Browsing by Author "Hurskainen, Wilma"

Abstract There is evidence of heavy screen time use being associated with poor lexical development in preschool (2–5 -year-old) children. On the other hand, it has been shown that from about 3 years of age onwards, children can learn from age-appropriate, language-promoting screen content. However, the previous evidence is mixed, and so far the knowledge of screen time used by Finnish children, its possible association with lexical development and parents´ attitudes towards their children´s screen time is very limited. It was the aim of this study to gain preliminary information on the quantity and quality of 2;6–3;6-year-old children´s screen time and its association with the children´s lexical development in Finnish language environment. A further aim was to gain information on Finnish parents´ attitudes towards the impact of screen time on language development and whether these attitudes were associated with either the quantity or quality of children´s screen time. This study used data from the LEINIKKI research project. The sample included 50 healthy, monolingual Finnish-speaking children aged between 2 years 6 months and 3 years 6 months. The quantity and quality of the children´s screen time and the parents´ attitudes were measured with a structured questionnaire. The children´s lexical development was assessed using the vocabulary section of the LEINIKKI parent report instrument and two subtests (receptive vocabulary and picture naming) of the WPPSI-III intelligence test. The associations between screen time and lexical development and between parents´ attitudes and screen time were studied by correlation analysis, Mann Whitney U tests, Poisson regression analysis and chi square tests. A higher amount of solitary screen time was significantly associated with poorer outcome in the WPPSI-III subtest that measures receptive vocabulary. There was also a negative trend between the amount of solitary screen time and the LEINIKKI method´s vocabulary points. However, a further analysis with Poisson regression model revealed that when background variables were added to the model, the screen time did not have a significant impact on lexical development. The quality of screen time was not associated with the lexical outcome. The parent´s positive attitude towards the screen time was associated with a higher amount of screen time but not the quality of the screen time. The attitude did not explain the variance in the quantity nor the quality of the children´s screen time.