion recognition difficulties in children with ASD, ADHD or DLD

Abstract Background: Many children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulty recognizing and understanding emotions. However, the reasons for these difficulties are currently not well understood. Aims: To compare the emotion recognition skills of children with neurodevelopmental disorders as well as those children’s skills with the skills of their typically developing (TD) age peers. Also, to identify the role of underlying factors in predicting emotion recognition skills. Methods & Procedures: The 6–10‐year‐old children (n = 50) who participated in th…

Lasten sosioemotionaalisten taitojen tukeminen varhaiskasvatuksessa

Continuity of Communication and Language Development (M����tt�� et al., 2016)

Purpose: This longitudinal study examined the development of prelinguistic skills and the continuity of communication and language from the prelinguistic stage to school age. Method: Prelinguistic communication of 427 Finnish children was followed repeatedly from 6 to 18 months of age (n = 203���322 at ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months), and its associations with language ability at ages 2;0 (n = 104), 3;0 (n = 112), 4;7 (n = 253), 5;3 (n = 102), and 7;9 (n = 236) were examined using latent growth curve modeling. Results: Prelinguistic development across several skills emerged as a rather stable intraindividual characteristic during the first 2 years of life. Continuity from prelinguistic de…

Mother-Child Teaching Strategies and Learning Disabilities

The teaching strategies used by mothers of sons with learning disabilities (LD) (n = 30) and normally achieving sons (NLD) (n = 30) were examined. The children were matched for age (8- to 11-year-olds) and for parents' socioeconomic status. The behavior of mother-child pairs was videotaped in a teaching task that was constructed to resemble a homework assignment. The results showed that the mothers of children with LD used fewer high-level strategies, and their total time used in teaching was less than that of the mothers of NLD children. The mothers of children with LD exhibited more dominance and less emotionality and cooperation than did the mothers of NLD children; however, the mothers…

Language and Symbolic Play in Toddlers

Language-play relations were examined in 110 18-month-old toddlers by observing their play actions in the Symbolic Play Test and assessing their language skills with the CDI parental report and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales. Significant associations between both language comprehension and production (vocabulary, use of suffixes, utterance length) and play were found when percentage of symbolic play was used as the measure of play competence. The total play score which included both functional-relational toy manipulation and symbolic play was not as strongly associated with the language measures. In both play measures relations were, however, higher between play and language com…

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