by Marshall Martin

For my term project I looked at the various risk factors toward developmental vulnerabilities relevant to the skills found on the Language and Cognitive Development scale and its subscales: Basic Literacy, Advanced Literacy, Basic Numeracy, and Interest in Literacy, Numeracy & Memory (HELP, 2019).

For the first part of the project, I evaluated the positive correlation between parental sensitivity (the ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to one’s child’s social cues appropriately) and children’s language ability (found in Madigan et al., 2019) through Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, which views development as occurring within a multilevel system of relationships ranging from the child’s immediate surroundings up to broad cultural and governmental influences (Berk, 2021). This perspective highlights the importance of broader social and societal factors, such as connections between a child’s school and their home, government funding of parental sensitivity research and educational campaigns, and cultural influences, and how these multilevel influences lead to positive parenting practices (such as parental sensitivity), and thus optimal environments for children’s developing language abilities. Although it helps to focus on specific and targeted interventions for issues involving genetic or environmental risks for language skill vulnerabilities, it is also vital that we do not lose sight of the larger social factors that influence these vulnerabilities indirectly, such as through their influence on correlated influences like parental sensitivity. Using the above social/societal examples, we can see that the presence of a strong connection between the child’s school and home, and abundant governmental funding for parenting research and education, can act as resilience factors when present, or risk factors when absent, toward the language development vulnerabilities in children.

For the second part of the project, I looked at the West Point Grey (WPG) Neighbourhood in Vancouver and how it was fairing in terms of the Language and Cognitive Development scale EDI data which runs up until 2019, while also examining relevant demographic info from the 2016 census. Overall, the percentage of vulnerable children for this scale in WPG (9%) is currently ~15% lower than that of the entire province (10.6%), even despite WPG’s rate of vulnerability having a meaningful increase over the long term (from 2004-2016), while the province remained stable in that time (HELP, 2020). This lower rate of vulnerability may be explained by the community’s wealthy demographic, with a median annual family income that is 28% higher than the province’s median, and with 84% of those aged 25-64 in the community holding a post-secondary credential, ~21% higher than the province’s rate (~64%) (HELP, 2018). It has been found that parents with a higher socioeconomic status typically stimulate and promote more academic achievement in their children due to their own prior education (Berk, 2021). Further, nearly a quarter of the community is of Chinese descent (2x the entire BC Chinese population proportionally), and East Asian interdependent cultural values often promote the idea of educational achievement as a moral obligation in children (HELP, 2018; Berk, 2021).

For the final portion of the project, I outlined a profile of the vulnerable behaviours children show for all the specific subscales of the Language and Cognitive Development scale during Kindergarten, and how these progress later in middle childhood, and then proposed a targeted solution for a specific behaviour. For example, children in kindergarten unable to write their own name, unable to identify 10+ letters of the alphabet, or lacking phonological awareness (the ability to attach sounds to their corresponding letters), are showing signs of vulnerability on the Basic Literacy subscale (HELP, 2019). And, if left untreated, these issues can persist into middle childhood, such as a lack of phonological awareness hurting a child’s ability to decode new words by sounding them out (Berk, 2021). My proposed solution targets this issue of phonological awareness, by recruiting kindergarteners challenged in this skill into an after-school read-aloud group that incorporates phonological awareness activities that help them learn the important relationships between letters and their corresponding sounds (like how sounding out words can help with spelling them). With the implementation of this intervention in kindergarten, delays in word decoding and reading comprehension in middle childhood can be prevented, and thus potential further causal delays throughout late stages in development as well.

References

Berk, Laura E. (2021). Revel for Infants and Children: Prenatal through Middle Childhood (9th ed.), Pearson

Human Early Learning Partnership. EDI BC. Early Development Instrument British Columbia, 2016-2019 Wave 7 provincial report. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public Health; 2019 Nov. Available from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/edibc_ wave7_2019_provincialreport.pdf

Human Early Learning Partnership. Early Development Instrument [EDI] report. Wave 7 Community Profile, 2019. Vancouver School District (SD39). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public Health; February 2020. Available from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/edi_w7_ communityprofiles/edi_w7_communityprofile_sd_39.pdf

Human Early Learning Partnership. (June 27, 2018). 2016 Census (NH). http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/maps/data/

Madigan, S., Prime, H., Graham, S. A., Rodrigues, M., Anderson, N., Khoury, J., & Jenkins, J. M. (2019). Parenting behavior and child language: A meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 144(4). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-3556