The Association Between Parental Executive Function and Children’s Language Skills at 18 Months

Abstract

Executive function (EF) is thought to be particularly important for parenting (Crandall et al., 2015). Studies have shown that maternal EF is related to parenting quality and children’s social and cognitive outcomes (Bridgett et al., 2015). These studies are few and are mostly conducted with mothers raising the question of whether paternal EF also affects children in the same way as maternal EF. In an effort to address these gaps I examined whether maternal and paternal EF influenced child language at 18-months, in part through parental engagement in home learning activities, in a sample of low-income, first time parents and their infants. My results did not show a significant, direct influence of maternal or paternal EF when children were 9 months old on children language skills at 18 months. Similarly, neither of the overall indirect effects of parental EF to child language through home parental learning activities were significant. However, paternal EF did positively predict paternal home learning activities, though this was not the case for mothers. Results of this study highlight the unique influences on maternal and paternal parenting and suggest further study is needed to fully elucidate the relation between parental EF and child language skills.