Excerpts from the press release:
Fewer children who attend regular formal centre- and family-based child care at 1.5 years and 3 years of age were late talkers compared with children who are looked after at home by a parent, child-carer or in an outdoor nursery. This is shown in a new study by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health of nearly 20,000 children.
The study found no relation between the type of child care at the age of 1 year and subsequent language competence, which may indicate that the positive effect of centre-based child care first occurs between the ages of 1 to 1.5 years.
Furthermore, there were fewer children who were late talkers among those who attended full-time centre-based child care compared with part-time attendance at 3 years of age.
The findings support most of the previous research showing that children who have been in formal child care have better language skills than children who have had more informal care.
The study, "Does universally accessible child care protect children from late talking? Results from a Norwegian population-based prospective study," is published by Ratib Lekhal and co-authors in the journal Early Child Development and Care.