Browsing by Author "Illi, Anniina"

Background and objectives. There is still little research about the screen time of parents, and it is also partly contradictory. Also, there aren’t any previous studies about the relationship between the screen time of the mother and the child’s performance in linguistic tests. Previ-ous studies have shown that the screen time of the mother decreases the interaction be-tween the mother and the child, which could also affect the language development of the child. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the quantity and quality of the screen time of the mother and the linguistic skills (receptive/expressive) of their 3- to 4-year-old child. This thesis was done as part of the LEINIKKI-study. Participants and methods. The participants were 49 (25 girls and 24 boys) 3- to 4-year-old, neurotypical, Finnish-speaking children, and their mothers. The language skills of the chil-dren were examined using the Finnish version of the Reynell Developmental Language Scales III and the LEINIKKI-method. The quantity and the quality of the mother’s screen time were assessed using the screen time questionnaire. The data was analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient and the Mann-Whitney U test. Results and conclusions. There was no statistically significant relationship between the quantity of the mother’s screen time and the linguistic skills of the child. However, a statisti-cally significant result concerning the quality of the screen time was found: The children whose mothers had four hours or more of work-related screen time on a weekday managed weaker in the LEINIKKI-method than those whose mothers had less than four hours of work-related screen time. The results of this master’s thesis give us precursory information about the negative relationship between heavy screen time of the mother and the development of the child’s linguistic skills. Future research would be important because of the lack of re-search in this subject matter.