Preschool Language Environments and Children's School Readiness Skills

Abstract

Early language environments are considered to support children's language development; however, it is unclear to what extent early language environments relate to skills other than language abilities. We examined (1) whether the preschool language environment (measured as adult words heard and conversational turns) is associated with children's school readiness skills (i.e., emergent literacy, math and executive function [EF]), and (2) whether children's vocabulary skills explain these associations. Using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) devices, we collected student-level language environment data from 91 preschoolers (56.04% boys; 67.42% non-Hispanic White) across two school days. We found that there was a significant, positive association between adult words heard and children's math skills (β = 0.18, p = 0.037) and a significant, positive association between conversational turns and children's math (β = 0.22, p = 0.008) and emergent literacy (β = 0.26, p = 0.002) skills. However, these associations were substantially attenuated when accounting for children's vocabulary skills; after including children's scores on a vocabulary task in these models, none of these associations were statistically significant. Neither adult words heard nor conversational turns were associated with children's EF skills in any models run. Implications of these findings for theory and early educational practices are discussed.