Abstract:
Sibling status is an environmental factor related to the speech and language development of children, and has been found to affect several speech characteristics in the language of a second child (Koch, 1956). These characteristics include: slower language development of the younger child, more stuttering in the younger child, and a decrease in articulation skills in the younger child. Children with no siblings who have adults as models tend to be superior in language development (Koch, 1956).It has been shown that the presence of a triadic interaction among the older sibling, the younger child, and the mother result in changes in the language of mothers. When the third interacting member is an older sibling the mother interacts with both children at the language level of the older child only. In comparison, in the language of a dyadic encounter consisting of the mother and younger child, the mother interacts with the younger child at his/her level (Wellen, 1985).The interpretation of Wellen's study hopothesized that the presence of older siblings may be a disadvantage towards language learning of younger siblings. Although there are many studies such as Wellen's that hypothesized the presence of an older sibling as a disadvantage toward language learning of younger siblings, there is little evidence to dispute these findings. Brittain (1966) argued that older siblings help the language development of the younger child through their modeling: however Brittain provided no evidence to back up his statement. Therefore the purpose of this study is to identify possible differences in the development of language of children with an older sibling from children with no siblings.