Early language development: Relationships with social-emotional/behavioural development and maternal interaction

Early language and social-emotional/behavioural problems and competencies are correlated between 18 and 36 months

A doctoral thesis investigated early relationships between child language, child social-emotional/behavioural problems and competencies, and family interaction between the children’s ages of 18 and 36 months. Higher language skills correlated with social-emotional/behavioural competencies and lower language skills correlated with social-emotional/behavioural problems.

Language and social-emotional/behavioural problems and competencies of sixty toddlers were studied. Parent-child interaction was videorecorded and analysed at the children’s age of 24 months. Other methods used were parental questionnaires regarding prelinguistic development, vocabulary and social-emotional-behavioural development of children and standardised language assessments.

Regarding maternal interaction style, maternal responsiveness was defined as prompt, contingent and appropriate responses to children’s signals. Maternal directiveness was defined as controlling the child with repeated, unnecessary direction. Maternal directiveness correlated with less child initiatives taken and smaller child receptive vocabulary. As this was a correlational study, the direction of the relationships cannot be determined.

Boys had lower prelinguistic skills and smaller receptive and expressive vocabularies than girls between the ages of 18 and 36 months. GIrls had more social competence than boys at the age of 30 months.

Language skills affect social and academic skills of children. Early identification of language problems could be important as the results of this thesis support intertwining of early language skills, social-emotional/behavioural problems and competencies and family interaction styles.