Longitudinal relationships between lexical and grammatical development in typical and late-talking children.
OBJECTIVE
This study examined the longitudinal relationships between lexical and grammatical development in typically developing (TD) and late-talking children for the purposes of testing the single-mechanism account of language acquisition and comparing the developmental trajectories of lexical and grammatical development in late-talking and TD children.


METHODS
Participants included 30 children identified as late talkers (LTs) at 2;0 (years;months), and 30 TD children matched on age, nonverbal cognition, socioeconomic status, and gender. Data were collected at 5 points between 2;0 and 5;6.


RESULTS
Cross-lagged correlational analyses indicated that TD children showed evidence of bidirectional bootstrapping between lexical and grammatical development between 2;0 and 3;6. Compared with the TD group, LTs exhibited less evidence of syntactic bootstrapping. Linear mixed-effects modeling of language sample data suggested that the relationship between lexical and grammatical growth was similar for the 2 groups.


CONCLUSIONS
Lexical and grammatical development were strongly related in both groups, consistent with the single-mechanism account of language acquisition. The results were mixed in terms of finding longitudinal differences in lexical-grammatical relationships between the TD and late-talking children; however, several analyses suggested that for late-talking children, syntactic growth may be less facilitative of lexical development.
Moyle
Maura Jones
MJ
University of Wisconsin, Madison , USA. maura.moyle@marquette.edu
Ellis Weismer
Susan
S
Evans
Julia L
JL
Lindstrom
Mary J
MJ
D000367:Age Factors; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014825:Vocabulary