Cadime, IreneSantos, Ana LúciaRibeiro, IolandaViana, Fernanda LeopoldinaMartín-Aragoneses, María Teresa2025-02-182025-02-182024-10-28Cadime I, Santos AL, Ribeiro I, Viana FL, Martín-Aragoneses MT. Living the first years in a pandemic: children’s linguistic development and related factors in and out of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Journal of Child Language. Published online 2024:1-27. doi:10.1017/S0305000924000412ISSN 0305-0009 eISSN 1469-7602https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000412https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/25918The registered version of this article, first published in “Journal of Child Language, (2024), 1-27", is available online at the publisher's website: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000412 La versión registrada de este artículo, publicado por primera vez en “Journal of Child Language, (2024), 1-27", está disponible en línea en el sitio web del editor: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000412This retrospective study provides insights on linguistic development in exceptional circumstances assessing 378 children (between 2;6 and 3;6) who lived their first years during the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing it with normative data collected before this period (CDI-III-PT; Cadime et al., 2021). It investigates the extent to which linguistic development was modulated by a complex set of factors, including sex, maternal education, book reading, language-promoting practices, COVID-19 infection, parental stress and sleeping problems, considering three periods (during lockdowns, out of lockdowns and at present). The results show a substantial negative effect of the pandemic on both lexical and syntactic development. Considering individual variation, structural equation modelling unveiled a complex scenario in which age, sex, book reading, language-promoting practices, sleeping problems and COVID-19 infection showed a direct effect on linguistic development. Maternal education and parental stress had an indirect effect on children’s language, mediated by book reading and sleeping problems, respectively.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess61 Psicología::6102 Psicología del niño y del adolescente::6102.05 Patología del lenguajeLiving the first years in a pandemic: children’s linguistic development and related factors in and out of the COVID-19 lockdownsartículolanguage developmentshared book readingperceived parental stresschild sleep qualityCOVID-19 pandemic