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The relationship between child behaviour problems at school entrance and teenage vocabulary acquisition: A comparison of two generations of British children born 30 years apart
Author(s) -
Parsons Sam,
Sullivan Alice,
Moulton Vanessa,
Fitzsimons Emla,
Ploubidis George B.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1002/berj.3732
Subject(s) - vocabulary , psychology , developmental psychology , socioeconomic status , association (psychology) , cohort , educational attainment , cognition , language acquisition , national longitudinal surveys , vocabulary development , millennium cohort study (united states) , national child development study , cognitive development , cohort study , demography , population , sociology , mathematics education , teaching method , linguistics , medicine , demographic economics , political science , philosophy , law , psychotherapist , pathology , neuroscience , economics
Behaviour problems in early childhood have a lasting impact on cognitive development and education attainment in later adolescence and into adulthood. Here we address the relationship conduct and hyperactivity problems at school entrance, and vocabulary acquisition in adolescence. We compare performance in identical assessments across two generations of British children born 30 years apart in 1970 ( n = 15,676) and 2000/2 ( n = 16,628) and find that both conduct and hyperactivity problems have a negative association with later vocabulary in both generations. We take advantage of rich longitudinal birth cohort data and establish that these relationships hold once family socioeconomic status and a child’s personal characteristics and earlier vocabulary acquisition are taken into account. We also find that teenagers today achieved substantively lower scores in the vocabulary assessment compared to their counterparts born 30 years earlier, and that this holds across all categories within each of the family and individual characteristics considered in this article. As vocabulary and language skills are key prerequisites for wider learning, we discuss implications the findings have for education policies.