A short-term follow-up of children with poor word production at the age of 18 months.
OBJECTIVE
(a) To study the stability of poor language development assessed by a new screening instrument based on parents' recognition of words their 18-mo-old children use; (b) to evaluate the predictability of the less-than-eight-words cut-off used by Child Health Centres (CHCs) in Sweden at the present 18-mo check-up--an assessment based on parents' recall of their children's vocabulary.


METHODS
All failures of the less-than-eight-words criterion, corresponding to about 10% of 1000 children from a community-based study, were followed up within half a year after the first assessment. The follow-up instrument was an extensive, internationally well-known and structured parent questionnaire, standardized for Swedish children.


RESULTS
Almost half of the followed-ups performed below the 10th percentile and more than two-thirds were found below the 20th percentile. Thus, after a few months about one-third of the children had caught up to a fairly normal level of performance. Two of the children who had recovered performed above median. More relaxed cut-off criteria were applied ad hoc, reducing the proportion of children with a fast recovery.


CONCLUSIONS
Age of language assessment and/or the level of cut-off criterion presently used at Swedish CHCs should be reconsidered.
Westerlund
M
M
Central Unit of Child Health Care, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University, Children's Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden. monica.westerlund@kbh.uu.se
Eriksson
M
M
Berglund
E
E
D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000517:prevention & control; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013548:Sweden