Language Development of Japanese Children Raised in Institutional Care

Background: Nurturing environments have a critical influence on children's language development. It is unclear to what extent nurturing environments in institutions influence children's language development.

Methods: The present study investigated the early lexical development in Japanese children raised in institutional care (IC) (N = 86; 10-33 months; 37 boys) and compared their lexical skills to a large sample of age peers being raised in biological family care (BFC) (N = 1897; 937 boys) using vocabulary checklists.

Results: Our results present three main findings: (1) Japanese IC children did not exhibit a delay in productive vocabulary compared with BFC children, although their comprehensive vocabulary was delayed; (2) IC children who experienced maltreatment showed poorer vocabulary scores than non-maltreated IC children; (3) both the duration at the institution and the number of books read to them significantly predicted children's vocabulary scores.

Conclusion: Our study suggests that the Japanese institutions included in the present study did not show a negative impact, at least on productive vocabulary, and may competently foster children's language development. We discussed the relationship between institutional environments and children's language development.