Kumulative Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2023

This dissertation uses data from a large-scale study to investigate the early cognitive predictors of later skills and competencies. More specifically, data from the Newborn Cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC1) is used to link children's looking behavior, as measured by categorical habituation-dishabituation tasks at 7 and 17 months, with later skills and competencies in the domains of language and mathematics. Moreover, the included studies find that children's socioeconomic background, which is indicated by aspects of parental occupation, education, and income, is positively associated with their looking behavior at 17 months, highlighting the emergence of social inequalities in cognitive development during the second year of life. Overall, this dissertation argues for a certain intraindividual continuity and interindividual stability in early cognitive abilities that are correlated with children's socioeconomic background.