Prelinguistic skills and early interactional context as predictors of children's language development

Abstract

A variety of infants' prelinguistic skills, their contribution to children's later language development and the critical features of social environment that are related to these skills were the focus of this investigation. Infants' prelinguistic behaviors and maternal interactional strategies were measured at 14 months of age. Children's language and cognitive development were studied at 14, 18, 24 and 30 months of age using both parental report forms and structured laboratory assessments. The research belongs to the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD) in which a total of 214 families from the Province of Central Finland participate. The results indicated that individual variation in prelinguistic behaviors was related to individual variation in subsequent language skills. Children who showed early interest in shared reading and had advanced skills in intentional communication and symbolic play had more developed language skills than children who were less advanced in these prelinguistic behaviors. The associations between prelinguistic behaviors and later language skills were, however, specific, so that early interest in shared reading and the level of symbolic play related more strongly to language comprehension, whereas most of the joint attentional behaviors had stronger associations to expressive language. These results suggest that in order to identify communication and language delays and deficits as early as possible, it is important to gain a comprehensive picture of the child's various prelinguistic skills. In relation to environmental influences it was found that mothers who were more skillful and sensitive in their interactions with the child had infants who were more advanced in their prelinguistic communication and whose later language skills, especially language comprehension, were more developed. Mothers' education had a positive association with their interactional strategies and contributed to their child's language. The findings on environmental influences suggest that skillful and sensitive environmental guidance supports the social-cognitive basis of language development and, hence, could also be utilized in the prevention of some language problems.