Mutualistic Coupling Between Vocabulary and Reasoning in Young Children: A Replication and Extension of the Study by Kievit et al. (2017). (August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kievit, Rogier A.; Hofman, Abe D.; Nation, Kate
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 30:Number 8(2019)
• Page Start: 1245
• Page End: 1252
• Publication Date: 2019-08
• Subjects: intelligence -- development -- reasoning -- vocabulary -- psychometrics -- open data; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797619841265
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

Recent work suggests that the positive manifold of individual differences may arise, or be amplified, by a mechanism called mutualism . Kievit et al. (2017) showed that a latent change score implementation of the mutualism model outperformed alternative models, demonstrating positive reciprocal interactions between vocabulary and reasoning during development. Here, we replicated these findings in a cohort of children ( N = 227, 6–8 years old) and expanded the findings in three directions. First, a third wave of data was included, and the findings were robust to alternative model specifications. Second, a simulation demonstrated that data sets of similar magnitude and distributional properties could have, in principle, favored alternative models with close to 100% power. Third, we found support for the hypothesis that mutualistic-coupling effects are stronger and self-feedback parameters weaker in younger children. Together, these findings replicated the work of Kievit et al. (2017) and further support the hypothesis that mutualism supports cognitive development.