Pre- and post-birth antecedents of 3- and 4-year-old attention, IQ, verbal expressiveness, task orientation, and capacity for relationships

The general hypothesis guiding this research is that certain preschool behaviors such as sustained attention are predominantly anticipated by pre-birth parent and early infant characteristics, whereas other behaviors such as positive parent-child mutuality are shaped by both earlier and concurrent influences. It was found that variations in the child's 36-month attention, 36-month verbal expressiveness, and 48-month verbal IQ all correlated significantly with the concurrent parent stimulation of cognitive and verbal experiences, but that when the influence of certain pre-birth and early postnatal variables was allowed in a path analysis, the concurrent correlations were no longer significant. For all three of these preschool behaviors, the mother's pre-birth verbal IQ was a significant influence. By contrast, for the child's 48-month modulation of aggression, the significant correlation with the concurrent parent transaction remained even after the pre-birth and postnatal characteristics had been allowed in the path analysis.