Does digital media use contribute to decreased expressive language skills of pre-school-aged children? An exploratory study in Portuguese children.

Purpose/aim of the study: The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between digital media use and expressive language skills in the semantic and morphosyntactic domains, of pre-school-aged children (3 years-and-0 months to 5 years-and-11 months).

Materials and methods: Verbal oral expression (VOE) tasks of the Pre-school Assessment of Language Test (Teste de Linguagem-Avaliação da Linguagem Pré-Escolar) were administered to 237 pre-school children with no previous identified neurological or developmental conditions associated with language disorders to assess expressive language skills in the semantic and morphosyntactic domains. Parents completed a questionnaire about their children's medical conditions, development (using the milestones of the Survey of Well-being of Young Children and the Pre-school Paediatric Symptom Checklist), and exposure to screens (using ScreenQ). Correlations between VOE and continuous variables such as ScreenQ were computed and a regression model incorporating all variables significantly associated with total language verbal expression was created.

Results: ScreenQ revealed a negative and significant correlation with children's verbal oral expression as well as significance in the regression model. Parents' education was the most significant predictor in this regression model.

Conclusions: This study emphasizes the importance of parents establishing limits for digital media use and promote good practices such as co-viewing.