Abstract
Introduction. The study examined the relationships between a child’s sibling position and language development (based on active vocabulary volume and narratives’ production).
Methods. Six hundred seventy-four preschoolers (M = 70.2 months, SD = 4.01, 50.7% boys) from Moscow, Kazan, and Sochi (Russia) participated in the study. The children’s parents filled out a form about the child’s age, sex, and sibling position. Children were asked to create a story based on a series of pictures and were tested on their active vocabulary using a verbal fluency test and Raven’s matrix test on nonverbal intelligence. We then analyzed how sibling position was interrelated with language development.
Results. A regression model was built where the dependent variable was the child's speech rate, and the main predictor was the sibling position while controlling for such factors as the level of nonverbal intelligence, sex (gender), and age of the child. The results were interpreted via language input the child receives in the family. The study showed that the highest speech rate was observed in older and only children, and that sibling position significantly contributed to the rate of speech, but less strongly than the gender factor.
Discussion. In future research we find it important to control sibling similarities within a family when comparing children with different sibling positions from different families.
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