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The Effect of Older Siblings on Language Development as a Function of Age Difference and Sex

Naomi Havron1; Franck Ramus1; Barbara Heude2; Anne Forhan2; Alejandrina Cristia1; Hugo Peyre1,2,3; the EDEN Mother-Child Cohort Study Group; I. Annesi-Maesano; J. Y. Bernard; J. Botton; M. A. Charles; P. Dargent-Molina; B. de Lauzon-Guillain; P. Ducimetière; M. De Agostini; B. Foliguet; A. Forhan; X. Fritel; A. Germa; V. Goua; R. Hankard; B. Heude; M. Kaminski; B. Larroque; N. Lelong; J. Lepeule; G. Magnin; L. Marchand; C. Nabet; F. Pierre; R. Slama; M. J. Saurel-Cubizolles; M. Schweitzer; O. Thiebaugeorges

1 Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, PSL Université · 2 Université de Paris, CRESS Centre of Research in Epidemiology and Statistics, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France · 3 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Robert Debré Hospital, Paris, France

Psychological Science 2019

The number of older siblings a child has is negatively correlated with the child’s verbal skills, perhaps because of competition for parents’ attention. In the current study, we examined the role of siblings’ sex and age gap as moderating factors, reasoning that they affect older siblings’ tendency to compensate for reduced parental attention. We hypothesized that children with an older sister have better language abilities than children with an older brother, especially when there is a large age gap between the two siblings. We reanalyzed data from the EDEN cohort ( N = 1,154) and found that children with an older sister had better language skills than those with an older brother. Contrary to predictions, results showed that the age gap between siblings was not associated with language skills and did not interact with sex. Results suggest that the negative effect of older siblings on language development may be entirely due to the role of older brothers. Our findings invite further research on the mechanisms involved in this effect.

DOI
10.1177/0956797619861436
Volume
30 (9)
Pages
1333-1343
Language
en
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