Living conditions and receptive vocabulary of children aged two to five years

Abstract

ObjectiveTo assess the receptive vocabulary of children aged between two years and six months and five years and eleven months who were attending childcare centers and kindergarten schools. Methods An analytical cross-sectional study was carried out in the municipality of Embu, Southeastern Brazil. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and analysis of factors associated with children's performance were applied. The sample consisted of 201 children of both genders, aged between two and six years. Statistical analysis was performed using multivariate analysis and logistic regression model. The dependent variable analyzed was test performance and the independent variables were child's age, mother's level of education and family socio-demographic characteristics. Results It was observed that 44.3% of the children had performances in the test that were below what would be expected for their age. The factors associated with the best performances in the test were child's age (OR=2.4; 95% CI: 1.6-3.5) and mother's education level (OR= 3.2; 95% CI: 1.3-7.4). Conclusions Mother's education level is important for child's language development. Settings such as childcare and kindergarten schools are protective factors for child development in families of low income and education. Resumo Objetivo Avaliar o vocabulário receptivo de crianças de dois anos e seis meses a cinco anos

The relevance of receptive vocabulary in reading comprehension

“…Such findings corroborate a study (18) in which it was verified that a good performance in reception and oral language production is an indicator of intelligence and development in formal academic abilities.…”

Identificação dos distúrbios da linguagem na escola

“…This finding corroborates other studies conducted in public early childhood education schools [17][18][19][20] , where the percentage of language deficits was found to be around 30%. The relevant literature 21 showed that language disorders are the most frequent issues in the development of preschool-age children.…”

Desempenho do vocabulário expressivo de pré-escolares de 4 a 5 anos da rede pública e particular de ensino

“…Socioeconomically favored children may have low academic performance, and children with low socioeconomic status may have high academic performance (22) . In addition to socioeconomic status, other factors can contribute to that difference in performance, such as the human-family environment of stimulation (23) , mother's education (2,8,21,24) , and cultural diversity (8,21,25) . According to the literature, the characteristics of the way parents talk to their children contribute positively to the composition of children's vocabulary (3) , and the more educated the parents, the richer the stimuli offered to the child (26) .…”

“…The acquisition of the semantic domain of words is required for a wide and comprehensive performance in language development, since assigning and understanding the meanings of words is necessary for satisfactory communication (7) . The ability to understand and utter words, that is, the receptive and expressive vocabulary, indicates the child's language level and is closely related to intelligence and subsequent academic performance (2,8) . During the vocabulary acquisition and expansion, there may be semantic deviations, because the child's set of traces that differentiate the use of one word from another in different linguistic contexts is not settled yet (2,9,10,11,12) .…”

“…The assessment of children's vocabulary allows to verify their lexical capacity (8,13) and the mechanisms used, in terms of quantity of words (13) and the assigning of meaning (9) . Nevertheless, the analysis of processes of word substitution highlights the differences and similarities of the lexical units used by children (13) .…”