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AbstractIn this study, we examined bidirectional associations between parental responsiveness and executive function (EF) processes in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. Participants were 534 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children (71 percent Hispanic/Latino; 28 percent African American; 1 percent European American) attending Head Start programs. At Time 1 (T1) and 6.5 months later at Time 2 (T2), parents and children participated in a videotaped free play session and children completed delay inhibition (gift delay‐wrap, gift delay‐bow) and conflict EF (bear/dragon, dimensional change card sort) tasks. Parental warm acceptance, contingent responsiveness, and verbal scaffolding were coded from the free play videos and aggregated to create a parental responsiveness latent variable. A cross‐lagged panel structural equation model indicated that higher T1 parental responsiveness significantly predicted more positive gain in delay inhibition and conflict EF from T1 to T2. Higher T1 delay inhibition, but not T1 conflict EF, significantly predicted more positive change in parental responsiveness from T1 to T2. These associations were not explained by several possible confounding variables, including children's age, gender, race/ethnicity, and verbal ability. Findings suggest that parental responsiveness may support EF development in disadvantaged children, with reciprocal effects of delay inhibition on parental responsiveness.

AbstractWe evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.

There are major obstacles to the effective delivery of mental health services to poor families, particularly for those families in rural areas. The rise of Internet use, however, has created potentially new avenues for service delivery, which, when paired with the many recent advances in computer networking and multimedia technology, is fueling a demand for Internet delivery of mental health services. The authors report on the adaptation of a parenting program for delivery via the Internet, enhanced with participant-created videos of parent-infant interactions and weekly staff contact, which enable distal treatment providers to give feedback and make decisions informed by direct behavioral assessment. This Internet-based, parent-education intervention has the potential to promote healthy and protective parent-infant interactions in families who might not otherwise receive needed mental health services.