The number of U.S. children living in households with extended families has greatly increased in the last 4 decades. This demographic shift calls for a reevaluation of the impact of household size on children's development. Household density (HHD), measured as the ratio of people to bedrooms in a home, has been shown to negatively relate to…

Past studies examining the cognitive function of bilingual school-aged children have pointed to enhancements in areas of executive control relative to age-matched monolingual children. The majority of these studies has tested children from a middle-class background and compared performance of bilinguals as a discrete group against monolinguals.…

This study used the Family and Child Experiences Survey, 2009 cohort, to explore the levels of depression among a nationally representative sample of Head Start teachers at the beginning and end of the preschool year. Results showed that one in three Head Start teachers reported some depression either in fall or spring, and that change in…

We examined whether the early learning environment predicts children's 5th grade skills in 2,204 families from ethnically diverse, low-income backgrounds; tested the mediating roles of children's pre-kindergarten school-related skills and later learning environment; and asked whether lagged associations generalize across White, Black, Hispanic…

This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the preLAS, the PALS-K screening,…

This is a report of an examination of gender differences in behavior problems and a prediction of their changes from 2.5 to 3.5 years from mothering qualities among 209 low-income Hispanic children. Externalizing behaviors declined over this time somewhat more for girls than for boys. Fewer externalizing behavior problems at age 3.5 were…

This case study examines one Honduran immigrant family's community of practice during home literacy events. Data include field notes and audio and video recordings from six weeks of in-home observations. Coding and discourse analysis are used to analyse talk-in-interaction in order to understand how the family engages in literacy events. Family…

Using a large, longitudinal data set that represents 701 state-funded pre-k classrooms and over 2,900 children enrolled in 11 states, the current study examined two hypotheses: (1) children would be perceived to be better adjusted at the beginning of pre-k when rated by a same-race teacher than by a different-race teacher, and (2) children would…

Research Findings: Grounded in the investment model and informed by the integrative theory of the study of minority children, this study used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort data set, a nationally representative sample of young children, to investigate whether the association between socioeconomic status (family income and…

This study examined associations between unwanted sexual experiences and both physical disability and cognitive performance in a nationally representative sample of young adults. We used data from 11,878 participants (ages 26-32) in Waves I, III, and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Logistic regressions…

The precursors of early English reading success have been widely studied for native English-speaking students, and those findings have been generalized to the English language learner (ELL) student population. However, the development of English language acquisition may be different for ELL students. The purpose of this study was to investigate…

Evaluated the receptive vocabulary ability and nonverbal cognitive ability of 20 Spanish-speaking and 11 bilingual Mexican-American preschool children. The children obtained significantly lower scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised than on the Perceptual Performance Scale of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. Bilingual…

Hispanic first graders who spoke only Spanish at home (OSH) and those who spoke English and Spanish at home (ESH) performed near the mean on a Spanish adaptation of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R). The ESH children scored higher than OSH children on the PPVT-R. (BC)

Comparisons of the PPVT-R, the PPVT, and placement IQ tests were made with 114 educable mentally retarded students, 46 White, 44 Black, and 24 Hispanic. The PPVT and PPVT-R correlated for all groups, but neither the PPVT nor PPVT-R, correlated to a significant degree with the placement IQ tests. (Author/RC)

Tested English and Spanish receptive vocabulary of 396 Hispanic preschoolers in Miami. English scores were more than one-and-a-half standard deviations below the mean. The mean score in Spanish was 95 compared to a mean of 100 for the Spanish norming population. Factors other than vocabulary knowledge that might account for the lower scores were…