Cognitive Ability

Home environments have been linked to cognitive development and academic performance, with suggestions that family factors exert more influence on language and literacy learning than on mathematics achievement. This study's purpose was to learn how selected family factors might be differentially related to primary grade achievement in reading and mathematics in children from low-income families. Family factors were contrasted in first graders who scored in the highest and lowest quartile on Woodcock-Johnson tests of reading and mathematics. Participants were 167 children from low-income families (80 % were African American) in a Head Start Transition Demonstration program, which provides low-income families with elementary school children the same support as received in Head Start. Children who did well in reading were from homes with higher scores on the Home Screening Questionnaire, were from smalle