Crawshaw Camilla E, Lüke Carina, Ritterfeld Ute
Research Unit of Language and Communication, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, TU Dortmund University, Germany.
Special Education and Therapy in Language and Communication Disorders, Institute of Special Education, Faculty of Human Sciences, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 Mar 5;68(3):1038-1055. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00703. Epub 2025 Jan 21.
Prior work has found that "late talkers" (LTs) as a group continue to demonstrate lower language and reading outcomes compared to their typically developing (TD) peers even into young adulthood. Others identified that children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) show difficulties later with theory of mind (ToM) tasks and metaphor comprehension, but there is a shortage of research specifically investigating these advanced skills in LTs. The current study therefore compared language-related skills of former LTs with their TD peers at school age.
A longitudinal sample ( = 35) of monolingual German-speaking children was observed from age 1 until 9, comprising TD children ( = 27) and children identified as LTs at age 2 ( = 8), of which two met criteria for DLD between ages 3 and 6. Children's language (productive vocabulary, productive and receptive grammar), reading, metaphor comprehension, and ToM skills (ToM scale and Strange Stories) were investigated, and group comparisons were conducted.
Former LTs performed worse than the TD children on measures of productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, metaphor comprehension, and the ToM Strange Stories task at the age of 9, but not on measures of productive grammar, reading, or the ToM scale.
The findings indicate that LTs can catch up with their TD peers in some areas of language and ToM but that subtle differences remain across other complex areas. Further research is needed to pinpoint possible explanations for why certain skills are more strongly impacted and the potential developmental interactions between these competencies.
先前的研究发现，“晚说话者”（LTs）作为一个群体，即使到了青年期，与发育正常（TD）的同龄人相比，其语言和阅读能力仍较低。其他人发现，被诊断为发育性语言障碍（DLD）的儿童在心智理论（ToM）任务和隐喻理解方面后来表现出困难，但缺乏专门针对LTs这些高级技能的研究。因此，本研究比较了学龄期前LTs与其TD同龄人在语言相关技能方面的差异。
对35名说德语的单语儿童进行了从1岁到9岁的纵向观察，其中包括TD儿童（27名）和2岁时被确定为LTs的儿童（8名），其中两名在3至6岁之间符合DLD标准。对儿童的语言（产出性词汇、产出性和接受性语法）、阅读、隐喻理解和ToM技能（ToM量表和奇怪故事）进行了调查，并进行了组间比较。
在9岁时，前LTs在产出性词汇、接受性语法、隐喻理解和ToM奇怪故事任务的测量上比TD儿童表现更差，但在产出性语法、阅读或ToM量表的测量上则不然。
研究结果表明，LTs在语言和ToM的某些方面可以赶上他们的TD同龄人，但在其他复杂领域仍存在细微差异。需要进一步的研究来确定为什么某些技能受到的影响更大以及这些能力之间潜在的发展相互作用的可能解释。
