Hostname: page-component-669899f699-chc8l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T11:46:38.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effect of Crianza Positiva e-messaging program on adult–child language interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2021

Ana Balsa Open the ORCID record for Ana Balsa [Opens in a new window] ,
Florencia López Boo ,
Juanita Bloomfield ,
Alejandrina Cristia ,
Alejandro Cid ,
María de la Paz Ferro ,
Rosario Valdés  and
María del Luján González
Ana Balsa*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Universidad de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
Florencia López Boo
Affiliation:
Department of Social Protection, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Juanita Bloomfield
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Universidad de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
Alejandrina Cristia
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France
Alejandro Cid
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Universidad de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
María de la Paz Ferro
Affiliation:
Department of Social Protection, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Rosario Valdés
Affiliation:
Fundación Fe y Alegría, Montevideo, Uruguay
María del Luján González
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Universidad Católica del Uruguay, Montevideo, Uruguay
*
*Correspondence to: E-mail: abalsa@um.edu.uy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We assess the effects of the Crianza Positiva text and audio e-messaging program on caregiver–child language interaction patterns. The program is a six-month-long intervention for families with children aged 0–2 aimed at strengthening parental competences. Its design exploits behavioral tools such as reminders, suggestions of action, and messages of encouragement to reinforce and sustain positive parenting practices. Families in 24 early childhood centers in Uruguay that completed an eight-week workshop were randomized into receiving or not receiving mobile messages. After the program, we videotaped 10-minute sessions of free play between the caregiver and the child, and decoded language patterns using automated techniques. The intervention was successful at improving the quality of parental vocalizations, as measured by the parent's pitch range. We also found suggestive evidence of increases in the duration of adult vocalizations. The results are consistent with more frequent parental self-reported involvement in reading, telling stories, and describing things to the child. Regarding the child, we find a nonrobust decrease in the duration of vocalizations, which we attribute to a crowding-out effect by the caregiver in the context of a fixed 10-minute suggested activity and a more proactive parental role.

Keywords

e-messagesparentingbehavioral economicslanguageearly childhoodC93D91I20
Type
Article
Information
Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 607 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aboud, F. E., Singla, D. R., Nahil, M. I. and Borisova, I. (2013), ‘Effectiveness of a parenting program in Bangladesh to address early childhood health, growth and development’, Social Science and Medicine, 97 (Special Issue: Critical Periods in Early Human Development, Guest Editors: Pia Rebello Britto, UNICEF, USA; Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Yale University, USA): 250–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ajzenman, N. and Lopez Boo, F. (2019), Lessons from behavioral economics to improve treatment adherence in parenting programs: An application to SMS. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12808. Retrieved from: https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/12808/lessons-from-behavioral-economics-to-improve-treatment-adherence-in-parenting-programs-an-application-to-sms.10.18235/0001981CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, S. E. and Dench, C. (2015), ‘Calculating mean length of utterance for Eastern Canadian Inuktitut’, First Language, 35(4-5): 377–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, M., Byrne, S. and Rodrigo, M. J. (2021), ‘Social support dimensions predict parental outcomes in a Spanish early intervention program for positive parenting’, Children and Youth Services Review, 121: 105823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baird, S., Bohren, J. A., McIntosh, C. and Özler, B. (2018), ‘Optimal design of experiments in the presence of interference’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 100(5): 844–860.10.1162/rest_a_00716CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, N. (1969), Bayley Scales of Infant Development [Measurement instrument]. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Bénabou, R. and Tirole, J. (2002), ‘Self-confidence and personal motivation’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(3): 871–915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlinski, S. and Schady, N. (2015), ‘More bang for the buck: Investing in early childhood development’, in Berlinksy, S., and Schady, N. (eds), The early years, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 149–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, J., Balsa, A. and Cid, A. (2020), Using behavioral insights in early childhood interventions: The effects of Crianza Positiva e-messaging program on parental investment. Universidad de Montevideo. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Cote, L. R., Haynes, O. M. and Suwalsky, J. T. D. (2015), ‘Mother-infant contingent vocalizations in 11 countries’, Psychological Science, 26(8): 1272–1284.10.1177/0956797615586796CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cameron, A. C., Gelbach, J. B. and Miller, D. L. (2008), ‘Bootstrap-based improvements for inference with clustered errors’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3): 414–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, D., Romano, J. P. and Wolf, M. (2020), ‘The Romano–Wolf multiple-hypothesis correction in Stata’, The Stata Journal, 20(4): 812–843.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conti, G., Poupakis, S., Sandner, M. and Kliem, S. (2020), The effects of home visiting on mother-child interactions: evidence from a randomized trial using dynamic micro-level data. IZA DP No. 12937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cristia, A. (2013), ‘Input to language: The phonetics and perception of infant-directed speech’, Language and Linguistics Compass, 7(3): 157–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dale, A. and Strauss, A. (2009), ‘Don't forget to vote: Text message reminders as a mobilization tool’, American Journal of Political Science, 53(4): 787–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doss, C., Fahle, E. M., Loeb, S. and York, B. N. (2019), ‘More than just a nudge supporting kindergarten parents with differentiated and personalized text messages’, Journal of Human Resources, 54(3): 567–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S. and Reilly, J. S. (1993), The MacArthur communicative development inventories: User's guide and technical manual. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J. and Pethick, S. J. (1994), ‘Variability in early communicative development’, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(5): 1–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferjan Ramírez, N., Lytle, S. R., Fish, M. and Kuhl, P. K. (2019), ‘Parent coaching at 6 and 10 months improves language outcomes at 14 months: A randomized controlled trial’, Developmental Science, 22(3): e12762.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferjan Ramírez, N., Lytle, S. R. and Kuhl, P. K. (2020), ‘Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(7): 3484–3491.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A. and Kuhl, P. (1987), ‘Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech’, Infant Behavior and Development, 10(3): 279–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, L., Kariger, P., Engle, P. and Raikes, A. (2009), Examining child development in low-income countries: a toolkit for the assessment of children in the first five years of life. Washington, DC: The World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Marchman, V. A. and Weisleder, A. (2013), ‘SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months’, Developmental Science, 16(2): 234–248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frankenburg, W. K., Dodds, J., Archer, P., Shapiro, H. and Bresnick, B. (1992), ‘The Denver II: A Major Revision and Restandardization of the Denver Developmental Screening Test’, Pediatrics, 89(1): 91–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gennetian, L., Darling, M. and Aber, J. L. (2016), ‘Behavioral economics and developmental science: A new framework to support early childhood interventions’, Journal of Applied Research on Children, 7(2): 2.Google Scholar
Gertler, P., Heckman, J., Pinto, R., Zanolini, A., Vermeerch, C., Walker, S., Chang, S. M. and Grantham-McGregor, S. (2014), ‘Labor market returns to an early childhood stimulation intervention in Jamaica’, Science, 344(6187): 998–1001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilkerson, J., Richards, J. A., Warren, S. F., Montgomery, J. K., Greenwood, C. R., Kimbrough Oller, D. and Paul, T. D. (2017), ‘Mapping the early language environment using all-day recordings and automated analysis’, American Journal of Speech-language Pathology, 26(2): 248–265.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gurol-Urganci, I., de Jongh, T., Vodopivec-Jamsek, V., Atun, R. and Car, J. (2013), ‘Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2012 Jul 11(7): CD007458.Google Scholar
Hart, B. and Risley, T. R. (1995), Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookers Publishing.Google Scholar
Hurtado, N., Marchman, V. A. and Fernald, A. (2008), ‘Does input influence uptake? Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning children’, Developmental Science, 11(6): 31–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hurwitz, L. B., Lauricella, A. R., Hanson, A., Raden, A. and Wartella, E. (2015), ‘Supporting Head Start parents: impact of a text message intervention on parent–child activity engagement’, Early Child Development and Care, 185(9): 1373–1389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, C. and Mash, E. J. (1989), ‘A measure of parenting satisfaction and efficacy’, Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 18(2): 167–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karp, S. M., Lutenbacher, M. and Wallston, K. A. (2015), ‘Evaluation of the parenting sense of competence scale in mothers of infants’, Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(11): 3474–3481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, K. N., Petry, N. M. and Bickel, W. K. (1999), ‘Heroin addicts have higher discount rates for delayed rewards than non-drug-using controls’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(1): 78–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lavechin, M., de Seyssel, M., Gautheron, L., Dupoux, E. and Cristia, A. (2021), Reverse-engineering language acquisition with child-centered long-form recordings. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pt9xq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, J., Rush, R., Schoon, I. and Parsons, S. (2009), ‘Modeling developmental language difficulties from school entry into adulthood: literacy, mental health, and employment outcomes’, The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52(6): 1401–1416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Le Franc, A., Riebling, E., Karadayi, J., Wang, Y., Scaff, C., Metze, F. and Cristia, A. (2018), The ACLEW DiViMe: An Easy-to-use Diarization Tool. In INTERSPEECH Conference Proceedings (pp. 1383–1387).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, C. Y. Y., Hernandez, M. W. and Suskind, D. L. (2020), ‘Enriching home language environment among families from low-SES backgrounds: A randomized controlled trial of a home visiting curriculum’, Early Childhood Research Quaterly, 50: 24–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M. and Kuhl, P. K. (2009), ‘Age related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: A longitudinal study’, Journal of Child Language, 36: 909–922.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lopez Boo, F., Cubides Mateus, M., Sorio, R., Garibotto, G. and Berón, C. (2018), Measuring the quality of the home environment of young children in Uruguay: socioeconomic gradients in the home inventory. Inter-American Development Bank Technical Notes. IDB-TN-1550.Google Scholar
Love, J. M., Kisker, E. E., Ross, C., Raikes, H., Constantine, J., Boller, K. and Fuligni, A. S. (2005), ‘The effectiveness of early head start for 3-year-old children and their parents: Lessons for policy and programs’, Developmental Psychology, 41(6): 885.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E. and Zhao, J. (2013), ‘Poverty impedes cognitive function’, Science, 341(6149): 976–980.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayer, S. E., Kalil, A., Oreopoulos, P. and Gallegos, S. (2018), ‘Using behavioral insights to increase parental engagement: The parents and children together intervention’, Journal of Human Resources, 54(4): 900–925.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGillion, M., Pine, J. M., Herbert, J. S. and Matthews, D. (2017), ‘A randomized controlled trial to test the effect of promoting caregiver contingent talk on language development in infants from diverse socioeconomic status backgrounds’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58(10): 1122–1131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendive, S., Mascareño Lara, M., Aldoney, D., Pérez, J. C. and Pezoa, J. P. (2020), ‘Home language and literacy environments and early literacy trajectories of low-socioeconomic status Chilean children’, Child Development, 91(6): 2042–2062.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meuwissen, A., Giovanelli, A., Labella, M. and Susman-Stillman, A. (2017), Text2Learn: An early literacy texting intervention by community organizations.Google Scholar
Neumann, C. (2020), Avutils. Retrieved from: https://github.com/gobbios/avutils.Google Scholar
NICHD (2000), ‘The relation of child care to cognitive and language development’, Child Development, 71(4): 960–980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olds, D. L., Kitzman, H., Cole, R., Robinson, J., Sidora, K., Luckey, D. W. and Holmberg, J. (2004), ‘Effects of nurse home-visiting on maternal life course and child development: age 6 follow-up results of a randomized trial’, Pediatrics, 114(6): 1550–1559.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, C. B., Hurley, J. C., Angadi, S. S., Todd, M., Berardi, V., Hovell, M. F. and Adams, M. A. (2020), ‘Delay discount rate moderates a physical activity intervention testing immediate rewards’, Behavioral Medicine, 46(2): 142–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porritt, L. L., Zinser, M. C., Bachorowski, J. A. and Kaplan, P. S. (2014), ‘Depression diagnoses and fundamental frequency-based acoustic cues in maternal infant-directed speech’, Language Learning and Development, 10(1): 51–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramírez-Esparza, N., García-Sierra, A. and Kuhl, P. K. (2017), ‘Look who's talking NOW! Parentese speech, social context, and language development across time’, Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 1008.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodero, E., Potter, R. F. and Prieto, P. (2017), ‘Pitch range variations improve cognitive processing of audio messages’, Human Communication Research, 43(3): 397–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez, M. L., Dumont, K., Mitchell-Herzfeld, S. D., Walden, N. J. and Greene, R. (2010), ‘Effects of healthy families New York on the promotion of maternal parenting competencies and the prevention of harsh parenting’, Child Abuse & Neglect, 34(10): 711–723.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romeo, R. R., Leonard, J. A., Robinson, S. T., West, M. R., Mackey, A. P., Rowe, M. L. and Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2018), ‘Beyond the 30-million-word gap: children's conversational exposure is associated with language-related brain function’, Psychological Science, 29(5): 700–710.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowe, M. L., Raudenbush, S. W. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012), ‘The pace of vocabulary growth helps predict later vocabulary skill’, Child Development, 83(2): 508–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rubio-Codina, M. and Grantham-McGregor, S. (2020), Validez predictiva de pruebas cortas comúnmente usadas para medir el desarrollo infantil en estudios a gran escala. Inter-American Development Bank Working Paper. DB-WP-1174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schilbach, F., Schofield, H. and Mullainathan, S. (2016), ‘The psychological lives of the poor’, American Economic Review, 106(5): 435–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S. and Shafir, E. (2012), ‘Some consequences of having too little’, Science, 338(6107): 682–685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shneidman, L. A. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012), ‘Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech?’, Developmental Science, 15(5): 659–673.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, L., Nestor, S., Parikh, C. and Yull, A. (2009), ‘Influences of infant-directed speech in early word recognition’, Infancy, 14: 654–666.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, N. A. and Trainor, L. J. (2008), ‘Infant-directed speech is modulated by infant feedback’, Infancy, 13(4): 410–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. and Ferguson, C. A. (1977), Talking to children. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Soderstrom, M. and Wittebolle, K. (2013), ‘When do caregivers talk? The influences of activity and time of day on caregiver speech and child vocalizations in two childcare environments’, PLoS One, 8(11): e80646.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sperry, D. E., Sperry, L. L. and Miller, P. J. (2019), ‘Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds’, Child Development, 90(4): 1303–1318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thaler, R. H. (2015), Misbehaving: The making of behavioral economics. New York: WW Norton.Google Scholar
The ManyBabies Consortium (2020). ‘Quantifying sources of variability in infancy research using the infant-directed-speech preference’, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.Google Scholar
Weber, A., Fernald, A. and Diop, Y. (2017), ‘When cultural norms discourage talking to babies: Effectiveness of a parenting program in rural Senegal’, Child Development, 88(5): 1513–1526.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weisleder, A. and Fernald, A. (2013), ‘Talking to children matters: early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary’, Psychological Science, 24(11): 2143–2152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zangl, R. and Mills, D. L. (2007), ‘Increased brain activity to infant-directed in 6-and 13-month-old infants’, Infancy, 11(1): 31–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, F. J., Gilkerson, J., Richards, J. A., Christakis, D. A., Xu, D., Gray, S. and Yapanel, U. (2009), ‘Teaching by listening: The importance of adult-child conversations to language development’, Pediatrics, 124(1): 342–349.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed