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This study assessed the status of te reo Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, in the context of New Zealand English. From a broadly representative sample of 6327 two-year-olds ("Growing Up in New Zealand"), 6090 mothers (96%) reported their children understood English, and 763 mothers (12%) reported their children understood Maori. Parents completed the new MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory short forms for te reo Maori (NZM: CDI sf) and New Zealand English (NZE: CDI sf). Mothers with higher education levels had children with larger vocabularies in both te reo Maori and NZ English. For English speakers, vocabulary advantages also existed for girls, first-borns, monolinguals, those living in areas of lower deprivation, and those whose mothers had no concerns about their speech and language. Because more than 99% of Maori speakers were bilingual, te reo Maori acquisition appears to be occurring in the context of the acquisition of New Zealand English.

The 'terrible twos' are often associated with increased temper tantrums, noncompliance and aggression. Although some expression of these behaviors is normal, whether early individual factors can predict which children are most at risk of frequent or prolonged emotional and behavioral problems is of increasing interest. The current study of 6,067 toddlers found that their 9 month scores on a new brief measure of temperament--the Infant Behavior Questionnaire- Revised Very Short Form (IBQ-R-VSF)--were associated with both difficult behaviors and prosocial behaviors at age 2, measured using a preschool version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Controlling for a range of demographic, maternal characteristics and contextual factors, we found that infants higher on the trait Negative Emotionality and/ or lower on Orienting Capacity and Fear were more likely to develop hyperactivity, emotion, peer and conduct problems and less likely to demonstrate pro-social behaviors at two years of age. Temperament aged 9 months explained an additional 1-6 % of the variance in toddler behavior. These findings suggest that infant temperament is associated with the behavior strengths and difficulties of 2-year-olds and provide the first longitudinal validation of the new 5-factor structure of the new IBQ-R-VSF.

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (short form) was adapted for Samoan and Tongan speakers in New Zealand. The adaptation process drew upon language samples from Samoan and Tongan parent-child dyads with 20- and 26-month-old children and adult informants. The resulting 100-word language inventories in Samoan and Tongan, plus a single question about word combinations, were then administered to over 600 mothers of 2-year-olds in the "Growing Up in New Zealand" pre-birth longitudinal cohort study who identified their children as understanding Samoan or Tongan. Most mothers were able to complete the inventories without the help of an interpreter or interviewer. Important demographic correlates of children's vocabulary and grammar were mothers' country of birth, education, and deprivation level, and children's birth order. Mothers' birthplace was the single best predictor of children's vocabulary development in Samoan and Tongan, with children of mothers who were born outside New Zealand having higher Samoan and Tongan vocabularies. Clinical implications are discussed, along with future analyses of the language development of these children from the Growing Up cohort.

The Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised–Very Short Form (IBQ–R VSF; Putnam, Helbig, Gartstein, Rothbart, & Leerkes, 2014) is a new publicly available measure of infant temperament measuring positive affectivity/surgency (PAS), negative emotionality (NEG), and orienting and regulatory capacity (ORC). Although the initial psychometric properties of the 3-factor model appear promising, it has not been administered to a large and diverse sample and its predictive validity has not been established. This study administered the IBQ–R VSF to a diverse sample of 5,639 mothers of infants aged between 23 and 52 weeks. Confirmatory factor analysis found that the 3-factor solution did not meet the requirement for satisfactory model fit. Exploratory factor analysis found that a 5-factor solution (PAS, NEG, Orienting Capacity, Affiliation/Regulation, and Fear) was statistically and conceptually the most parsimonious. All 5 temperament dimensions were found to relate to both mother- and partner-reported infant closeness, parenting confidence, and parenting satisfaction, and four of the dimensions (PAS, Orienting Capacity, NEG, and Fear) related to the infants' communication development. Some parental differences were also found. Together these findings suggest that the 5-factor IBQ–R VSF is a promising measure of infant temperament and is related to parenting perceptions and child language development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Differences in parent-child interactions have implications for a range of developmental outcomes that are of interest to large longitudinal cohort studies. We describe a new method for observing parent-child conversations specifically designed to be a component of a more comprehensive collection of data about child health and development. Participants were mothers and their two-year-old children who were part of the Growing Up in New Zealand study. During a series of brief, prompted parent-child conversations, observers were trained to rate mothers' warmth, use of open-ended questions, talk about emotions and 'linking' talk, children's emotional expression, and mothers' overall use of discipline. Reliability was established before and reviewed mid-way through the one-year data collection wave. We observed differences in parent-child interaction ratings as a function of socio-demographic variables, ethnicity, and child gender that were in agreement with published research. Inter-scale correlations and correlations between observer ratings and maternal self-report measures provide preliminary evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Specifically, higher maternal self-reported affiliation and more frequent book reading were significantly correlated with observer ratings of maternal warmth, maternal language style, and children's emotional expression; and negatively correlated with observer ratings of maternal discipline. Higher maternal self-reported parenting hostility was negatively correlated with observed maternal warmth and language; and positively correlated with observed maternal discipline. This observational method is a potentially useful technique for obtaining independent measures of parent-child conversational interactions during the preschool years within large cohort studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]