Early Home Learning Environment (HLE) and Children’s Cognitive Development: A Review of Empirical Studies

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Publication year

2022

study description

Review

core topic(s)

Early Literacy

Population Characteristics

Toddler/Preschool

Exposures, Outcomes, Other

Brain/Neurocognitive , Home Language/Literacy/Learning Environment , Language and Literacy Development , School Readiness and Educational Outcomes

objectives

Based on the existing theoretical framework and scattered empirical studies, this study tries to put forward a theoretical model of the influence of early HLE on children's cognitive development.

exposure

Home literacy environment (HLE)

outcomes evaluated

Impact of home learning environment on early literacy and language development

methods

This study only uses journal papers from the "Web of Science." The researcher used "Early Home Learning Environment" as the main topic to retrieve journal papers in the five years from 2016 to 2020, and sorted them according to their relevance. Thirty empirical high-quality papers were selected from the first four pages as the main research objects of this study. This study also refers to some other sources of literature as a supplement to the theoretical basis.

sample size

n = 30 (empirical papers)

measures

Review

results

Early stimulation in HLE leads preschoolers to develop literacy, language, and numeracy skills, which in turn contribute to higher reading and math skills in primary or secondary school. According to the life cycle theory, early childhood development plays a key role in children's future health, educational success, and economic status. Decades of research has also made people realize that early childhood experiences determine the development of brain structure and provide the foundation for subsequent learning, behavior and health.

conclusions

In the process of literature search, this study found that nearly 90% of the frontier studies discussed the relationship between HLE and cognitive development. However, we still know little about how the influence of early HLE on children's cognitive ability extends to children's behavioral and socio-emotional development (Liang et al., 2020). The distribution of related research contents in cognitive fields is also uneven. For a long time, most of the studies on the impact of HLE on children's cognitive development have focused on the development of early literacy (such as literacy and grammar). However, research on the influence of parents on children's early number skills is still in its infancy.

limitations

This paper only summarized and summarized the existing researches, and failed to systematically conduct quantitative meta-analysis of the research results. Secondly, the literature selected in this study is limited, and the research results of different cultures are not covered enough, so the conclusions drawn are easily affected by the lack of quantity.