Longitudinal associations among interest, persistence, supportive parenting, and achievement in early childhood

Early Childhood Research Quarterly 28 (2013) 658–667

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Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Longitudinal associations among interest, persistence, supportive parenting, and achievement in early childhood Anne Martin a,∗ , Rebecca M. Ryan b , Jeanne Brooks-Gunn a a b

Columbia University, United States Georgetown University, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 23 May 2012 Received in revised form 3 May 2013 Accepted 20 May 2013 Keywords: Learning behaviors Parenting School readiness

a b s t r a c t This study investigates two facets of children’s school readiness: interest in new cognitive tasks (interest) and persistence in task completion (persistence). Little attention has been paid to the early development of these learning behaviors, although they might prove susceptible to intervention even before school entry. Using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a sample of low-income children (N = 1771) was followed to model bidirectional associations among interest and persistence and maternal supportive parenting between ages 1 and 3, and estimate associations between children’s interest and persistence at age 3 and their academic skills at age 5. Results indicate that maternal supportive parenting influences children’s interest and persistence more strongly and consistently than interest or persistence influences parenting, and that interest but not persistence transacts with parenting over time. Interest and persistence were equally predictive of children’s early academic skills. Findings affirm that both interest and persistence during toddlerhood predict children’s academic standing at school entry. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Researchers and educators increasingly consider children’s learning behaviors key indicators of school readiness, defined broadly as the “child competencies at the time of school entry that are important for later success” (Snow, 2006, p. 9). First, kindergarten teachers report that children’s work habits, such as paying attention and working independently, are among the qualities they consider most adaptive in the classroom (RimmKaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). Second, accumulating evidence suggests that children’s learning behaviors at school entry powerfully predict both short- (Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 1993; Fuchs et al., 2005; Matthews, Ponitz, & Morrison, 2009; McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2006) and long-term (Duncan et al., 2007; LiGrining, Votruba-Drzal, Maldonado-Carreno, & Haas, 2010; Pagani, Fitzpatrick, Archambault, & Janosz, 2010) academic achievement. The centrality of children’s learning behaviors to school readiness calls for an understanding of the process by which these skills develop prior to school entry. Yet to date, the field has emphasized “product over process” (Snow, 2006, p. 20); that is, researchers have focused on the skills that are observable at school entry, without

∗ Corresponding author at: National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 39, New York, NY 10027, United States. Tel.: +1 212 678 3479; fax: +1 212 678 3676. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Martin). 0885-2006/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2013.05.003

identifying the antecedents of those skills earlier in the life course or assessing continuity in those skills over time. The present study addresses this gap by examining two such behaviors – interest in new cognitive tasks or objects, and persistence in task completion (hereafter, interest and persistence) – at ages 1, 2, and 3 in a large, multi-site sample. Interest is typically measured at school entry by indicators of curiosity, exploration, or eagerness (Alexander et al., 1993; McDermott, Leigh, & Perry, 2002; Yen, Konold, & McDermott, 2004). Persistence is typically operationalized by items measuring attention and task completion (Li-Grining et al., 2010; McClelland et al., 2006; Schaefer & McDermott, 1999). Together, interest and persistence represent two distinct facets of learning behavior in toddlerhood: a child’s initial engagement in learning and his or her ability to maintain that engagement. These behaviors emerge even before children are exposed to the classroom. Indeed, they appear in the first year of life, when home is the primary context for development, as these characteristics map onto the two facets of temperament – reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Reactivity refers to the latency, duration, and intensity of children’s reactions to external and internal stimuli, whereas self-regulation refers to the attentional, behavioral, and emotional processes that modulate reactivity (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Specifically, children’s interest in new tasks reflects their tendency to orient toward, rather than withdraw from, novel stimuli,

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a dimension of reactivity called “approach” (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001). Toward the end of the first year, children begin to develop cognitive control of these reactions, which allows them to sustain engagement with (or disengage from) sources of stimulation (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997). Thus, during the second year of life, temperament becomes increasingly characterized by self-regulation, the abilities that control attention, behavior, and emotion. Task persistence is one manifestation of children’s self-regulation, as it requires sustaining attention and resisting the impulse to flee. As indicators of temperament, both interest and persistence should be observable in early childhood and relatively consistent across contexts. To understand how interest and persistence develop in the years before school entry, it should be profitable to examine whether and how they are impacted by parenting. Some research has linked supportive parenting behaviors to children’s subsequent persistence in infancy and toddlerhood (Frodi, Bridges, & Grolnick, 1985; Kelley, Brownell, & Campbell, 2000; Yarrow, Morgan, Jennings, Harmon, & Gaiter, 1982), but less attention has been paid to the possibility that supportive parenting affects young children’s interest levels. Moreover, reciprocal links from children’s interest and persistence to supportive parenting behaviors have not been addressed. Therefore, consistent with transactional theories of development (Sameroff, 2009), we model bidirectional associations among children’s interest and persistence and supportive parenting across ages 1, 2, and 3. By determining which learning behavior is more responsive to parenting, which behavior more strongly influences parenting, and whether these associations change over time, we aim to inform efforts to promote the development of these behaviors prior to school entry. The study goes on to explore how interest and persistence at age 3 relate to vocabulary, literacy, and math skills at age 5. As reviewed earlier, ample research links learning behaviors at school entry with subsequent achievement, but most studies have combined disparate learning behaviors in a single index (Duncan et al., 2007; Matthews et al., 2009; McClelland et al., 2006; Yen et al., 2004) or focused exclusively on attentional skills (Horn & Packard, 1985; Razza, Martin, & Brooks-Gunn, 2012a). Therefore, little is known about the learning behaviors aside from attention that might be leveraged to boost children’s school readiness. The present study identifies and compares the independent contributions of interest and persistence in toddlerhood to preschool academic skills and asks whether one behavior enhances the effect of the other. The results will suggest whether interest constitutes a unique pathway to greater academic skill, either directly or indirectly by amplifying the benefits of persistence. We address these questions using data from the first four waves of the national evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS), which provides a large, national sample of low-income children and families. The school readiness of socioeconomically disadvantaged children is of particular interest because they enter school generally lagging behind their peers on a range of indicators (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997), including teacher-reported learning behaviors (McClelland, Morrison, & Holmes, 2000; West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken, 2000). Uncovering the influences on and implications of interest and persistence may inform programs designed to enhance the school readiness of low-income children.

1. Interest, persistence, and parenting Children’s interest in new tasks and materials reflects a key facet of temperamental reactivity: the tendency to orient toward novel stimuli, a dimension of temperament called approach (Blandon, Calkins, Keane, & O’Brien, 2010; Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997; Rothbart et al., 2001). Temperament is believed to be amenable

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to socialization despite its basis in biology, according to prevailing views of temperament (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Interest in objects and environments is evident in the first six months of life (Barrett & Morgan, 1995). Thus, there are several years before school entry during which children’s interest behaviors may be susceptible to environmental influences, such as parenting behaviors. Like interest, persistence may be vulnerable to environmental influences in the years before school entry. To our knowledge, however, few studies have examined parental effects on persistence, and none have examined parental effects on interest. The studies on persistence reveal a link between more sensitive parenting and children’s early persistence (Frodi et al., 1985; Kelley et al., 2000; Yarrow et al., 1982). For example, children whose mothers provided more positive feedback during a challenging toy task at age 2 showed greater persistence during a subsequent toy task at age 3 (Kelley et al., 2000). These findings are consistent with a growing literature delineating parents’ effects on self-regulation more broadly. For example, sensitive parents promote self-regulation in emotionally challenging circumstances by lowering children’s arousal level and modeling adaptive self-regulatory strategies such as distraction (Eisenberg, Smith, & Spinrad, 2010). A child’s ability to regulate her emotions has important implications for her cognitive functioning, because a child who is more skilled at regulating her emotions is better able to direct her attention to, and sustain attention on, cognitive tasks (Blair & Ursache, 2010). While past research and theory strongly suggest that more supportive parenting behaviors should predict greater persistence in the first three years of life, it is less clear whether supportive parenting will similarly influence children’s level of interest. Research on parenting and temperamental reactivity in the infant and toddler years has focused largely on negative emotionality, finding that it is responsive to both positive and negative parenting behaviors (Akker, Dekovic, Prinzie, & Asscher, 2010; Blandon et al., 2010). However, it is unclear whether findings on negative emotionality should generalize to interest. We therefore draw on attachment theory and research to propose a pathway from parenting behaviors to interest in the first three years of life. Specifically, the attachment literature shows that maternal sensitivity promotes young children’s exploration of and engagement with their environment through the establishment of a secure base (Bowlby, 1982; Bus & Van IJzendoorn, 1988; Frodi et al., 1985; Matas, Arend, & Sroufe, 1978). In one study, the deficit in cognitive skills for insecurely attached children relative to securely attached children was attributable in part to less exploratory behavior (O’Connor & McCartney, 2007). In sum, extant theory and research suggest that supportive parenting should boost children’s interest and persistence in the first three years of life. Yet little is known about the potential for children’s interest and persistence to affect supportive parenting during this period. The transactional model of development (Sameroff, 2009) characterizes parental influence on early development as a feedback loop between the child and parent, but few studies have the data needed to test bidirectional influences between mother and child (Lugo-Gil & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008; Maccoby, Snow, & Jacklin, 1984; Owens, Shaw, & Vondra, 1998; Rubin, Nelson, Hastings, & Asendorpf, 1999), and none of these has examined interest or persistence. The research to date on unidirectional pathways from child interest and persistence to maternal parenting is limited. In one study, infants’ persistence at 6 months was bivariately associated with mothers’ teaching behaviors at 14 months, but in the absence of multivariate models, we cannot rule out the possibility of confounding by family background characteristics (Banerjee & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007). Two other studies found that toddlers high in interest and persistence received fewer stimulating maternal behaviors during play (Dixon & Smith, 2003; Maccoby et al., 1984).

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Both of these studies, however, measured parenting and child behavior simultaneously, assessing parents’ immediate efforts to engage children in tasks, rather than assessing the quality of their teaching. While low-interest children may elicit greater effort (e.g., more bids for attention) from their mothers to engage them in activities in the context of a laboratory observation, high-interest children may provide more opportunities on a daily basis for mothers to display highly stimulating behaviors, such as scaffolding complex tasks and using varied language. Therefore, greater displays of interest may encourage more of the sensitive and stimulating parenting behaviors that are linked to higher achievement scores (Bennett, Weigel, & Martin, 2002; Rogoff, 1990). Similarly, children high on persistence may be more apt to elicit stimulation because they are able to sustain interactions long enough for parents to feel that teaching is worthwhile and rewarding. Persistent children may also elicit sensitive parenting behavior because extended parent–child interactions give parents a more nuanced understanding of their child’s preferences and cues. The current study estimates a cross-lagged model of interest, persistence, and supportive parenting at ages 1, 2, and 3. One question of interest is whether the direction and size of the associations among interest, persistence, and maternal supportiveness shift over time. For instance, it is possible that supportive parenting influences interest and persistence more between ages 1 and 2 than ages 2 and 3. In general, studies find greater stability in child temperament after 2 years of age (Lemery, Goldsmith, Klinnert, & Mrazek, 1999; Pfeifer, Goldsmith, Davidson, & Rickman, 2002). Relative stability in temperament may indicate less responsiveness to environmental influences. Moreover, persistence may be particularly responsive to parenting between ages 1 and 2, given that the attention system undergoes substantial reorganization during the second year of life (Diamond, 2002; Feldman, 2009; Posner & Rothbart, 2000). By contrast, child behavior may influence parenting more strongly between ages 2 and 3 than 1 and 2 precisely because there is greater stability in behavior during that period, and more stable characteristics may exert a greater influence on parent–child interactions. Without prior research as a guide, these hypotheses are speculative. The current analyses are intended as a first step toward understanding whether and when interest and persistence are amenable to parental intervention.

2. Interest, persistence, and academic skills Both interest and persistence should facilitate early academic competence by providing children with more opportunities to learn. However, little is known about the ability of these two behaviors, in particular, at school entry to predict later academic skills because most studies evaluate composites of learning behaviors rather than the individual behaviors themselves (McDermott et al., 2002). When interest and persistence are considered individually, there is reason to expect that persistence will enhance children’s academic skills. First, a key component of persistence, sustained attention, when measured at school entry, predicts higher academic achievement, both concurrently and longitudinally (Razza, Martin, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Razza et al., 2012a). It appears that the ability to sustain attention allows children to focus on relevant materials and avoid distraction (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein, 1989; Velting & Whitehurst, 1997). Second, the two studies that have examined persistence per se both found links to achievement. Banerjee and Tamis-LeMonda (2007) found that infants’ persistence at 6 months predicted their cognitive scores at 14 months, while Berhenke, Miller, Brown, Seifer, and Dickstein (2011) found a cross-sectional association between persistence and math and reading skills in kindergarten. Thus, in the present study, we expect

to find that persistence at age 3 will predict higher achievement at age 5, adjusting for interest at age 3. It is less clear whether interest will predict achievement after adjusting for persistence. There is almost no research on whether interest in early childhood, conceived of as curiosity and exploration, is associated with later achievement net of persistence. The same study that found an association between persistence and math and reading in kindergarten failed to find such an association for interest/arousal (Berhenke et al., 2011). The authors speculated that they may have captured overarousal rather than arousal. Indeed, temperament research indicates that toddlers who score high on approach as well as positive affect and activity level (a profile termed “exuberant”) are more prone to frustration (Dennis, 2006) and display more externalizing behaviors and poorer selfregulation than other children (Putnam, 2012; Stifter, Putnam, & Jahromi, 2008). However, recent research suggests that outcomes for children high on approach may be highly dependent on the type of parenting behaviors they encounter (Dennis, 2006; Razza, Martin, & Brooks-Gunn, 2012b). Alexander and colleagues (1993) developed a scale called (vs. “Apathy-Withdrawal”), which “Interest-Participation” assessed the child’s enthusiasm for and interest in new things and situations. They also examined persistence in a scale called “Attention Span-Restlessness.” They found that both scales, measured in first grade, uniquely predicted children’s math and reading grades and scores in second and fourth grades. The two behaviors were equally predictive in the short term, but interest was more predictive than persistence in the longer-term. Thus, in our sample, it is possible that interest, measured at age 3, will predict academic skills at age 5 more strongly than persistence. The final goal of this study is to explore how interest and participation work together to influence achievement. Sansone and Thoman (2005, p. 176) suggested that “interest can become the more proximal motivator for persistence and subsequent engagement.” The present study considers the alternative possibility that interest and persistence create a synergistic effect. That is, if children high on persistence engage their attention to a task but do not readily initiate new tasks, they may conduct complex problem solving but have limited exposure to new concepts. If children high on interest marvel at new things in their environment but shift focus quickly, they may be exposed to a wide range of words and concepts but have limited practice with task comprehension. We therefore propose that the rewards of interest and persistence may be greater in each other’s presence. Specifically, children who are high on interest may benefit far more from their enthusiasm if they can also sustain engagement in novel tasks. Likewise, highly persistent children may gain even more from that ability when they can apply it to a wide range of activities. In either scenario, interest and persistence would amplify each others’ positive effects on early learning. The present study tests this hypothesis for the first time by examining whether the interaction between interest and persistence at age 3 predicts academic scores in preschool.

3. Method 3.1. Data Data were drawn from a large sample of low-income families who enrolled in a nationwide evaluation of EHS between 1996 and 1998. EHS is a federally funded program for low-income infants and toddlers and their families designed to improve children’s school readiness and their caregivers’ parenting skills. The EHS Research and Evaluation Project included families seeking enrollment at 17 programs across the country selected for their demographic, geographic, and programmatic diversity. Families (N = 3001) were

A. Martin et al. / Early Childhood Research Quarterly 28 (2013) 658–667 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for all study variables. Percent Interest Age 1 Age 2 Age 3 Persistence Age 1 Age 2 Age 3 Maternal supportiveness Age 1 Age 2 Age 3 Academic skills at age 5 PPVT Letter-Word Identification Applied Problems Controls Race/ethnicity White African-American Hispanic Other Male Household income <33% poverty threshold 33–66% poverty threshold 67–99% poverty threshold 100% + poverty threshold In EHS treatment group English is primary language MDI at age 1

M (SD)

– – –

3.5 (0.7) 3.6 (0.8) 3.8 (0.7)

– – –

3.6 (0.7) 3.6 (0.8) 3.8 (0.8)

– – –

4.0 (1.1) 4.2 (1.0) 4.1 (1.0)

– – –

90.8 (15.7) 89.3 (13.7) 88.3 (20.1)

40.6% 35.4% 20.0% 4.1% 50.1% 31.1% 30.6% 24.8% 13.5% 52.0% 83.2% –

– – – – – – – – – – – 98.2 (11.2)

Note. Outcome variables have not been imputed; Ns for these variables are 1674, 1754, and 1755, respectively. All other variables have been imputed (N = 1771).

randomly assigned to receive EHS services or to the control group, which was free to seek services elsewhere (for study details see Administration for Children and Families, 2002). Parents and children were visited in their homes when children were 14, 24, and 36 months old (hereafter, ages 1, 2, and 3). At each time point, videotaped observations were made of mother–child interactions and children were administered assessments of cognitive and behavioral development. At age 5, children were visited again in their homes and their vocabulary, literacy, and math skills were assessed. 3.2. Participants Cases from the EHS Project were eligible for inclusion in the current study if they had valid data on one of the age 5 academic skills of interest (n = 1771). Models of age 5 outcomes were run only with cases with valid values on the relevant outcome (n = 1674 for PPVT, n = 1754 for Letter-Word Identification, n = 1755 for Applied Problems). Although attrition between enrollment and the age 5 home visit was substantial, few differences emerged between our analytic sample and the original sample. Children in the analytic sample scored slightly higher on interest at age 3 (see Section 3.3), but similarly on measures of persistence and maternal supportive parenting. However, children in the analytic sample were more likely to be White (41% vs. 32%, t = 4.68, p < .001), less likely to be Hispanic (20% vs. 29%, t = 5.57, p < .001), more likely to be in the EHS treatment group (52% vs. 48%, t = 2.09, p < .05), and more likely to speak English as their primary language (83% vs. 73%, t = 6.97, p < .001). Although the analytic sample differed slightly from the full EHS sample, its characteristics still reflect those of a low-income population (see Table 1). Nearly one-third (31.1%) had an incometo-poverty ratio of less than .33 (i.e., were below 33% of the poverty threshold), and only 13.5% lived at or above the poverty threshold.

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Less than half the sample (40.6%) was White; 35.4% of the children were African-American; 20.0% were Hispanic; and 4.1% were of other race/ethnicity. Half the children were male, and 52% were in the EHS treatment group. The majority (83.2%) came from homes where English was the primary language. 3.3. Measures 3.3.1. Maternal supportive parenting The videotaped “Three-Bag” protocol was used at ages 1, 2, and 3 to assess maternal parenting. This protocol was adapted from Vandell (1979) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care’s “Three Box” free play assessment (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1999). During the task, the dyad was asked to play with three pillow cases containing toys or books for 10 min (for details on the protocol, see Administration for Children and Families, 2002). Parents were given intentionally vague instructions so as to elicit naturally occurring parenting behaviors. At each age, the coding scheme for maternal behavior was guided by theory about the importance of parent responsiveness to parent–child attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1982) and scaffolding of child play to cognitive development (Rogoff, Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, 1993; Vygotsky, 1978). The scales considered here are sensitivity (taking the child’s perspective, accurate perception of the child’s signals and prompt and appropriate responses to these signals) and stimulation of cognitive development (teaching or actively trying to expand the child’s abilities). Both scales had seven points, ranging from very low (1) to very high (7). All coders achieved reliability (exact agreement within one point) to a criterion of 85% with the “gold standard” researcher, after which 15% of tapes were drawn randomly from the coders’ weekly assignment and checked for inter-rater reliability (again at 85%). Agreement between coders and the gold standard averaged 90% at age 1, 93% at age 2, and 94% at age 3. Because we expected the sensitivity and cognitive stimulation scales to exhibit similar associations with interest and persistence (as confirmed in exploratory analyses), the scales were averaged at each age to form a single scale called supportiveness (r’s = .60 to .66). 3.3.2. Child interest and persistence Child interest and persistence at ages 1, 2, and 3 were rated by trained assessors with items drawn from the Behavior Rating Scale (BRS) of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II (Bayley, 1993). The BRS is well-suited to assessing learning behaviors in early childhood because the test conditions mimic those of a structured learning environment. Children’s behavior is rated during a series of cognitive tasks led by assessors, just as a typical learning scale measures children’s behavior reported by teachers during academic tasks. Moreover, the BRS items used here assess children’s interest and persistence in novel tasks, rather than tasks of children’s choosing, just as typical learning behavior scales measure children’s interest in and attention to tasks introduced by teachers. Assessors completed the BRS after administering the Bayley in the child’s home at ages 1, 2, and 3. Previous studies have used the BRS to rate children’s temperament and have relied on broad scales (Gaertner, Spinrad, & Eisenberg, 2008; Stifter & Corey, 2001), although Yarrow et al. (1982) and Banerjee and TamisLeMonda (2007) each selected five items to measure persistence. We disaggregated items tapping orientation and engagement with test materials from those assessing sustained attention on and persistence in tasks into distinct interest and persistence scales. Specifically, five items were averaged to capture children’s interest and enthusiasm during the administration of the Bayley, each rated on a scale of 1–5: positive affect; animation; interest in test materials; exploration of objects/surroundings; and social engagement (˛ = .83 at age 1, ˛ = .84 at age 2, ˛ = .81 at age 3). Four items

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were averaged to assess persistence, also rated on a 5-point scale: attention to tasks; persistence in tasks; cooperation; and lack of fidgeting/hyperactivity (˛ = .86 at age 1, ˛ = .90 at age 2, ˛ = .89 at age 3).1 These scales were consistent with results from factor analyses. Specifically, principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded two factors consistently across child ages 1, 2 and 3. The first factor comprised the interest scale as it now stands (5 items) and the second factor comprised the persistence scale as it now stands (4 items) plus 3 additional items (negative affect, hypersensitivity to test materials, and adaptation to change in test materials). These additional 3 items were dropped because they were somewhat conceptually inconsistent with the remaining items in the persistence scale, and there was no difference in the scale alpha with and without them. Tests of discriminant validity confirmed that interest and persistence at all three ages were distinct from temperament measures of emotionality and sociability at age 1 (|r|’s ≤ .15). Interest and persistence were only moderately correlated within each time point (r’s = .37 to .47), indicating that their consideration as separate constructs is warranted. 3.3.3. Child academic skills Three academic skills were assessed by trained data collectors at age 5. Emergent literacy was assessed with the Woodcock–Johnson-Revised Letter-Word Identification subtest and math achievement was assessed with the Woodcock–JohnsonRevised Applied Problems subtest (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). The Letter-Word Identification subtest assesses the child’s ability to name letters and words on sight. The Applied Problems subtest assesses the child’s ability to solve math problems based on pictures (e.g., the child is asked to count the number of objects shown). Receptive vocabulary was assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (Dunn & Dunn, 1997). In this task, the child is asked to point to one of four pictures that best represents a word read aloud. All measures are age-standardized (M = 100, SD = 15). 3.3.4. Controls Demographic information was collected from mothers at the time of enrollment. Maternal race was coded as nonHispanic White, non-Hispanic African-American, Hispanic, and other race/ethnicity. Poverty status was captured by a series of indicator variables denoting whether the child’s household was below 33% of the poverty threshold (the reference category), between 33 and 66% of the poverty threshold, between 67 and 99% of the poverty threshold, or 100% or above the poverty threshold. An indicator variable was coded 1 if the child was in the EHS treatment group. Models also controlled for child sex (1 = male) and mother’s primary language (1 = English). Children’s scores on the Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI; Bayley, 1993) at age 1 were entered as an additional control in the regression models predicting academic outcomes at age 5 to isolate their associations with child interest and persistence net of cognitive ability. Scores were standardized against a national norming sample (M = 100, SD = 15). Although MDI scores are also available at ages 2 and 3, we used age 1 because later scores may too closely reflect the

1 Although both scales measure attention skills, the interest scale taps selective attention, orientation, and switching, while the persistence scale taps sustained attention. Instructions to raters were clear in this regard. For example, the “exploration of objects/surroundings” item in the interest scale cautioned that it did not “mean the amount of enthusiasm, persistence, or overall attention the child displays; but rather, the degree to which the child initially attends to the material or the examiner during each item administration.” By contrast, the “attention to tasks” item in the persistence scale was defined as “the degree to which the child remains focused on the tasks presented by the examiner; the degree to which the child sustains interest in the tasks.”

academic skills that the Woodcock–Johnson and PPVT assess and thus overcontrol for variation in children’s achievement scores. 3.4. Analytic strategy The analysis was conducted in two phases. The first phase addressed our first research question surrounding the direction and timing of associations among children’s interest and persistence and mothers’ supportiveness at 1, 2, and 3 years. Cross-lagged path models were computed in MPlus (Version 5.21) using weighted least squares estimation with robust standard errors and meanand variance-adjusted chi-squares (WLSMV). Cross-lagged, bidirectional paths were estimated between interest and supportiveness, and persistence and supportiveness. Each construct at age 2 was regressed on its earlier measurement at 1 year, and each construct at 3 years was regressed on its measurement at 2 years. At each time point, supportiveness was estimated to covary with both interest and persistence. Thus, for example, interest at 2 years was regressed on supportiveness at 1 year, supportiveness at 2 years, and interest at 1 year. Similarly, supportiveness at 2 years was regressed on interest at 1 year, interest at 2 years, and supportiveness at 1 year. Residual covariances between the 1 and 3 year measures of the same construct were constrained to be zero following the assumption that they were related only via the year 2 measure. Non-significant paths were trimmed to improve model fit. The second phase of analysis tested whether interest and persistence at 3 years operated independently or interactively to predict academic skills at age 5 using OLS regression models in Stata (Version 11.0). Separate models were run for each outcome (PPVT, Letter-Word Identification, and Applied Problems). Each model included main effects for interest and persistence, as well an interaction between them (interest × persistence). Interest and persistence were centered to facilitate interpretation of results. All models included the covariates included in the path models as well as a measure of the child’s cognitive ability. Maternal supportiveness at age 3 was also controlled. All variables were standardized in order that coefficients may be interpreted as standardized regression coefficients (ˇs). 3.5. Missing data The two phases of our analysis relied on different approaches to missing data. In the first phase, which estimated a cross-lagged path model in MPlus, missing data were accommodated by a pairwise present approach, which uses all available data on each pair of variables to generate sample statistics; in MPlus, this technique produces unbiased estimates under the assumption that data are missing at random (that is, their missingness can be predicted by observed values on the independent variables; Asparouhov & Muthen, 2010; Rubin, 1987). This assumption is reasonable given our thorough list of control variables. In the second phase, which estimated regression models in Stata, we followed vonHippel’s (2007) recommendation to multiply impute independent but not dependent variables because imputed outcomes generate excessive noise in regression models. Although we did not impute the academic outcomes, they were included in the models used to impute the other variables (vonHippel, 2007). Again, we assumed that the data were missing at random. This assumption was strengthened by our use of a host of auxiliary variables describing the child’s behaviors and home environment at ages 1–3 in our imputation models (Allison, 2009). Multiple imputation was conducted using the ICE command (Royston, 2007) in Stata 11.0, which is based on a regression switching protocol using chained equations. Imputed values for missing observations were calculated drawing from the posterior predictive

A. Martin et al. / Early Childhood Research Quarterly 28 (2013) 658–667

Age 1

Age 2 .24

Persistence

.18

Persistence

.23

.45 Sex Race/ethnicity Income-toneeds Primary language In EHS

663

.10

Age 3 .37

.65

.11

Interest

.32

Maternal Supportiveness

.25

.53

.13

.36

.07

.14

.38

Maternal Supportiveness

Persistence

Interest

.44

Maternal Supportiveness

.13

Interest

Fig. 1. Associations among maternal supportiveness and child interest and persistence at child ages 1, 2, and 3. Figure presents standardized coefficients for all paths significant at p < .05. N = 1771. Chi-square = 233, df = 49, p > .05; CFI = .95; RMSEA = .05.

distribution. Five imputed datasets were generated and were analyzed using the MIM prefix (Royston, 2007) for regression analyses in Stata, which combines coefficients and standard errors across imputed data sets. 4. Results 4.1. Descriptive statistics for key variables Table 1 displays descriptive statistics for all key independent and dependent variables. Children’s interest and persistence scores were relatively stable and normally distributed across time points with a mean of 3.5–3.8. Maternal supportiveness was also stable over time with a mean of approximately 4, indicating moderate supportiveness. Children in the analytic sample, like children from the full EHS study, scored approximately 10 points lower than national norms on all measures of academic skills, reflecting its exclusively low-income composition. 4.2. Cross-lagged model of interest, persistence, and supportiveness The results of the cross-lagged model show that between 1 and 3 years, maternal supportiveness had a greater influence on interest and persistence than interest and persistence had on supportiveness (Fig. 1). The fit of this model was adequate (2 = 233, df = 49, p > .05; comparative fit index [CFI] = .95; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .05). A value of .90 or greater on the CFI and .10 or less on the RMSEA are considered indicative of acceptable fit (Kline, 1998). Although we report the 2 , it should not be interpreted as an indicator of fit because a large sample can render this statistic significant (Schumacker & Lomax, 2004). Greater maternal supportiveness at age 1 predicted higher interest and persistence at age 2. Pathways to interest and persistence were extremely similar (ˇ = .25, p < .001 and ˇ = .23, p < .001, respectively). Greater maternal supportiveness at age 2 predicted

higher interest and persistence at age 3, although these associations were roughly half the size of the same associations at the earlier time point. Again, pathways to interest and persistence were extremely similar (ˇ = .13, p < .001 and ˇ = .14, p < .001, respectively). There was only one significant pathway from children to mothers: higher child interest at age 2 predicted greater maternal supportiveness at age 3 (ˇ = .13, p < .001). Child interest at age 1 did not significantly predict maternal supportiveness at age 2. Child persistence at age 1 did not predict supportiveness at age 2, and persistence at age 2 did not predict supportiveness at age 3. Thus, between ages 1 and 3, maternal supportiveness predicted children’s interest and persistence more often than the reverse.

4.3. Interest and persistence at age 3 and academic skills at age 5 Results from the regression models showed that children’s academic skills at age 5 were predicted by both their interest and persistence scores at age 3 (Table 2). It appeared that interest had a stronger association than persistence did with PPVT and LetterWord (PPVT: ˇ = 0.20, p < .001 vs. ˇ = 0.12, p < .001; Letter-Word: ˇ = 0.16, p < .001 vs. ˇ = 0.12, p < .001). By contrast, it appeared that persistence had a stronger association with Applied Problems than interest did (ˇ = 0.22, p < .001 vs. ˇ = 0.16, p < .001). However, postestimation Wald tests showed that the difference between the two coefficients was not statistically significant in any of the models. Thus, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that interest and persistence were equally predictive of early vocabulary, literacy, and math. Finally, results did not support the hypothesis that interest and persistence had an interactive effect on academic skills (Table 2). The interaction term was not significant at the p < .05 level in models of any of the three skills. Thus, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that interest and persistence have independent effects on early achievement.

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Table 2 OLS regression of academic skills at age 5 on interest and persistence at age 3.

Interest Persistence Interest × persistence Maternal supportiveness Male African-American Hispanic Other race/ethnicity 33–67% poverty 67–99% poverty 100% + poverty In EHS treatment group English primary language MDI at age 1 N R2

PPVT

Letter-Word Identification

Applied Problems

0.20*** (.03) 0.12*** (.03) 0.04 (.02) 0.19*** (.03) 0.00 (.02) −0.22*** (.03) −0.10** (.03) −0.03 (.02) 0.09** (.03) 0.11*** (.03) 0.08* (.03) 0.00 (.02) 0.12*** (.03) 0.17*** (.03) 1674 0.30

0.16*** (.03) 0.12*** (.03) 0.04 (.02) 0.13*** (.03) −0.07** (.02) 0.11*** (.03) −0.09* (.03) 0.08** (.02) 0.04 (.03) 0.06* (.03) 0.12*** (.03) −0.03 (.02) 0.02 (.04) 0.13*** (.03) 1754 0.18

0.16*** (.03) 0.22*** (.03) 0.01 (.02) 0.12*** (.03) 0.01 (.02) −0.13*** (.03) −0.10** (.03) 0.01 (.02) 0.07* (.03) 0.07* (.03) 0.07* (.03) 0.01 (.02) 0.12*** (.03) 0.17*** (.03) 1755 0.25

Note. Table presents standardized regression coefficients and standard errors estimated from five multiply imputed data sets. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

5. Discussion

5.1. Interest, persistence, and parenting

Children’s learning behaviors in the classroom are increasingly recognized as an index of school readiness as well as a potential target for intervention. Because some of these behaviors reflect aspects of children’s temperament, and are thus visible quite early, they may be vulnerable to intervention before the age of school entry, particularly if they are responsive to changes in parenting. We investigated the development of children’s interest and persistence in the first five years of life by specifying their associations with supportive parenting behaviors and academic school readiness. We began by examining bidirectional associations between mothers’ supportive parenting and children’s interest and persistence at ages 1, 2, and 3. We hypothesized that children’s interest and persistence would relate bidirectionally to maternal supportive parenting over the first three years of life, but that maternal parenting would influence children’s behavior more between ages 1 and 2 than ages 2 and 3 and that child behavior would influence maternal parenting more between ages 2 and 3 than 1 and 2. Results partially supported our hypotheses. Maternal supportiveness influenced both interest and persistence more strongly between ages 1 and 2 than between 2 and 3. However, neither interest nor persistence was associated with supportiveness consistently. Child interest at age 2 significantly predicted maternal supportiveness at age 3. This was consistent with our expectation that children’s behavior would exert a greater influence on maternal parenting during the later time period. Overall, these results indicated that maternal supportive parenting increases children’s interest and persistence. This study went on to investigate the influence of interest and persistence at age 3 on children’s academic skills age 5. We hypothesized that interest and persistence would both predict academic skills but that interest may have stronger predictive power than persistence. We also hypothesized that the presence of one would enhance the effect of the other. Again, results partially supported hypotheses. Both interest and persistence significantly predicted PPVT, Letter-Word, and Applied Problems as hypothesized. However, interest was no more predictive than persistence was. In addition, the interaction between interest and persistence failed to reach significance, suggesting these behaviors predict language, literacy, and math learning independently of one another. Overall, our findings indicate that both interest and persistence play important roles in the development of early academic skills.

As hypothesized, maternal supportiveness predicted higher levels of interest and persistence across ages 1–3. By contrast, there was only one instance of child behavior influencing supportive parenting. These findings are consistent with past research indicating that parenting has a larger influence on toddlers’ temperament than vice versa (Gaertner et al., 2008; Owens et al., 1998). Our results also indicated that both interest and persistence were more responsive to parenting between ages 1 and 2 than 2 and 3, as hypothesized. This difference suggests that parents and programs aiming to enhance these behaviors prior to school entry should begin prior to preschool, and perhaps even emphasize the second year of life. At ages 1 and 2, maternal supportiveness predicted interest and persistence a year later to nearly identical degrees. This similarity suggests that children’s interest in new tasks and their persistence in task completion may be equally susceptible to parental intervention during the early years. The link we find from supportiveness to persistence comports with past studies demonstrating that supportive parenting enhances young children’s attention and persistence (Banerjee & Tamis-LeMonda, 2007; Gaertner et al., 2008; Kelley et al., 2000). Our findings extend that literature by pointing to interest as yet another learning behavior with implications for school readiness that is responsive to supportive parenting. This result is significant in light of past research identifying children’s exuberance as a risk for poor self-regulation and behavior problems (Putnam, 2012; Rothbart, Derryberry, & Hershey, 2000). In one study, children’s surgency (a combination of high approach, impulsivity, and activity level) declined between ages 4 and 7 as a function of warm, responsive parenting at age 2 (Blandon et al., 2010). The authors noted that further research was needed to specify how each of the components of the surgency construct acted on its own. Given that our measure of interest resembles that study’s measure of approach, our findings suggest that approach per se is susceptible to positive parenting behaviors, at least in the infant and toddler years. Greater interest at age 2, but not at age 1, predicted higher maternal supportiveness one year later. We hypothesized that child behavior would predict parenting more strongly during the second year of life than the first because children’s behavioral characteristics grow more stable over time. However, it remains unclear why persistence at age 2 did not influence maternal supportiveness at age 3 the way interest did. There may be a singular association

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between interest and supportive parenting at child age 2 because it is at this age when children begin to initiate social interactions and engage in interactive “symbolic” or pretend play (Piaget, 1952; Ruff & Capozzoli, 2003). These new capacities may enable a 2year-old child high in interest to draw his/her parents into play, thereby creating opportunities for supportive parenting behavior. Further, an interested child’s positive affect may elicit heightened positive affect in parents striving to achieve affective synchrony (Cohn & Tronick, 1988). Persistent children may not induce changes in parental behavior if parents perceive them as “easy” and able to entertain themselves. In sum, these results suggest that child interest, but not persistence, and maternal supportiveness transact over time. Specifically, maternal supportiveness during the earliest years may initiate a positive feedback loop in which early maternal supportiveness enhances child interest, which in turn enhances subsequent maternal supportiveness.

sample similar to our own, Berhenke et al. (2011) found that kindergarten children’s interest during a challenge task failed to predict their academic competence, but it predicted their hyperactivity. The authors speculated that they might have measured overarousal rather than interest. Further research is needed to replicate our findings, particularly with alternative measures of interest. In particular, it is possible that many children who score high on interest fit the profile for exuberance (high approach, high positive affect), and such children are at risk of poor self-regulation (Rothbart et al., 2000; Stifter et al., 2008). Thus, it is heartening that interest was susceptible to parenting effects at ages 1, 2, and 3. It may be fruitful for future studies to test whether high interest predicts greater achievement even among children who are also high on positive affect. For the time being, the present study points to interest as a potential predictor of early academic skills and a possible target for early behavioral intervention.

5.2. Interest, persistence, and academic skills

5.3. Limitations

We found that both interest and persistence at age 3 predicted all academic skills at age 5. Persistence requires both sustained attention and impulse control; thus, its link to academic skills is consistent with other evidence indicating that early self-regulatory abilities facilitate academic school readiness (Blair, 2002; Blair & Razza, 2007; Matthews et al., 2009; Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009). The link from interest to academic skills among young children is novel and builds upon similar findings by Alexander et al. (1993) among school-aged children. The link in our sample suggests that fostering young children’s curiosity about new tasks may be as important for subsequent school readiness as promoting their attentional and impulse control skills. Although interest was as predictive of academic skills as was persistence, it was not more predictive, as it had been in Alexander et al. (1993). It may be that interest more strongly predicted academic achievement than did persistence in that study because persistence was captured by a scale that included items tapping internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Such behaviors are only tangentially related to persistence (and may have other causes), and as a result, they may have added noise to the measure. Because we find that interest and persistence at age 3 are equally and independently predictive of achievement at age 5, our results suggests that high interest may serve a compensatory role for young children with poor self-regulation. In other words, children who are high on interest but low on persistence should experience the same achievement as children who are high on persistence but low on interest, or children who are moderate on both. It is, however, entirely possible that this pattern is limited to early childhood, a period in which identifying and recognizing objects and their properties are key components of learning. For example, toddlers who are eager to explore new materials and environments may elicit greater labeling of objects from their parents, leading to an expansion of vocabulary. Once children reach school age, and learning depends heavily on comprehension and abstraction (e.g., extracting the meaning of a reading passage or learning a mathematical rule), interest may be no longer interchangeable with persistence; in fact, interest may serve primarily to motivate persistence (Sansone & Thoman, 2005). In sum, our findings suggest that promoting young children’s curiosity may effectively enhance their achievement, but we cannot draw a similar conclusion for children of school age and older. We found no support for our hypothesis that interest and persistence would enhance each other’s influence on academic skills. This finding points to the importance of interest as a key learning behavior in its own right, at least among low-income children. No previous study has identified the influence of interest on children’s learning during the toddler and preschool years. In a low-income

Although our findings illuminate the development of learning behaviors prior to school entry, data and methodological limitations undermine our ability to draw broadly generalizable and causal inferences. First, because we used a low-income sample, our findings may apply only to low-income populations rather than children and families more generally. Higher-income mothers tend to provide more supportive parenting (Linver, Brooks-Gunn, & Kohen, 2002; Yeung, Linver, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002) and have different socialization goals (Lareau, 2002) than lower-income mothers, and it is unknown whether the two groups respond to child interest and persistence identically. Nonetheless, because low-income children enter school lagging behind their more affluent peers on a range of school readiness measures including learning behaviors (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; McClelland et al., 2000; West et al., 2000), our findings can inform policies and programs that target at-risk populations in ways a more representative sample could not. Second, although using a cross-lagged model reduces the influence of confounding variables on associations between children’s behavior and maternal parenting, the strategy does not rule out omitted variable bias in our estimation of the reported links. Specifically, it is possible that unobserved genetic or environmental characteristics that parents and children share partially drove associations between supportiveness and child interest and persistence. Moreover, unlike the cross-lagged models, the regression models do not have the benefit of lagged dependent variables, so threats to internal validity are even larger in those analyses (Duncan, Magnuson, & Ludwig, 2004). However, the inclusion of children’s MDI scores as a control for cognitive ability, the key confound of concern, gives us greater confidence in the results. Finally, the effects of parenting on learning behavior and learning behavior on academic outcomes that we identify are modest. Thus, we are isolating relatively small-to-moderate differences in children’s learning behaviors as the result of parenting, and in children’s school readiness as the result of learning behaviors. Nonetheless, the effects are comparable to the effects of parenting (Lugo-Gil & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008) and learning behaviors (McClelland et al., 2006) identified in similar studies. 5.4. Summary Findings from the present study illuminate the role of maternal parenting in the development of learning behaviors prior to school entry and highlight the importance of both interest and persistence in the development of early academic skills among low-income children. Our results uncovered a transactional relationship between maternal supportiveness and children’s

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interest behavior, but not one between supportive parenting and persistence. Our results also identified the unique importance of children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for later academic skills. These novel associations suggest that future research on the development of low-income children’s early learning behaviors should focus not only on promoting attention skills, but also on enhancing children’s curiosity in and enthusiasm for learning.

Acknowledgments The findings reported here are based on research conducted as part of the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project funded by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under contract to Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton, NJ, and Columbia University’s National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, in conjunction with the Early Head Start Research Consortium. The Consortium consists of representatives from 17 programs participating in the evaluation, 15 local research teams, the evaluation contractors, and ACF. The authors thank Fred Morrison, Deborah Phillips, and Amanda Berhenke for their insight.

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