Year: 2024
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Nurturing environments have a critical influence on children's language development. It is unclear to what extent nurturing environments in institutions influence children's language development. METHODS: The present study investigated the early lexical development in Japanese children raised in institutional care (IC) (N = 86; 10-33 months; 37 boys) and compared their lexical skills to a large sample of age peers being raised in biological family care (BFC) (N = 1897; 937 boys) using vocabulary checklists. RESULTS: Our results present three main findings: (1) Japanese IC children did not exhibit a delay in productive vocabulary compared with BFC children, although their comprehensive vocabulary was delayed; (2) IC children who experienced maltreatment showed poorer vocabulary scores than non-maltreated IC children; (3) both the duration at the institution and the number of books read to them significantly predicted children's vocabulary scores. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that the Japanese institutions included in the present study did not show a negative impact, at least on productive vocabulary, and may competently foster children's language development. We discussed the relationship between institutional environments and children's language development.
DOI: 10.1111/cch.70000
Authors: Yuko Okumura, Hiroki Higuchi, Yuka Sakamoto, Yasuhiro Minami, Ryoko Mugitani, Kayoko Ito, Tessei Kobayashi
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,730
OpenAlex ID: W4403804201