Maternal overall verbal responsiveness to prelinguistic infants at 0;10 was analysed by categorizing responses according to their function. In addition, the predictive validity of the response categories to the child's communicative and linguistic development at 1;0 was examined. The participants were 27 Finnish-speaking mothers and their first-born infants. The results indicated several predictive relations between the functions of maternal verbal responses and child communicative and linguistic development, while maternal overall verbal responsiveness seemed to imply aspects of verbal style only modestly. Child contributions that may account for relationships between maternal interaction and child linguistic development were also considered. The results are discussed with reference to maternal interactional sensitivity.

The results of the present study suggest that maternal responsiveness during the prelinguistic stage is not necessarily dependent on children's communicative competence. As predictors of early communicative and linguistic skills, both maternal responsiveness and infant intentional communication make a distinctive contribution.

Ten teachers made recordings during one normal working day using a portable DAT recorder and a head-mounted microphone. In addition, the subjects filled in a questionnaire of signs of vocal fatigue. The speech samples were selected from the first and last lesson from three points representing the beginning, middle and end part of the lesson, respectively. To standardize the samples, 30 [a] vowels from stressed syllables were chosen for spectral analysis. The level of the fundamental and second formant regions (L1), the level of frequency ranges 2–5 kHz (L2) and 5–10 kHz (L5) were measured. From these measurements the parameters L1–L0, L1–L2 and L1–L5 were formed and used in the analyses as well as the energy levels below and above 1 kHz (α). Statistically significant changes were observed in the following parameters: the L1–L2 and L1–L5 differences, and the α ratio. In general, there was an increase in the energy content of the high frequency components due to vocal loading. The subjective reports revealed a statistically significant relationship with the spectral characteristics.

Maternal sensitivity and infant co-operation during free play was analysed at the infant's age of 10 months and their contributions to early communicative and linguistic development at 12 months as well as later language outcome at 30 months were examined. In addition, the possible predictions of early skills to later development were considered. The participants were 27 Finnishspeaking mother -infant dyads. According to the results maternal sensitivity was associated with early intentional communication-particularly the use of communicative gestures, and also with symbolic behaviour and later comprehensive skills. No associations between infant co-operation and communicative and linguistic skills were found. As for expressive language skills, early capacities correlated with later outcome. The findings of the present study suggest that the effects of both maternal sensitivity and child characteristics on language development are likely to be specific rather than global.

Objective: Preterm children with low birth weight are at greater risk of experiencing speech and language difficulties than full-term children. The aim of the current study was to investigate expressive language skills of Finnish-speaking preterm children with low birth weight [extremely-low-birth-weight (ELBW) children: n = 8; very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children: n = 10] at 2 years of corrected age and to compare their language results with full-term controls (n = 18), using spontaneous speech samples. Methods: The children were video recorded in semistructured free-play sessions with their mothers. From these video samples, expressive vocabulary size and maximum sentence length (MSL) were analyzed. In addition, the possible effect of children’s gender on language measures as well as associations between different language measures were examined. Results: The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the preterm and full-term groups in the size of expressive vocabulary. In contrast, the MSL, which measures morphosyntactic skills, was significantly shorter in preterm children. A positive correlation was found between MSL and expressive vocabulary. Children’s gender was not associated with language skills measured. Conclusion: The findings indicate that Finnish-speaking preterm children, especially ELBW children, experience difficulties in morphosyntactic skills.