The influence of Child Gender, Parent’s Job and Education, Number of Sibling and Parenting Styles on the Development of Semantics, Syntax and Word articulation Among Preschool Children

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of child gender, fathers and mother’s education and job, the number of siblings and parenting styles on language development components (semantics, syntax and word articulation). The population were normal preschool children and their parents in Karaj, Iran. Participants were 98 children and their parents which selected by convenient method. Test of language development (3 edition) administered on children and parents asked to response to demographic questionnaire and Parenting authority questionnaire. Results showed that girls compared with boys had better performance in syntactical understanding, grammatical completion and relational vocabulary. There were not significant differences between families with different number of siblings. Father’s job did not influence language performance of children, whereas mother’s job had a positive influence on the components of language development. Father and mother’s educational level had a positive effect on the syntactical understanding, grammatical completion and relational vocabulary. Furthermore, authoritative and permissive parenting style could positively predict sematic and syntax development, whereas authoritarian parenting style could negatively predict semantic and syntax development. It could argue that parental socioeconomic status (especially parent’s educational level and mother employment) and parenting styles could influence language acquisition in semantic and syntax domains. Moreover, girls outperformed boys in semantic and syntax in preschool period.