Relationship between social interaction bids and language in late talking children

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between language development and the frequency of social interaction (SI) behaviours during language acquisition in late-talking (LT) children who exhibit delays in expressive vocabulary development but have age-appropriate cognitive skills.

Method: The research consists of a longitudinal study with a first test followed by two re-tests 5 months apart, in which LT children were compared to 5-months-younger typically-developing (TD) children.

Result: Data showed that LT children performed significantly fewer initiation of SI behaviours, but no differences between groups in responding to SI behaviours were observed. Furthermore, LT children who have lower language comprehension scores initiate social interaction more frequently.

Conclusion: The results showed that LT children seem to be less active in starting social interaction and participation, but, once they get involved, they respond similarly to TD children of comparable expressive language competence. Additionally, the correlation pattern between the frequency of SI behaviours and language functions showed that LT toddlers with more prominent receptive language delay are more interested in initiating interaction with their partner, thus suggesting that they need a partner's “scaffolding” to overcome this lack.

Keywords::

• Children
• late talkers
• social interaction

Notes

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a project grant (#175012) from the Ministry for Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1. Joint attention processes include a child's ability to establish and maintain shared reference with an interactive partner, as well as the ability to respond to a partner's attention bids (Wilcox & Shannon, 1998).

2. In a recent paper (Vuksanović & Bjekić, 2013) we reported data obtained from JA behaviours on the ESCS. We have not coded the data obtained from requesting behaviours.