Family play, reading, and other stimulation and early childhood development in five low-and-middle-income countries

Jorge Cuartas; Dana McCoy; Juliana Sánchez; Jere Behrman; Claudia Cappa; Georgina Donati; Jody Heymann; Chunling Lu; Abbie Raikes; Nirmala Rao; Linda Richter; Alan Stein; Hirokazu Yoshikawa

doi:10.1111/desc.13404

Family play, reading, and other stimulation and early childhood development in five low-and-middle-income countries

Dev Sci. 2023 Nov;26(6):e13404. doi: 10.1111/desc.13404. Epub 2023 Apr 28.

Authors

Jorge Cuartas^{1

2}, Dana McCoy¹, Juliana Sánchez³, Jere Behrman⁴, Claudia Cappa⁵, Georgina Donati⁶, Jody Heymann⁷, Chunling Lu⁸, Abbie Raikes⁹, Nirmala Rao¹⁰, Linda Richter¹¹, Alan Stein^{6

12

13}, Hirokazu Yoshikawa¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
² Centro de Estudio sobre Seguridad y Drogas (CESED), Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.
³ Facultad de Economía, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.
⁴ Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
⁵ Data and Analytics Section, UNICEF, New York, New York, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK.
⁷ WORLD Policy Analysis Center, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
⁸ Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
⁹ College of Public Health, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
¹⁰ Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
¹¹ DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
¹² MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa.
¹³ African Health Research Institute, Durban, South Africa.
¹⁴ NYU Global TIES for Children Center, New York, New York, USA.

PMID: 37114644
DOI: 10.1111/desc.13404

Abstract

This paper used longitudinal data from five studies conducted in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes (N = 4904; M_age = 51.5; 49% girls). Results from random-effects and more conservative child-fixed effects models indicate that across these studies, family stimulation, measured by caregivers' engagement in nine activities (e.g., reading, playing, singing), predicted increments in children's early numeracy, literacy, social-emotional, motor, and executive function skills (standardized associations ranged from 0.05 to 0.11 SD). Study-specific models showed variability in the estimates, with null associations in two out of the five studies. These findings indicate the need for additional research on culturally specific ways in which caregivers may support early development and highlight the importance of promoting family stimulation to catalyze positive developmental trajectories in global contexts. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Research on the links between family stimulation and early childhood development in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited. We used longitudinal data from studies conducted in five LMICs to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes. Results suggest that family stimulation predicted increments in children's numeracy, literacy, social-emotional, motor, and executive function skills. We found variability in the observed estimates, with null associations in two out of the five studies, suggesting the need for additional research in LMICs.

Keywords: early childhood development; fixed-effects; home environment; low-and-middle-income countries; stimulation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child Development
Child, Preschool
Developing Countries*
Executive Function
Female
Humans
Literacy
Male
Middle Aged
Reading*