Le parole per dirlo: sviluppo del linguaggio e funzioni esecutive in bambini fra i 24 e i 30 mesi

A growing body of research shows a close association between language development and Executive Function (EF). However, these studies are mostly focused on school-aged children. Much less is known about this issue in preschoolers and/or toddlers. The aim of this study was to address this gap by exploring the relationships between emerging EF skills (working memory, inhi- bition, cognitive exibility) and age-appropriate linguistic measures (lexical ability, function word omissions, Mean Length of Utterance - MLU) during toddlerhood. Two groups (24-30 months of age), each one consisting of 20 typically developing children, participated in the study. The results showed that the relations between cognitive and linguistic measures changed from 24 to 30 months of age: at 24 months, only morpho-syntactic measures signi cantly correlated with cognitive exibility, whereas at 30 months both lexical ability and LME signi cantly correlated with the three FE mea- sures. Moreover, function word omissions correlated with cognitive exibility and inhibition. When checking on age and lexical ability, only cognitive exibility was associated with morpho-syntactic complexity. These results are discussed in the light of emergentist-dynamic developmental models.