Silent Finns and Talkative Italians? An investigation of communicative differences and similarities as perceived by parents in typically developing children

Abstract

Effective communication is a fundamental aspect of children’s daily living, enabling interaction with adults and peers. A rich literature suggests that communicative abilities develop with age, while little is known about cross-cultural differences and similarities. This study presents a comparison of the communicative performance of Finnish (n = 147) and Italian (n = 147) typically developing children, aged 4–8 years old, as assessed by the widely used Children’s Communication Checklist–2 (CCC-2). The results reveal an effect of nationality in 9 of the 10 subscales. Finnish parents scored their children’s communicative skill higher than Italian parents in eight of those subscales, but for the social relation subscale, Italian parents scored their children higher than the Finnish parents. Some of these differences are evident for the different age groups and are already present at early developmental stages. In both the Finnish and Italian samples, the parents rated the girls’ communicative performance as more competent than the boys’ on a number of CCC-2 subscales. The results are discussed in light of previous evidence highlighting that cultural features affect and shape communicative style within society, leading to differences (and similarities) that should be considered when assessing children’s communicative abilities.