Exposure to electronic media was negatively associated with speech and language development at 18 and 24 months.

AIM: This study evaluated early speech and language development at 18 and 24 months, and associated factors, based on parental reports. METHOD: We followed up the CHILD-SLEEP birth cohort of 1667 Finnish-speaking families, who were randomly recruited in 2011-2013 during routine visits to maternity clinics in the Pirkanmaa Hospital District of Finland. The women were approximately 32 weeks' pregnant at enrolment. Parents reported the size of their child's expressive vocabulary, word combinations, intelligibility, finger-pointing and adherence to instructions. A subsample was studied using the Expressive Language subscale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition. RESULTS: The children's vocabulary was smaller than previously reported. At 18 months of age, 68.8% of the 997 children had a vocabulary of 20 words or less and 35.7% used about five words at most. At 24 months, 32.4% of the 822 children had a vocabulary of 50 words or less and 18.4% used about 20 words at most. Longer child and parental exposure to electronic media was negatively associated with the size of the child's expressive vocabulary. CONCLUSION: Vocabulary size at 18 and 24 months was smaller than previously reported and negatively associated with exposure to electronic media.

The acoustic voice quality index version 02.02 in the Finnish-speaking population.

Background: The Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) is a multiparametric tool for objectively measuring the general acoustic characteristics of voice. The AVQI uses both sustained vowel and continuous speech in its analysis, and therefore, a validation is required for different languages. In the present study, validation was performed in the Finnish-speaking population.Methods: The study included 200 native Finnish-speaking participants of whom 115 were voice patients attending a phoniatric clinic, and the remaining 85 subjects participated in the study as healthy controls. Voice samples were recorded, and the auditory evaluation was performed by five speech therapists. An ordinal four-point interval scale was used to evaluate the degree of voice abnormality (Grade, G). Several statistical analyses were performed to test the validity and the diagnostic accuracy of the AVQI in the Finnish-speaking population.Results: The inter-rater reliability of four of the five raters was high enough to allow the use of Gmean in the validation. There was a statistically significant correlation between the AVQI scores and the evaluation of overall perceptual voice quality (r = 0.74).Conclusions: The results confirmed the good discriminatory power of the AVQI in differentiating between normal and abnormal voice qualities. The AVQI 02.02 threshold value for dysphonia was 2.87 in the Finnish-speaking population.

[Developing speech]. / Kehittyvä puhe.

Speech and language development is essential in following up children's wellbeing. Assessment of active early childhood vocabulary gives information about language development. Parents' assessment is reliable until about 2 years. Studies show that children aged 1 year 6 months have an average active vocabulary of dozens of words. Though individual variation is wide, most children possess far more than a few words. Current screening practice may miss children with language disorders. Support given from early on in child's own environment diminishes challenges and prevents potential later problems, e.g. difficulties in learning and in social relationships.