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Affiliation
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Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (CIRRIS), 525 Wilfrid-Hamel Blvd, Québec, QC, G1M 2S8, Canada. |
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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Exposure to neglect can severely compromise children's pragmatic skills (social language use). The disruptions of parent-child interactions that typically occur in context of neglect may compromise several parental behaviors which are known to foster language skills such as pragmatics.
OBJECTIVES: 1- Compare the behaviors of neglectful and non-neglectful parents in four domains which are of interest for pragmatic language development, namely, responsive, supportive, affective, and control behaviors, and 2- Identify parental behaviors associated with the levels of pragmatic ability of 42-month-old neglected children. PARTICIPANTS: Study sample consisted of 21 neglected children living in their biological family, recruited in four Youth Centers in the province of Québec (Canada) and 95 non-neglected children recruited in child-care centers.
METHOD: Parental behaviors were video recorded in context of free-play with the child at the participants' homes between 2015 and 2017, and subsequently analyzed using the Coding Observations of Parent-Child Interactions (COPI), developed to observe ten parental behaviors associated with early language development. The level of pragmatic ability of children was established using the Language Use Inventory: French, a standardized questionnaire completed with parents of both groups.
RESULTS: Parents in situation of neglect scored lower than parents in the control group on eight of the ten behaviors (p < .001). Parental reciprocity was associated with the level of pragmatic ability of 42-month-old neglected children (p = .04).
CONCLUSIONS: The results of this exploratory study provide insight on the associations between parental behaviors and the level of pragmatic language skills of children experiencing neglect.
Crown Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Language: en |