Sociodemographic Risk and Infants’ Emerging Language Ability: Examining the Indirect Effects of Maternal Sensitivity and Nurturance to Distress

SYNOPSIS Objective. To examine whether maternal sensitivity in non-distress contexts and nurturance to infants’ distress mediate the association between cumulative sociodemographic risk and children’s emerging language ability. Design. Participants were a community sample of mothers and their infants (n = 99). During an initial home visit, mothers and infants 6 to 12 months old were videorecorded during free-play and infant distress-eliciting tasks, and mothers provided demographic information. Maternal behaviors were coded for sensitivity and nurturance to distress. Six months after the home visit, mothers reported children’s language ability. Cumulative risk was a latent variable with dichotomous indicators of high school education or less, income-to-needs ratio <1, maternal age ≤21, single parenthood, and minority status. Child language, a latent variable with five percentile scores as indicators, was regressed onto sensitivity, nurturance, and the latent risk variable. The indirect effects between sociodemographic risk and child language outcome via sensitivity and nurturance to distress were also estimated. Results. Risk was negatively associated with maternal sensitivity and nurturance to distress in infancy. Sensitivity, but not nurturance to distress, mediated the association between risk and child language ability between 12 and 22 months of age. Conclusions. Maternal sensitivity in non-distress contexts may represent an important target of intervention programs aimed at enhancing early language development among high-risk families.