Childrens language development varies in when they begin to use words and how quickly their vocabula

1
School Age Cognitive and Achievement Outcomes for
Late Talkers and Late Bloomers Do Late Bloomers
Really Bloom? Erika S. Armstrong, Texas Womans
University Virginia A. Marchman, Stanford
University Margaret Tresch Owen, University of
Texas at Dallas earmstrong_at_twu.edu
marchman_at_stanford.edu mowen_at_utdallas.edu
Method (continued)
Results (continued)
Introduction
Childrens language development varies in when
they begin to use words and how quickly their
vocabulary increases across their 2nd year. Most
children achieve a 50-word vocabulary by 24
months however, other children only say a few
words by this time (late talkers). Prior
research has suggested that late talkers who
recover prior to starting school (late
bloomers) perform within the normal range in
their school years, and children who remain
delayed perform significantly worse than
typically developing children. However, no
research has studied the developmental trajectory
of school-age cognitive/linguistic skills in a
large, diverse group of late bloomers to
determine the true extent of their recovery. We
expect that late bloomers display late onset of
expressive vocabulary and relatively poorer
performance on language measures in school
compared to typically developing children, and
expressive language delayed children have a more
severe, broader cognitive and linguistic
weakness. This would be demonstrated by a
continuum of scores on outcome measures into
middle childhood.

• Proportionately fewer Caucasian and more African
  American and Hispanic children in ELD group.
• Income-to-needs and parental education associated
  with language group and outcomes.
• Therefore, these factors were controlled for in
  the final analysis.

ANOVAs revealed significant group differences
among all three groups on receptive and
expressive language at 54 months. On nonverbal
cognition, however, the only group differences
were between the TD and ELD groups.

• Measures
• Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery
  Revised Picture Vocabulary, Memory for Sentences
  and Letter-Word Identification subtests (54
  months through grade 5)
• Language and Literacy Scale teacher questionnaire
  (K-5)
• Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence
  Performance IQ (Grade 4)
• PLS-3 Auditory Comprehension (54 months)

Discussion

• Do Late Bloomers Really Bloom?
• Even though LBs moved to within the normal range
  on expressive language by 4½, they scored
  significantly below TDs on an omnibus language
  measure as well as skill-specific measures into
  middle childhood.
• No differences between LBs and TDs in rate of
  growth after recovery their steeper slope in
  early expressive language development did not
  continue with the development of other
  language-related skills.
• What is the Nature of the Underlying Weakness?
• There was a continuum of scores on all language
  measures, suggesting a mild underlying receptive
  and expressive language weakness for LBs, and a
  more severe language weakness for ELDs.
• LBs were no different from TDs in nonverbal
  cognitive performance in 4th grade, suggesting
  that the LB weakness is exclusive to language.
• ELDs scored significantly below TDs (though
  still WNL) on nonverbal cognition, indicating
  that their underlying weakness is not only more
  severe but also more broad.
• LBs appear to have language deficits similar to
  children with ELD, only to a lesser degree.
  Further research on late bloomers can contribute
  to our knowledge of language development,
  language disorders and the language endowment
  continuum.

Objectives
Results

• Examine the developmental trajectory of
  school-age language-related skills of late
  bloomers, using hierarchical linear modeling,
  compared to typically developing children and
  children with expressive language delay.
• Determine whether the cognitive/linguistic
  weakness hypothesized for these late
  talkers/bloomers was exclusive to expressive
  language or included receptive language and/or
  nonverbal cognition.

• Hierarchical linear modeling of the WJ-R subtests
  and the Language and Literacy Scale revealed
  similar patterns of development in the school
  years
• Significant group differences among all three
  groups at 54 months.
• Persistent, stable group differences into 5th
  grade (i.e., no differences in growth during the
  early school years).
• All groups WNL except ELD Memory for Sentences
  up to 2nd grade.
• Differences evident on standardized measures
  (national norms) and compared to their
  classmates.

Method

• Participants
• Drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care
  and Youth Development (SECCYD) data set.
• Diverse group of 689 children (328 males 361
  females) with wide ranges of family income,
  parental education, language comprehension, and
  cognition.
• Assigned into three language groups
  retrospectively based on three expressive
  language measures given between 24 and 54 months

References
Bates, E., Bretherton, I., Snyder, L. (1988).
From first words to grammar. Cambridge, UK
Cambridge University Press. NICHD Early Child
Care Research Network (2001). Nonmaternal care
and family factors in early development An
overview of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care.
Applied Developmental Psychology, 22,
457-492. Paul, R. (2000). Predicting outcomes of
early expressive language delay Ethical
implications. In D.V.M. Bishop L.B. Leonard
(Eds.), Speech and language impairments in
children Causes, characteristics, intervention
and outcome. (pp. 195-209). Philadelphia, PA
Taylor Francis. Rescorla, L. (2005). Age 13
language and reading outcomes in late-talking
toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 48, 459-471.

• No relationship between language group and
  childs sex.

This study was completed as part of the first
authors dissertation work at the University of
Texas at Dallas. Presented at the 2007 Convention
of the American Speech-Language-Hearing
Association, Boston.