COMMUNICATION SKILLS OF THREE-YEARS-OLD: ENVIRONMENTAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

Abstract

The paper presents a quantitative research whose goal was to identify the communication skills of three-year-olds using the Gunzberg II test. The purposive sample consists of 312 children aged three years. The main assumption of the research was that the communication skills of three-year-olds are influenced by their gender, birth order, parents' level of education, length of stay in kindergarten and age within the same age group. None of the mentioned variables had a consistent impact on the communication skills of the examined children. Some variables did not affect the emergence of differences at all (e.g. the mother's level of education), and some influenced the realization of at most two tasks (gender, birth order and age within the same age group). This was insufficient to accept the auxiliary, and thus the main hypothesis. In general, three-year-olds did not demonstrate sufficient communication skills in accordance with expectations based on developmental characteristics, which points to the need to intensify, enrich and encourage work on the development of communication.Keywords:demographic characteristics, communication, speech development, environmental influences, three-year-olds.