Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, and Department of Family and Child Nursing, University of Washington;
Aylin C. Küntay
Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, and Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Bilge Yagmurlu
Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Nuran Aydemir
Department of Psychology, İzmir University of Economics, İzmir, Turkey
Dilek Cankaya
Department of Educational Sciences, Ankara University, Istanbul, Turkey
Fatos Göksen
Department of Sociology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Zeynep Cemalcilar
Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Acknowledgement: This research was funded by Turkish Institute for Scientific and Technological Research Grant 106K347 and received generous support from Koç University.
Notable individual differences in vocabulary knowledge are observed at the end of the first year of life (
We present a framework where the factors that support early vocabulary development may differ depending on the family and maternal characteristics. Studies of unique and context-dependent influences of the characteristics of developmental ecologies on the cognitive development of young children are few, especially in contexts of social disadvantage (
In the present study, we focused on the intersection of two well-established risk factors for vocabulary development of children: economic hardship and maternal depressive symptoms (for brevity, hereafter referred to as maternal depression). We defined four groups of families: (a) low economic status and low maternal depressive symptoms (economic risk group), (b) low economic status and high maternal depression (economic and mental health risk group), (c) high economic status and low maternal depression (no-risk group), and (d) high economic status and high maternal depression (mental health risk group). Previous research in the United States (
We investigated (a) whether maternal vocabulary knowledge and perceived support for caring for the child was associated with the proximal family ecology that supported vocabulary development, (b) whether maternal vocabulary knowledge and perceived support for caring for the child also directly predicted vocabulary knowledge, and, most importantly, (c) whether these associations significantly varied in the four groups of families defined by their risk status. The family ecological factors that were considered in this study as potentially supportive of vocabulary development were the degree of verbal stimulation of the child, the provision of learning materials to the child, and maternal warmth and responsiveness (see
The association of maternal verbal ability with a child’s vocabulary may be partially genetically mediated (
Recent studies suggested specific routes through which social support for the mothers could influence their children’s developmental outcomes (
Among many family proximal ecological factors that could be associated with children’s vocabulary knowledge, we focused on (a) verbal stimulation by the mother, (b) maternal warmth and responsiveness, and (c) the provision of learning materials. The impact of amount and variety of maternal language input (
The link between these proximal factors and the vocabulary knowledge of children might vary in different family contexts. A few studies, including cross-cultural studies (
These studies did not provide conceptual explanations of the processes that operate in different social contexts. The present study investigated the reasons that may account for the socioeconomic differences in the linkages between various environmental factors and vocabulary knowledge.
Economic status of the family has been established as a strong correlate of children’s vocabulary skills (
Economic status of the family is expected to be linked to the vocabulary knowledge of the child because of its association with the characteristics of the mother–child interactions. The investment hypothesis and the stress hypothesis account for these processes (
Research demonstrated that the link between economic status and family ecology was stronger in economically disadvantaged families than other families (
Depression in mothers is associated with delays in cognitive and language development of children in developed societies (
The consequences of maternal depression are not expected to be similar in all families. A meta-analytic review of maternal depression and parenting behaviors (
The current research used data from the study of Early Childhood Developmental Ecologies in Turkey (ECDET;
Turkish society rapidly transformed from a rural and agricultural society in the 1950s to an increasingly urban and industrial one in recent decades. However, cultural values, norms, and attitudes have not changed as rapidly as the economy, especially in the areas of interpersonal and family relations (
Collectivistic values in family relationships are characterized by a high degree of material and emotional interdependence. The Turkish family has been characterized as functionally extended, with much support and interaction among relatives who tend to live close to each other (
The average level of economic well-being is lower in developing societies than in Anglo-American and European societies where most research on the effects of economic hardship on children has been conducted. For example, in 2011, the median disposable income in Turkey was $6,000, versus $31,000 in the United States (
The ecologies that are most proximal to development in early childhood consist of the family, the immediate social context of the family, and the childcare provider or preschool. The proportion of children regularly attending nonmaternal care arrangements prior to age 5 is very low in Turkey (2% at 3 years of age in year 2007, according to the ECDET data). Thus, in Turkey, the individuals with whom children interact on a regular basis consist of the nuclear and the extended family members and the neighbors.
The model presented in
The direct path from maternal vocabulary to child vocabulary (Path A1) could be partly due to a genetic link and partly because of the association of the maternal vocabulary knowledge with the variety of child-directed use of vocabulary. The direct link from support for caring for the child to the child’s vocabulary (Path B1) was expected because, in the Turkish cultural context, a high level of support could involve direct interactions of extended family and community members with the child. In that context, the responsibilities for a child’s socialization, including language socialization, could be shared among the members of the extended family and the community.
The indirect association of maternal and child vocabulary through language stimulation and maternal warmth/support (Paths A2–C and A4–E) could arise because maternal vocabulary knowledge could enhance the quality of the mother–child interactions. Maternal vocabulary was also an indicator of maternal education, and everything else being equal, mothers who had high levels of education were expected to have a preference to invest in learning materials in order to support the child’s development (Path A3–D). The indirect association of support for caring for the child with child vocabulary (Paths B4–C, B2–D, and B3–E) could arise because, in the cultural context of the current study, support from the extended family and neighborhood could constitute important and dependable resources for the mother and therefore could substantially support her parenting practices.
The paths that predicted children’s vocabulary knowledge were expected to vary across the four risk groups defined by the presence of economic risk and maternal mental health risk. Specifically, we expected that in families with economic risk, the effects of the quality of mother–child interactions (i.e., language stimulation and maternal warmth and responsiveness) on children’s vocabulary knowledge (Paths C and E) would be stronger than in other families because child vocabulary would be more sensitive to differences in these resources when all other resources were scarce, and the lack of mother–child interactions could not be compensated by the availability of material goods and activities.
We also expected that the role of support for the mother in our model would be stronger in families with both economic and mental health risks than in other families. This was expected for both the direct (Path B1) and the indirect (Paths B2, B3, B4) role of support in predicting child vocabulary. We proposed that a direct association could emerge if the child directly interacted with the members of the community, such as in multiple caregiver situations where neighbors and extended family provided support for child care. In families without high levels of risk, support for child care might not contribute substantially to a child’s already adequate ecology or already adequate exposure to language. Especially when maternal mental health was compromised and economic resources were low and unpredictable, neighborhood and extended family support could gain relative importance in elevating the quality of the child’s developmental ecology. Furthermore, the benefits of support from the immediate community were expected to be evident in a sample from a relatively collectivistic culture, where such support was available.
The participants in the ECDET were the members of a sample that was nationally representative of the 3-year-old population living in Turkey whose mothers were able to be interviewed in Turkish, the most common language spoken in Turkey. For seven families, the caregiver participant was the grandmother, who was the full-time care provider for the child. A total of 1,052 children and their mothers participated in ECDET from 24 communities in 19 provinces in 12 regions of Turkey in 2008. Among these, 1,017 (97%) who had complete data on economic status were included in the analyses presented here. All children were between 36 months and 47 months old at the time of the assessments (for sample characteristics, see
The measures used were based on maternal reports, assessments of the mothers, assessments of the children, and observational reports. All additive scale scores were rescaled to have a minimum of 0 and maximum of 100, to facilitate interpretation.
Outcome: Receptive language
The outcome of interest in the current research is the vocabulary knowledge of 3-year-old children. The Turkish Receptive Language Test (TRLT) was used to assess the receptive vocabulary knowledge (
The predictors of children’s vocabulary knowledge that were considered in the present research consist of the economic well-being of the family, the mother’s depressive symptoms, the mothers’ vocabulary knowledge, the extent of support for caring for the child as perceived by the mother, the extent of stimulation that the child received for language development, the learning materials available to the child, and the warmth and responsiveness of the mother toward her child. All items of scales are listed in Part A of the online supplemental materials.
Economic status
The economic well-being of the family was assessed as a factor score (
The indicator of material possessions was constructed on the basis of ownership of 12 material possessions including basic durable goods such as a refrigerator and nonessential items that are indicative of further economic well-being such as a computer or a car. Per-person family expenditures of the household were computed by dividing the maternal report of total expenditures of the family by the number of members of the household as reported in the demographic questionnaire. The mothers were asked the actual monthly rent or, if they owned their home, the estimated monthly rent that they would have paid to rent their home. The quality of the physical environment scale came from the adapted HOME (HOME-TR;
The factor score combining these four measures constituted the basis for grouping the families into low and high economic status. A factor score that was lower than 30% of a standard deviation below the mean value (−0.30) indicated low economic status. This cutoff resulted in 41.3% of the sample being classified as low economic status.
In order to interpret the results for this study, it was important to understand the circumstances of the families classified as low versus high economic status. The poverty level defined by the Turkish government for the year 2013 was U.S. $1,350 annual per-person disposable income. This figure is very close to the reported median per-person expenditures in this sample. In this study, families identified as low economic status had a mean annual per-person expenditure of U.S. $900, compared to U.S. $2,292 for families identified as high economic status (
Maternal vocabulary
The maternal vocabulary test (short version;
Maternal depressive symptoms
Maternal depression was assessed by the depression subscale of the Brief Symptom Inventory (
Support for caring for the child
The ECDET respondents were asked about a variety of types of social support that they could be receiving. Those considered here were the perceived support from the extended family and from the neighbors. The focus was on support that was directly relevant for child care because it would be most likely to influence parenting behaviors. The internal consistency values for the neighbor support subscale (four items) and the extended family care subscale (three items) were .86 and .90, respectively. The two subscales were averaged so that there was not undue weight of neighborhood support over extended family items. The items of both subscales are given in Part A of the online supplemental materials.
Family ecology measures
The proximate predictors of vocabulary development of the child were three measures of the family ecology: the extent of language stimulation, the available learning materials, and the warmth/responsiveness of the mother. All three of these measures came from HOME-TR (
The direct associations of maternal vocabulary knowledge and the availability of support for caring for the child with children’s vocabulary scores, as well as their indirect associations through the characteristics of the family ecology in four risk groups, were modeled using multigroup path models. This model allowed a statistical test of whether the estimated coefficients quantifying the strength of the associations differed across families in different risk groups. Starting from a model where all coefficients were unique to each risk group, a series of increasingly parsimonious nested models were tested by progressively equating the path coefficients across risk groups. This strategy is especially helpful when the coefficients of some but not all risk groups are hypothesized to be equal.
The sample was distributed in the four risk groups considered in the present study as follows: 29% (n = 297) in the low economic status–low depression group, 12% (n = 123) in the low economic status–high depression group (i.e., the highest risk group), 47% (n = 481) in the high economic status–low depression group, and 11% (n = 116) in the high economic status–high depression group. Although the four groups differed in size, even the smallest group had adequate power to support the analyses presented here. The characteristics of the families in the four risk groups are presented in
The four risk groups differed strongly and significantly in all predictors of vocabulary development and receptive vocabulary scores, as indicated by the effect-size estimates of risk group membership in
As expected, maternal warmth was generally lower in families of low economic status than in families of high economic status. Surprisingly, maternal depression was associated with warmth and responsiveness only in families of high economic status, resulting in a level of warmth and responsiveness in the high economic status–high depression group that was not statistically different from the level of this attribute in the group with low economic status.
The estimated coefficients (see
Although the structure of associations that was represented by the path coefficients differed for the two groups of low economic status families, it was identical across the two groups of high economic status families regardless of maternal depression. Specifically, the direct effect of maternal vocabulary on children’s vocabulary (Path A1) and its mediated effects through language stimulation (Paths A2–C), learning materials (Paths A3–D), and maternal warmth/responsiveness (Paths A4–E) were equal for all children of high economic status. The direct (Path B1) and indirect effects (through Paths B2, B3, B4) of support for caring for the child were nonsignificant for the children of high economic status, resulting in a rather simple model that resembled the models often estimated for Western European and Anglo-American samples (e.g.,
Data supported the equality of several path coefficients across all four risk groups. The direct effect of maternal vocabulary scores on children’s receptive vocabulary scores (Path A1) was equal regardless of economic status or maternal depression. The average standardized direct coefficient was 0.11, depending on the standard deviation of the vocabulary scores in each group. The coefficients representing the association of support for caring for the child with language stimulation (Path B4) and with maternal warmth/responsiveness (Path B3) were nonsignificant for all risk groups.
There was also considerable similarity between the four risk groups in the paths describing the linkages between the family ecology and language development. The coefficients of two of the three measures of family ecology, namely, those of language stimulation (Path C) and the availability of learning materials (Path D), on children’s receptive vocabulary scores were equal, positive, and significant regardless of the risk group (see the lower part of
Despite these similarities, the results pointed to three important sources of differences in the path coefficients for the four risk groups: (a) differential association of maternal vocabulary with family ecology (Paths A2, A3, A4) in low versus high economic status, (b) differential association of support for caring for the child with children’s vocabulary (Paths B1 and B2–D) in the highest risk group compared to all other groups, and (c) differential association of maternal warmth/responsiveness with children’s vocabulary scores (Path E) in the low economic status group without the additional risk of maternal depression.
Although the direct association between maternal and child vocabulary was equal across all four groups, its mediated associations differed. Specifically, maternal vocabulary scores were more strongly associated with language stimulation (Path A2) and with warmth/responsiveness (Path A4) in families of low economic status than of high economic status. On the contrary, maternal vocabulary knowledge was more strongly associated with the provision of learning materials (Path A3) in the families of high economic status than of low economic status.
Regarding the second source of difference, the perceived support for caring for the child was positively associated with the learning materials (Path B2) only among the families of the highest risk group. Furthermore, in this group only, support for caring for the child had a direct positive and significant association with the receptive vocabulary scores of the children (Path B1), with a substantial standardized coefficient (0.22).
Regarding the third source of difference, maternal warmth/responsiveness was associated with children’s receptive vocabulary (Path E) only in families of low economic status and low maternal depression (standardized coefficient = 0.21), but not in any other group.
The results of the path model underscored the protective role of two factors in the families of elevated risk compared to other families: (a) the stronger total positive coefficient of maternal vocabulary on child vocabulary due to a stronger mediation by language stimulation in families who were at economic risk and (b) the positive coefficient of perceived support for caring for the child only in families who had economic and mental health risk. This beneficial role of support for caring for the child is depicted in
Because of the apparent significance of perceived support for child care for the vocabulary outcome among children of the highest risk group, the analyses were repeated including a measure of mothers’ perceived support from the fathers. This source of support had no statistically significant effects on the mediating measures of the family ecology or on children’s vocabulary scores. The reasons for this may partly be the patriarchal cultural context of this study and the associated lack of expectation from the fathers for contributing to child care. Therefore, the role of the perceived support for child care in this model could not be attributed to the confounding association of this source of support with support from the father. These additional analyses validated the robustness of the current findings.
This study examined the family and community factors that predicted receptive vocabulary knowledge in 3-year-old children in Turkey. It is one of the few recent studies on early language skills to examine a large and nationally representative sample from a non-Western population. We presented a model predicting vocabulary knowledge of children of families in four risk groups defined by the presence of economic and maternal mental health risks. Maternal vocabulary and support for child care from the extended family and the neighborhood were the exogenous factors considered. The characteristics of the proximate family ecology (i.e., the amount of language stimulation, the availability of learning materials, and maternal warmth and responsiveness) could mediate the association of these exogenous factors with children’s vocabulary development.
Several findings were important because of their contribution to our understanding of vocabulary development in early childhood generally. We found that many aspects of our mediational model did not vary across the four risk groups. The model was identical regardless of maternal mental health risk among the families of high economic status. Furthermore, the associations of the characteristics of the family ecology with children’s vocabulary were identical for all risk groups with only one exception: maternal warmth and responsiveness was a significant predictor of child vocabulary only in low economic status families with no maternal mental health risk. In addition, the direct contribution of maternal vocabulary on child vocabulary was identical for all families, with an effect size similar to that found in previous studies (
The mediational paths of association of maternal vocabulary with child vocabulary were not identical across the four risk groups. Nevertheless, maternal vocabulary emerged as the most substantial contributor to child vocabulary, with an estimated total effect size of slightly under 0.30 for all four groups. Next, we discuss the components of our model that varied between the four risk groups.
The aspects of the family ecology that were strongly predicted by maternal vocabulary in high economic status families differed from those in low economic status families. In other words, the mediational associations suggested that high maternal vocabulary knowledge mobilized learning materials in families of high economic status but mobilized language stimulation and maternal warmth/responsiveness in families of low economic status. However, either way, it similarly supported a child’s vocabulary development. One possible reason for the lack of a link between maternal vocabulary and some aspects of mother–child interactions in high economic status families may be the high level of maternal vocabulary skills in those families. It may be that above a certain threshold, marginal differences in maternal vocabulary do not predict enhanced mother–child interactions at this developmental stage.
Previous findings in Hispanic versus White families in the United States (
Finally, our findings suggest that extrafamilial support for child care may truly be acting as a protective factor for language development in families with co-occurring economic and psychological risk. The differential role of perceived extrafamilial support emerged even though the amount of perceived support did not vary by economic status, indicating strong extended family and community social networks in this sample regardless of economic status. In the highest risk group, maternal contributions to the developmental ecology were likely compromised due to elevated levels of depressive symptoms and economic hardship. In this risk group, the contribution of support for child care to children’s vocabulary knowledge was large and positive, and its effect size matched that of maternal vocabulary (total effect size = 0.27).
The direct association of extrafamilial support with child vocabulary may arise due to the cumulative effects of child-directed speech and language stimulation. It is possible that the vocabulary of the child benefits from verbal interactions with all adults who are engaged with the child. It may be speculated that multiple caregiver contexts also offer opportunities for observing and learning vocabulary from overheard conversations (
Our findings have some policy implications. First, maternal vocabulary emerges as an important resource for vocabulary development of all children, underscoring, once more, that maternal education is a sure way of investing in the language development of all children, regardless of economic status. When maternal vocabulary skills are high, mothers create and mobilize a variety of resources to invest in their children’s vocabulary skills.
Second, the invariability of the processes that predict children’s vocabulary in families of high economic status suggests that these families support vocabulary development similarly regardless of maternal depression. Note that in these families, maternal vocabulary benefited child vocabulary through the availability of learning materials rather than through supportive maternal–child interactions. The provision of learning materials to the child regardless of maternal mental health may shield children’s vocabulary development from the negative repercussions of maternal depression. The policy question, then, is whether the provision of learning materials may also be a viable (and relatively low-cost) way of supporting the vocabulary development of children of low economic status who may or may not have added maternal mental health risk. Our findings supported this idea because, for families with both economic and maternal mental health risk, one of the mechanisms through which extrafamilial support for child care benefited children’s vocabulary was through the provision of learning materials.
Third, our findings indicated that in families of low economic status, maternal warmth and responsiveness were associated with vocabulary only if the mothers were not depressed. This finding suggests that parenting training may be a viable intervention for not only socioemotional but also language development for this group. The lack of an association of maternal warmth/responsiveness with vocabulary development in families of high economic status may be due to limited variability of this resource in those families. It is also possible that warmth does not contribute any further to vocabulary development when other aspects of family ecology are supportive.
Fourth, our findings pointed to extrafamilial support for child care as an effective protective factor in families with economic and mental health risk that operated through direct and indirect routes. The implication of this finding is that organizing and mobilizing community networks or supporting naturally occurring support networks may be effective, at least in some cultural contexts.
The current study revealed the variations in cross-sectional associations of the characteristics of the family ecology with vocabulary knowledge in early childhood. As such, it is not able to support or question causal pathways. Future studies could focus on longitudinally tracking children’s linguistic knowledge in situations where multiple risk factors coexist. Further insight into the trajectories of delay and acceleration in development of this important domain of cognition, as well as causal mechanisms that govern it, may be gained by linking these trajectories to changes in risk status.
In conclusion, this study contributes to our understanding of the diversity in early childhood ecologies that could support normative development of a foundational language skill. Although this is not a cross-cultural study, it presents findings from a nationally representative sample from Turkey, and the representative nature of its sample may allow qualitative comparisons with the established findings of comparable studies of Anglo-American and Western European samples. Economic risk in societies such as the context of the current study implies a deep and pervasive hardship in multiple domains because public goods and services are scarce and social welfare programs are inadequate (
Akhtar, N. (2005). The robustness of learning through overhearing. Developmental Science, 8, 199–209. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00406.x
Albright, M. B., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2002). Maternal depressive symptoms in relation to dimensions of parenting in low-income mothers. Applied Developmental Science, 6, 24–34. doi:10.1207/S1532480XADS0601_03
Andreassen, C., & Fletcher, P. (2007). Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS–B): Psychometric report for the 2-year data collection (NCES 2007–084). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
Ataca, B., Kağıtçıbaşı, C., & Diri, A. (2005). Turkish family and the value of children: Trends over time. In G.Trommsdorff & B.Nauck (Eds.), The value of children in cross-cultural perspective: Case studies from eight societies (pp. 91–119). Lengerich, Germany: Pabst.
Baydar, N., Küntay, A., Goksen, F., Yagmurlu, B., & Cemalcilar, Z. (2007). Neighborhood Ecologies Survey. Unpublished manuscript.
Baydar, N., Küntay, A., Goksen, F., Yagmurlu, B., & Cemalcilar, Z. (2010). The study of early childhood developmental ecologies in Turkey (Grant No. 106K347). Ankara: Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.
Berument, S. K., & Guven, A. G. (2010). Turkish Expressive and Receptive Language Test: Receptive Vocabulary Sub-Scale (TIFALDI-RT). Ankara, Turkey: Turkish Psychological Association.
Bornstein, M. H., Haynes, M. O., & Painter, K. M. (1998). Sources of child vocabulary competence: A multivariate model. Journal of Child Language, 25, 367–393. doi:10.1017/S0305000998003456
Bornstein, M. H., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (1997). Mothers’ responsiveness in infancy and their toddlers’ attention span, symbolic play, and language comprehension: Specific predictive relations. Infant Behavior & Development, 20, 283–296. doi:10.1016/S0163-6383(97)90001-1
Bradley, R. H., & Caldwell, B. M. (1979). Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A revision of the Preschool Scale. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 84, 235–244.
Bradley, R. H., & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371–399. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135233
Bradley, R. H., Corwyn, R. F., Burchinal, P., McAdoo, H. P., & Garcia-Coll, C. (2001). The home environments of children in the United States Part II: Relations with behavioral development through age thirteen. Child Development, 72, 1868–1886. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.t01-1-00383
Breznitz, Z., & Sherman, T. (1987). Speech patterning of natural discourse of well and depressed mothers and their young children. Child Development, 58, 395–400. doi:10.2307/1130516
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Ecological systems theory. In P.Moen, G. H.Elder, Jr., & K.Lüscher (Eds.), Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the ecology of human development (pp. 106–173). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Cicchetti, D., Rogosch, F. A., Toth, S. L., & Spagnola, M. (1997). Affect, cognition, and the emergence of self-knowledge in the toddler offspring of depressed mothers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 338–362. doi:10.1006/jecp.1997.2412
Derogatis, L. R. (1992). The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), administration, scoring and procedures manual II. Baltimore, MD: Clinical Psychometric Research Institute.
Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). Family poverty, welfare reform, and child development. Child Development, 71, 188–196. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00133
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised (PPVT–R). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services.
Farver, J. M., Xu, Y., Lonigan, C. J., & Eppe, S. (2013). The home literacy environment and Latino Head Start children’s emergent literacy skills. Developmental Psychology, 49, 775–791. doi:10.1037/a0028766
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D., & Pethick, S. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(5, Serial No. 242).
Fernald, L. C. H., Weber, A., Galasso, E., & Ratsifandrihamanana, L. (2011). Socioeconomic gradients and child development in a very low income population: Evidence from Madagascar. Developmental Science, 14, 832–847. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01032.x
Grantham-McGregor, S., Cheung, Y. B., Cueto, S., Glewwe, P., Richter, L., Strupp, B., & the International Child Development Steering Group. (2007). Child development in developing countries 1: Developmental potential in the first 5 years for children in developing countries. The Lancet, 369, 60–70. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60032-4
Gulgoz, S. (2004). Psychometric properties of the Turkish Vocabulary Test. Istanbul, Turkey: Koç University.
Hart, B., & Risley, R. T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: SES affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74, 1368–1378. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00612
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26, 55–88. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2005.11.002
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Hurtado, N., Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2008). Does input influence uptake? Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning children. Developmental Science, 11, F31–F39. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00768.x
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27, 236–248. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.27.2.236
Kağıtçıbaşı, Ç. (2007). Family, self, and human development across cultures: Theory and applications (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kohen, D. E., Leventhal, T., Dahinten, V., & McIntosh, C. N. (2008). Neighborhood disadvantage: Pathways of effects for young children. Child Development, 79, 156–169. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01117.x
Kurstjens, S., & Wolke, D. (2001). Effects of maternal depression on cognitive development of children over the first 7 years of life. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 623–636. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00758
Lee, J. (2011). Size matters: Early vocabulary as a predictor of language and literacy competence. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 69–92. doi:10.1017/S0142716410000299
Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Children and youth in neighborhood contexts. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 27–31. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01216
Linver, M. R., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Kohen, D. E. (2002). Family processes as pathways from income to young children’s development. Developmental Psychology, 38, 719–734. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.38.5.719
Lovejoy, M. C., Graczyk, P. A., O’Hare, E., & Neuman, G. (2000). Maternal depression and parenting behavior: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 20, 561–592. doi:10.1016/S0272-7358(98)00100-7
Lugo-Gil, J., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2008). Family resources and parenting quality: Links to children’s cognitive development across the first 3 years. Child Development, 79, 1065–1085. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01176.x
Magnuson, K. (2007). Maternal education and children’s academic achievement during middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1497–1512. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.6.1497
Mardin, S. (2006). Religion, society and modernity in Turkey. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
McLoyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53, 185–204. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.53.2.185
Mistry, R. S., Biesanz, J. C., Taylor, L. C., Burchinal, M., & Cox, M. J. (2004). Family income and its relation to preschool children’s adjustment for families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Developmental Psychology, 40, 727–745. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.40.5.727
Mrug, S., & Windle, M. (2009). Mediators of neighborhood influences on externalizing behavior in preadolescent children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 265–280. doi:10.1007/s10802-008-9274-0
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (1999). Child care and mother–child interaction in the first 3 years of life. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1399–1413. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.35.6.1399
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (Eds.). (2005). Early child care and children’s development in the primary grades: Follow-up results from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. American Educational Research Journal, 42, 537–570. doi:10.3102/00028312042003537
Noel, M., Peterson, C., & Jesso, B. (2008). The relationship of parenting stress and child temperament to language development among economically disadvantaged preschoolers. Journal of Child Language, 35, 823–843. doi:10.1017/S0305000908008805
Odgers, C. L., Moffitt, T. E., Tach, L. M., Sampson, R. J., Taylor, A., Matthews, C. L., & Caspi, A. (2009). The protective effects of neighborhood collective efficacy on British children growing up in deprivation: A developmental analysis. Developmental Psychology, 45, 942–957. doi:10.1037/a0016162
OECD. (2011). Society at a glance 2011: OECD social indicators. Retrieved from
Oxford, M., & Spieker, S. (2006). Preschool language development among children of adolescent mothers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 165–182. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2005.12.013
Pan, B. A., Rowe, M. L., Singer, J. D., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low-income families. Child Development, 76, 763–782. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00498-i1
Park, H. (2008). Home literacy environments and children’s reading performance: A comparative study of 25 countries. Educational Research and Evaluation, 14, 489–505. doi:10.1080/13803610802576734
Paxson, C., & Schady, N. (2005). Cognitive development among young children in Ecuador: The roles of wealth, health and parenting (World Bank Policy Research Paper 3605). Washington, DC: World Bank.
Pound, A., Puckering, C., Cox, T., & Mills, M. (1988). The impact of maternal depression on young children. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 4, 240–252. doi:10.1111/j.1752-0118.1988.tb01026.x
Rietveld, M. J., van Baal, G. C., Dolan, C. V., & Boomsma, D. I. (2000). Genetic factor analyses of specific cognitive abilities in 5-year-old Dutch children. Behavior Genetics, 30, 29–40. doi:10.1023/A:1002034509854
Rowe, M. L., Raudenbush, S. W., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). The pace of vocabulary growth helps predict later vocabulary skill. Child Development, 83, 508–525. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01710
Sahin, N. H., & Durak, A. (1995). The Brief Symptom Inventory: The validity, reliability and factor structure in Turkish youth sample. Turkish Journal of Psychology, 9, 44–56.
Song, L., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Yoshikawa, H., Kahana-Kalman, R., & Wu, I. (2012). Language experiences and vocabulary development in Dominican and Mexican infants across the first 2 years. Developmental Psychology, 48, 1106–1123. doi:10.1037/a0026401
Stein, A., Malmberg, L.-E., Sylva, K., Barnes, J., Leach, P. P., & the FCCC Team. (2008). The influence of maternal depression, caregiving, and socioeconomic status in the post-natal year on children’s language development. Child Care, Health & Development, 34, 603–612. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00837.x
Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2001). The role of family and home in the literacy development of children from low-income backgrounds. New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development, 92, 53–72. doi:10.1002/cd.15
TURKSTAT. (2013). Gelir Ve Yaşam Koşullari Araştirmasi, 2011 [Income and living conditions survey]. Retrieved from
Walker, S. P., Wachs, T. D., Gardner, J. M., Lozoff, B., Wasserman, G. A., Pollitt, E., . . . the International Child Development Steering Group. (2007). Child development in developing countries 2: Child development—Risk factors for adverse outcomes in developing countries. The Lancet, 369, 145–157. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60076-2
World Bank. (2012). PovcalNet: An online poverty analysis tool. Retrieved from
Yeung, W. J., Linver, M. R., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2002). How money matters for young children’s development: Parental investment and family processes. Child Development, 73, 1861–1879. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.t01-1-00511
Submitted: November 30, 2012 Revised: July 22, 2013 Accepted: August 21, 2013