Word usage of Maltese infants and toddlers based on caregiver report

Abstract

Many studies have been carried out throughout the years to take a step closer to understanding young children’s vocabulary acquisition and exploring factors that may influence its development. Variability in item-based word usage by typically developing children has only recently received recognition, both locally and internationally. However, locally, this area of research is still in its infancy. This study aimed to cover this research gap by analysing secondary cross-sectional data to investigate what words were used by a sample of 44 typically developing Maltese children aged 12, 18, 24, and 30 months, according to caregiver report. How commonly words were used across the same sample and whether demographic factors of age, gender, and maternal education affected their word usage were also investigated. For every child, words reportedly produced from each semantic category of the vocabulary checklist and demographic information were coded and analysed. It was found that a total of 67% of checklist words were reported to be uttered by the sample. Social words, specifically people, sounds, and routines, were the most commonly reported words. Verbs were also found to have a higher commonality than nouns. Time words followed by prepositions were the most under-represented words, with few children reported to utter them. No significant association was found between word usage and the factors of age, gender, and maternal education in this sample. In conclusion, it was observed that specific semantic categories were found more often than others in the early expressive vocabularies of children receiving Maltese-dominant exposure. Based on this study’s analysis, a revision of the tool used, the vocabulary checklist, could be carried out to update and potentially remove redundant words to reflect better the words that early vocabularies of children receiving Maltese-dominant exposure consists of.