Antecedents and consequences of social–emotional development: A longitudinal study of academic achievement.

SCIENTIFIC Different aspects of social–emotional development in early childhood—including self-regulation, hyperactivity, emotional problems, and peer problems—have each been shown to individually influence academic achievement into primary and secondary school. Environmental and demographic factors have also been shown to influence a child’s academic development. The current study extends previous work to consider—concurrently, using structural equation modeling—a broader array of antecedents and measures of social–emotional development to understand their relative relations with later academic outcomes. Parent-reported data on a nationally representative sample of children (N = 10,080) at ages 3 and 5 years, and academic assessment at age 7, from the Millennium Cohort Study were subjected to longitudinal modeling. Results indicated the individual and collective contributions of social–emotional, environmental, and demographic antecedents of academic progress. These results suggest that malleable factors in early childhood are important predictors of later academic success, and thus may be viable targets for intervention.