Factors related to verbal abilities in Swedish preschoolers

In a prospective longitudinal study concerned with the effects of in‐ and out‐of‐home care 140 Swedish children were studied. These analyses using partial least squares analysis procedures focus on the 84 children who remained in home care, family day care, or centre day care through the two years of the project, beginning when the children averaged 16 months of age. Griffiths scale C scores 12 and 24 months later were best predicted by earlier Griffiths scores and contemporaneous measures of the quality of home care, measures which were themselves moderately stable over time. Contemporaneous measures of the children's sociability were also significantly correlated with Griffiths scale C performance. Neither the type nor quality of out‐of‐home care was predictively important. These results show that the quality of care received by children at home is more influential, where verbal abilities are concerned, than either the type or quality of out‐of‐home care.