Objective

1
First Grade Cognitive and Achievement Outcomes
for Late Talkers Does Rate of Recovery
Matter? Erika S. Armstrong Margaret Tresch
Owen The University of Texas at Dallas, School of
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, P.O. Box 830688,
Richardson, TX 75083


Results Multivariate analyses of variance were
conducted using a priori comparisons. It was
hypothesized that Typically Developing Children
would perform significantly better on school-age
cognitive and achievement measures than Early
Late Bloomers and that Early Late Bloomers would
perform significantly better than Later Late
Bloomers. It was also hypothesized that children
with Expressive Language Delay would perform
significantly below all the other groups.
Therefore, repeated contrasts were used whereby
the mean of each group (except the last) was
compared to the mean of the subsequent group. In
addition, because maternal education and family
income level (as measured by income-to-needs
ratio) were significantly related to school-age
outcomes (ranging from r(656) .11 to r(657)
.37), these factors were used as covariates in
the analyses. Planned contrast results by
language group are graphed below with means and
standard error bars. Means for the same subtest
that do not share a common letter differed using
the repeated contrast at p lt .025 or less.
Discussion The current study confirms prior
findings that children who have normal-range
language skills upon entering school perform
significantly better on language and reading
tasks than children who have below-average
language skills. Therefore, for children who are
late to begin talking, recovery from delayed
onset of productive vocabulary prior to starting
school is important for normal-range school
performance. However, blooming in expressive
language does not guarantee that school
performance on specific cognitive/linguistic
tasks will be equal to children with normal
histories of language development. While the
Early Late Bloomers performed the same as the
Typically Developing Children on a phonological
processing task, the Later Late Bloomers scored
significantly lower. Both the Early and Later
Late Bloomers performed significantly worse than
the Typically Developing Children on an
expressive vocabulary task as well as a
short-term memory task that utilizes
comprehension-knowledge. This is particularly
telling since the Early Late Bloomers, according
to their defining criteria, have had
normal-range language skills for at least 3
years. It does not appear, though, that being a
Late Bloomer has an impact on early pre-reading
achievement skills such as letter-word
identification or simple non-word decoding.
However, given their poorer performance on the
cognitive/linguistic tasks, it would be of
interest to determine whether there are
differences in later reading skills involving
comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Interestin
gly, when comparing the two groups of Late
Bloomers (Early vs. Later), the rate at which a
child recovered did not matter. There were no
significant differences between the scores for
the two late blooming groups on any of the tasks
administered. This suggests that there may be two
distinct subgroups of children who are late to
begin talking (1) children with a mild
cognitive/linguistic weakness who will bloom yet
who will not perform as well as children with
typically developing language, and (2) children
with a more severe cognitive/linguistic deficit
who continue to demonstrate difficulty with
language-related skills into school. These
findings have research implications for better
understanding language development as well as
clinical implications for providing early
intervention services to late talking toddlers
and educational implications for classroom
support.
Introduction It is well known that children vary
in when they begin to use words and how quickly
vocabulary size increases over the second year
(e.g., Bates, Bretherton, Snyder, 1988). Most
children achieve a 50-word vocabulary by 24
months however, other children only say a few
words by this time and are identified as late
talkers. Approximately 50 of the 2-year-old
late talkers will bloom quickly that is, they
will perform within the normal range on a test of
expressive language before their third birthday.
Another 20-30 will bloom later, scoring in the
average range between their third and fifth
birthdays (e.g., Rescorla, 2005). As a group,
children who were late to begin talking often
score lower than typically developing children on
language assessments in school. It is not known,
however, whether rate of recovery is associated
with school-age outcomes i.e., whether late
talkers who recover earlier have better outcomes
than those who recover later.



Objective The current study examined whether the
timing of recovery from late onset of productive
vocabulary (e.g., either earlier or later
blooming) was a factor in cognitive and
achievement outcomes in first grade.
64
53


Method Participants The participants were drawn
from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and
Youth Development (SECCYD) data set, a national
prospective longitudinal study. They included 657
first-graders (311 males 346 females) from a
wide range of income levels and a variety of
ethnic backgrounds. Participants were assigned
into language groups retrospectively based on
three expressive language assessments given at
24, 36, and 54 months. Language group assignments
were as follows
Language Group 24m CDI Percentile Score 36m Reynell Expressive Std. Score 54m PLS Expressive Std. Score
Typically Developing Children (n536) gt 10th 85 85
Late Talkers Early Late Bloomers (n61) 10th 85 85
Later Late Bloomers (n26) 10th lt 85 85
Expressive Lang. Delayed (n34) 10th lt 85 lt 85


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. Rescorla, L. (2005). Age
13 language and reading outcomes in late-talking
toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 48, 459-471.
Procedure As part of the SECCYD study,
language-related subtests from the Woodcock
Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery Revised were
used to assess the childrens cognitive aptitude
and achievement in first grade. Cognitive
(language) measures included the Picture
Vocabulary, Memory for Sentences, and Incomplete
Words subtests. Achievement (pre-reading)
measures included the Letter-Word Identification
and Word Attack subtests.