Maternal education as determinant of preschool children's communication abilities
Year: 2012
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Numerous studies provided evidence that maternal education was related to child language development. The objective of this, explorative research, was to determine the nature of relationship between maternal education and various aspects of the child structural and pragmatic language functioning. The sample consisted of 97 (46.2%) boys and 113 (53.8%) girls, aged from 4 to 7 (M=5.75; SD=0.97). Their communication abilities were assessed by the Serbian version of the Children's Communication Checklist. Participants were divided into three groups based on maternal education: those with unfinished high school (n=19), those with high-school education (n=104) as well as those, graduate from university (n=87). The obtained results showed that children of more educated mothers achieved significantly higher level of syntactic (p=0.013) and semantic (p=0.001) development than children of less educated mothers. There were no significant differences in pragmatics associated with maternal education. Children of more educated mothers also had higher scores of social deviance composite than comparable group. The obtained results indicate that insufficient maternal education should be considered as a risk factor for subsequent speech and language development of their children.
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6992715044