engleski

Do internal or external demographic factors influence on early language development? A cross-linguistic study

Background and aims: There are great individual differences in the early language development. These differences can be noticed in style and pace of language acquisition. Some of those differences may be caused by various internal and external factors such as gender, birth order or socioeconomic status defined as parent educational level. In literature, above mentioned factors are commonly defined as demographic factors. Most of the studies consider those factors as having a significant role in determining the trajectory of language development. However, there is no consensus in the literature regarding to extent of influence of those factors on language development. Furthermore, there is little or no data of the impact of the above mentioned factors on language development across different languages. The aim of this cross-linguistic study was to examine the influence of the following demographic factors: gender, birth order and mother/father education, on expressive vocabulary and ability to combine words at the age of 24 months in three languages, Croatian, Estonian and Finnish. The specific objective was: Do the demographic factors (gender, birth order, mother/father educational level) have an impact on the expressive vocabulary or the ability to combine words at two years of age, irrespective of language? Subjects and methods: Cross-sectional data about children's expressive lexical skills and the ability to combine words were obtained using the Short form of the Communicative Development Inventories in each of three languages at two years of age. In total, 324 children (Croatian: N=86 ; Estonian: N=160 ; Finnish: N=77) at the age of 24 months (range= 23 to 25 months) were included. The impact of demographic variables (gender, birth order, mother/father educational level ; ≤12 years, >12 years) on language development (number of expressive words, ability to combine words) at two years of age was analysed. Results and conclusions: According to the analysis of variance (dependent variable: number of expressive words), the only predictive variable was gender (p<0.01, partial η²=0.061), in favour of girls. Gender was also the only predictive variable for the ability to combine words to sentences (Z=-3, 336, p=0.001). Language was not related with any of the demographic factors. Based on the findings of this crosslinguistic study, it seems that only internal (i.e. biological) factors are associated with the language development at the age of two years.

internal factors, external factors, language development, MB-CDI

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