Generalized Slowing Rather Than Inhibition Is Associated With Language Outcomes in Both Late Talkers and Children With Typical Early Development

What is it about?

Late talkers are children with unusually small vocabularies at 2 years of age. It is difficult to predict which of these children catch up with their peers and which have persistent language difficulties. We sought to investigate whether difficulties in attentional inhibition (the ability to suppress task-irrelevant information while focusing in a task) is associated with school-age language abilities in former late talkers or children with a history of typical language development. We measured inhibition on a visual button-press task. Our findings suggest that inhibition is not related to language outcomes on late talkers or children with typical early language development. However, general processing speed as reflected by reaction times in the button-press task is related to language abilities in both late talkers and children with typical early development. The finding suggests that processing speed measures could possibly be used to predict which late talking children catch up their peers in language abilities before school-age but also which children with typical early language development are at risk for language difficulties.

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