| This study examined whether previously observed language differences between shy and non-shy children are a product of performance anxiety that shy children presumably experience in a formal testing situation. Twenty shy and 20 non-shy Junior Kindergarten children were administered a battery of tests at school, and their parents administered a parallel form of expressive and receptive vocabulary measures at home. As well, a conversational speech sample was collected in the home. Analyses of the speech sample revealed that even in a naturalistic home environment, shy children spoke less than non-shy children and their parents spoke proportionally more than the parents of non-shy children. Analyses of the formal vocabulary measures revealed no differences in expressive language scores, although shy children obtained lower receptive language scores and lower Sentence Imitation standard scores than non-shy children at school. On the expressive language measure, both groups of children scored higher at school, and on the receptive language measure, the non-shy children again scored higher at school suggesting that the language differences are not a result of performance anxiety, which is presumably higher at school. |
