Content area
Resumo
Developmental studies pertaining to a relationship between parental behaviors and children's Piagetian cognitive development with infants and young children as subjects suggested that both concurrent and longitudinal cumulative relationships should be investigated over a longer span of childhood. A review of theoretical and empirical literature suggested that both fathers' and mothers' involvement and responsivity were likely to be salient variables in their children's development of Piagetian cognitive structures.
This study investigated the hypothesized concurrent and cumulative parental relationship with children's cognitive development with a statewide, randomly selected sample of three- to eleven-year-old rural Nebraska Children and their parents. Repeated measures were taken annually on subsamples of parents and their children at three, four, and five years; six, seven and eight years; and nine, ten, and eleven years of age. Cohort controls of the same age tested each year ruled out retest effects. The 16-task Nebraska-Wisconsin Cognitive Assessment Battery administered in the rural homes of the families was used to test children's Piagetian cognitive functioning. Factor scores from the self-report, paper and pencil Iowa Parent Behavior Inventory were used to measure the fathers' and mothers' behaviors.
Multiple regression analysis results were nonsignificant for concurrent relationships between parental factors and children's cognitive scores at every age level from three through eleven years. The parent factors were significantly more closely associated with cognitive scores of ten-year-olds than of seven-year-olds (p $<$.05). Cognitive scores of nine-year-olds together with the concurrent father involvement, mother involvement, and father responsivity significantly predicted the children's cognitive scores at age eleven (p $<$.01). The cognitive score was the best single predictor. Other statistical tests of cumulative relationships between early and later measures of parent and child variables were nonsignificant.
