Developmental Associations Between Conduct Problems and Expressive Language in Early Childhood: A Population-Based Study.
Conduct problems have been associated with poor language development, however the direction of this association in early childhood remains unclear. This study examined the longitudinal directional associations between conduct problems and expressive language ability. Children enrolled in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (N = 14, 004; 50.3 % boys) were assessed at 3 and 5 years of age. Parent reports of conduct problems and standardised assessments of expressive language were analyzed using cross-lagged modeling. Conduct problems at 3 years was associated with poorer expressive language at 5 years and poorer expressive language at 3 years was associated with increased conduct problems by 5 years. The results support reciprocal associations, rather than a specific unidirectional path, which is commonly found with samples of older children. The emergence of problems in either domain can thus negatively impact upon the other over time, albeit the effects were modest. Studies examining the effects of intervention targeting conduct problems and language acquisition prior to school entry may be warranted in testing the efficacy of prevention programmes related to conduct problems and poor language ability early in childhood.
Research Unit on Children's Psychosocial Maladjustment (GRIP), Université de Montreal, Montréal, QC, Canada. lisa.girard@alum.utoronto.ca.|Paris-Sud Innovation Group in Adolescent Mental Health, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM U669), Inserm U669 97 Boulevard du Port-Royal, 75679, Paris cedex 14, France. lisa.girard@alum.utoronto.ca.|School of Public Health, Physiotherapy, and Population Sciences, Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Room B205, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. lisa.girard@alum.utoronto.ca.
Lisa-Christine
LC
Girard
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK.
Jean-Baptiste
JB
Pingault
School of Economics, Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Orla
O
Doyle
Paris-Sud Innovation Group in Adolescent Mental Health, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM U669), Inserm U669 97 Boulevard du Port-Royal, 75679, Paris cedex 14, France.|Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.|Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Descartes, Paris, France.
Bruno
B
Falissard
Research Unit on Children's Psychosocial Maladjustment (GRIP), Université de Montreal, Montréal, QC, Canada.|Institute of Genetic, Neurobiological, and Social Foundations of Child Development, Tomsk State University, Tomsk Oblast, Russian Federation.|Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada.|School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Sciences, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Richard E
RE
Tremblay
D000367:Age Factors; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019955:Conduct Disorder / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male
Conduct problems; Early childhood; Expressive language; Millennium Cohort Study