Conclusions:
This study demonstrates the value of an early responsive stimulation intervention on children’s
social-emotional skills in LAMI contexts. Further, it extends previous literature by highlighting the importance of home environment quality in mediation associations between the intervention and children’s development. Despite the disadvantaged nature of the sample, we found sustained impacts of a zero-to-two intervention on children’s social skills and problem behaviors in the preschool period. The intervention improved home environment quality at age two which was then linked to social skills and behavior problems via home environment quality at age four. These findings suggest that parenting interventions can have lasting and meaningful impacts on children’s school readiness, even in highly disadvantaged contexts where parents have low levels of education themselves. Future analyses seek to explore whether the intervention effect on children’s social-emotional development was moderated by child- or family-level factors.