Abstract

The current investigation examined whether intergenerational transfer of risk could be revealed through mothers' and preschool-aged children's language complexity, and whether continuity of risk persisted in these children's academic abilities, three years later. Participating families were drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal investigation of French-speaking families from low SES Montreal neighborhoods. At Time 1 (N=159), mothers' history of childhood social withdrawal was shown to predict language complexity when engaging in conversational speech with their preschool-aged children. Mothers' language complexity was also shown to be predictive of preschoolers' language complexity. At Time 2 (N=131), children's report card grades in Language Arts and Mathematics were both predicted by their language complexity at preschool-age. The findings support an intergenerational continuity of risk operating through language complexity and extending beyond language-related school abilities.