Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 May-Jun;95(3):895-912.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.14040. Epub 2023 Dec 1.

Relations between early majority language and socioemotional development in children with different language backgrounds

Wei Huang  1   2 , Sabine Weinert  1 , Anna Volodina  3
Affiliations

Relations between early majority language and socioemotional development in children with different language backgrounds

Wei Huang et al. Child Dev. 2024 May-Jun.

Abstract

This study explored whether the directionality of the relation between majority language and various facets of socioemotional development (three to 5 years old) differs between children with different language backgrounds. 12,951 children (49% girls; 85% White, 6% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 3% Black, 3% Mix, 2% Indian) from the British Millennium Cohort Study (2001-2006) were included in two-time-point cross-lagged analyses. Models controlling for important covariates found a bidirectional association for monolinguals (βs = .05, -.07, -.04), a unidirectional effect of majority language on socioemotional difficulties for dual language learners (DLLs) speaking English and minority language(s) at home (β = .14), and a unidirectional effect of socioemotional strength on majority language for DLLs speaking only minority language(s) at home (β = -.17).

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Barnett, M. A., Gustafsson, H., Deng, M., Mills‐Koonce, W. R., & Cox, M. (2012). Bidirectional associations among sensitive parenting, language development, and social competence. Infant and Child Development, 21(4), 374–393. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.1750
    1. Belhadj Kouider, E., Koglin, U., & Petermann, F. (2014). Emotional and behavioral problems in migrant children and adolescents in Europe: A systematic review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 23(6), 373–391.
    1. Brauns, H., Scherer, S., & Steinmann, S. (2003). The CASMIN educational classification in international comparative research. In J. H. P. Hoffmeyer‐Zlotnik & C. Wolf (Eds.), Advances in cross‐national comparison: A European working book for demographic and socio‐economic variables (pp. 221–244). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978‐1‐4419‐9186‐7_11
    1. Brazzelli, E., Grazzani, I., & Pepe, A. (2021). Promoting prosocial behavior in toddlerhood: A conversation‐based intervention at nursery. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 204, 105056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105056
    1. Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human development. In Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (Vol. 1, 6th ed., pp. 793–828). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

LinkOut - more resources