Early childhood marks a time when word learning is accompanied by rapid growth in the cognitive processes that underlie self-modulated and goal-directed behavior (i.e., executive functions (EF)). Although there is empirical evidence to support the association between EF and vocabulary development in childhood, inconsistent findings have been reported regarding the extent to which early EF abilities predict later vocabulary outcomes and vice versa. Thus, the first aim of the present study was to employ a stringent analytic approach to examining the longitudinal relations between EF and vocabulary across multiple waves in early childhood (i.e., at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6). Among the studies that have documented a link between children's early and later EF/vocabulary skills, the underlying mechanism(s) that can account for this association have yet to be identified. As such, the second and third aims of this study were to investigate children's private speech and visual attention skills as potential mediators of the hypothesized link between early and later EF/vocabulary. The results indicate that after controlling for maternal education, a unidirectional cross-lagged panel model best fit the data. That is, across all measurement waves, children's vocabulary scores at one timepoint were positively predictive of their EF performance at the following timepoint. Although no evidence of mediation was detected, a significant and novel association emerged between children's early vocabulary scores and their later private speech production. Moreover, this study was able to replicate the well-established link between visual attention and receptive vocabulary among a sample of older children. / Doctor of Philosophy / Across the first few years of life, young children are quickly learning to understand/say new words (vocabulary development) at the same time that they are improving upon their ability to create plans, solve problems, and control their thoughts/actions (executive functioning (EF) development). These early skills act as developmental "building blocks" because they play an essential role in shaping more complex abilities later in childhood and even adulthood. Given their importance, the first goal of this study was to examine whether children's early abilities in one area are related to their later abilities in the other area at multiple ages across the early childhood period. For example, does vocabulary size at age 2 or age 3 relate to children's EF scores at age 3 or age 4? The results show that at each age measured in this study, children's early word knowledge predicted their later EF performance. The second goal of this study was to identify research-based, mediating variables in order to better understand why the expected association between vocabulary and EF exists in childhood. The results show that children with larger vocabularies at age 2 think out loud more when completing a difficult task at age 4, and that children who are skilled at finding requested objects when viewing a cluttered picture at age 4 have larger vocabularies at age 6. Collectively, these findings suggest that children's language and cognitive skills are closely related starting in toddlerhood and continuing into the elementary school years.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/109981 |
| Date | 09 May 2022 |
| Creators | Bruce, Madeleine D. |
| Contributors | Psychology, Bell, Martha Ann, Diaz, Vanessa, Savla, Jyoti S., Hoffman, Kurt A. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0056 seconds