Journal article
Maternal responsiveness predicts child language at ages 3 and 4 in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers
S Hudson, P Levickis, K Down, R Nicholls, M Wake
International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders | Published : 2015
Abstract
Background Maternal responsiveness has been shown to predict child language outcomes in clinical samples of children with language delay and non-representative samples of typically developing children. An effective and timely measure of maternal responsiveness for use at the population level has not yet been established. Aims To determine whether a global rating of maternal responsiveness at age 2 years predicts language outcomes at ages 3 and 4 in a community sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. Methods & Procedures In an Australian population-based study, at child age 1:6 years, 301 slow-to-talk toddlers (scoring ≤20th percentile on a parent-reported expressive vocabulary checklist) were invit..
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Awarded by Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Funding Acknowledgements
The Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funded the Let's Learn Language trial (Strategic Award 384491), Dr Levickis (Postgraduate Scholarship 491296 and Centre for Research Excellence 1023493) and Professor Wake (Senior Research Fellowship 1046518). The authors also acknowledge the support of the NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language (#1023493). Research at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute was supported by the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program. The first author recognizes and thanks the members of the Let's Learn Language study team for the opportunity to complete the embedded study as part of a graduate (master's) degree. The authors would also like to thank sincerely all the families and child health nurses who took part in the Let's Learn Language trial, including those children and parents who contributed parent-child interaction and language outcome data for the current study. The authors thank Sherryn Tobin, Hannah Bryson and all the research assistants who helped collect the parent-child interaction and language outcome data. Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. All authors read, edited and contributed to the manuscript.