Child-related and environmental factors influencing vocabulary development at ages 24 and 30 months

Authors

• Amanda Tilvis Peruspalvelukuntayhtymä Kallio / Ylivieskan terveyskeskus
• Leila Paavola-Ruotsalainen Faculty of Humanities / Logopedics and the Child Language Reserach Center, University of Oulu and Attentio Oy Ltd, Oulu

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23997/pk.69817

Keywords:

background factors, family, relationship, vocabulary comprehension, vocabulary production

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between child-related and
environmental factors and child vocabulary development at 24 and 30 months. Information
on the background factors was gathered at the children’s age of 18 months. The participants
were 37 Finnish-speaking healthy children who were born full term (16 boys and 21
girls). Compared to boys, girls got higher scores in receptive and expressive vocabulary
measurements at 24 and 30 months, and had larger productive vocabulary at 24 months.
A negative relationship was found between otitis media (at least one otitis by the age 18
months) and receptive and expressive vocabulary measurements at 30 months, but not at
24 months. Children who had at least one sibling had lower scores in receptive vocabulary
at 30 months than children who did not have any siblings. A relationship between familial
history of difficulties in linguistic development and receptive vocabulary at 24 months was
found. In turn, being firstborn or parental educational level were not associated with child
vocabulary development. More studies with larger sample sizes are still needed, because in
clinical practice there is a need for better understanding of potential risk factors for language
problems.