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Updated: Jul 9, 2025

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Relations between early majority language and socioemotional development in children with different language
Wei Huang1,2, Sabine Weinert1, Anna Volodina3
1Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
Abstract:
This study explored whether the directionality of the relation between majority language and various facets of socioemotional development (three to 5 years old) differs between children with different language backgrounds. 12,951 children (49% girls; 85% White, 6% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 3% Black, 3% Mix, 2% Indian) from the British Millennium Cohort Study (2001-2006) were included in two-time-point cross-lagged analyses. Models controlling for important covariates found a bidirectional association for monolinguals (βs = .05, -.07, -.04), a unidirectional effect of majority language on socioemotional difficulties for dual language learners (DLLs) speaking English and minority language(s) at home (β = .14), and a unidirectional effect of socioemotional strength on majority language for DLLs speaking only minority language(s) at home (β = -.17).
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