New research findings from the world’s largest study on language emergence have revealed that one in four late-talking toddlers continues to have language problems by age 7.

The Looking at Language project has analyzed the speech development of 1,766 children in Western Australia from infancy to 7 years of age, with particular focus on environmental, neurodevelopmental, and genetic risk factors. It is the first study to look at predictors of late language.

The study's results are published in a recent issue of the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

Looking at Language chief investigator Mabel Rice, PhD, says the findings were mixed news for parents worried about their child’s language development. “While a late start doesn’t necessarily predict ongoing language problems, most school-aged children with impaired language were late talkers,” according to Rice, director of the Merrill Advanced Studies Center and the Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communications Disorders Center at the Lawrence-based University of Kansas.

Rice continues, “That’s why it’s essential that late-talkers are professionally evaluated by a speech pathologist and have their hearing checked. We know that early intervention can greatly assist with a child’s language development.”

Co-chief investigator Kate Taylor, PhD, a researcher in the Western Australia-based Centre for Developmental Health, says the next challenge for the researchers was to find ways to identify which children were likely to outgrow the problem so that interventions could be targeted at those in need.

“Our study has previously shown that 13 percent of 2 year olds are late talkers, and that boys are three times as likely to have a delay at that age,” Taylor says. “What we now can see from our data is that by 7 years of age, 80 percent of late-talkers have caught up, and that boys are at no greater risk than girls. However, one in five late-talkers was below age expectations for language at school-age.”

Other findings from the Looking at Language project have included that a mother’s education, income, parenting style or mental health had no impact on a child’s likelihood of being a late-talker. By 24 months, children will usually have a vocabulary of around 50 words and have begun combining those words in two- or three-word sentences.

A second stage of the research is now looking at language development in twins.


Source: Research Australia