The relationship between temperamental dimensions and inhibitory control in early childhood: Implications for language acquisition

The present study investigates the latent organization of inhibitory control in children aged between 2;3 and 3;0 years. In addition, it explores the relationships between temperament dimensions - social orientation, motor activity, and attention -, inhibitory control and language. One-hundred-twelve typically developing children were evaluated with tasks for inhibitory control and lexical skills, while ratings of temperament and language were collected from their caregivers. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis reveals that inhibitory control seems to be best described by a unitary dimension. A Structural Equation Model suggests that 78 % of the variance in vocabulary is explained by a model considering the language observed measures, the three temperamental dimensions, and inhibitory control and in which both temperamental attention and the latent dimension of inhibitory control are significantly related to vocabulary. In addition, inhibitory control does not mediate the relationship between temperament and language.