Development of communication skills in Finnish pre-school children examined by the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC)

Abstract

The communication skills of typically developing Finnish-speaking children between three and six years of age were examined using the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC). The differences between the boys and girls were also investigated. Results showed that the performance of the three-year-old children differed on the Speech subscale of the CCC compared to the five-year-old and six-year-old children and on the Syntax, Coherence and Use of Context subscales from the six-year-old children. Four-year-old children differed from the six-year-olds on the Syntax and Coherence subscales, and the five-year-olds differed from the six-year-olds on the Rapport subscale. Boys performed similarly to girls except on the Interests scale where the boys' performance was poorer. The CCC was effective in evaluating typical communication skills in pre-school children, and it can be used to investigate pragmatic skills in children as young as three years of age. As the development of pragmatic abilities may develop differently across languages and cultures, studies about children's pragmatic development in different languages and cultural backgrounds are needed to identify if there is a universal developmental pattern of communication, as well as features that are specific to a given culture and to a given language.