Language Development Milestones Research Articles

The language screening instrument SNEL

Objectives: The aim of this study was to design a valid and accurate language-screening instrument (SNEL) (Spreek Normen Eerste Lijn = Speech Norms primary Healthcare), for identifying possible language problems in children from one to six years of age, which is intended to improve the referral of at-risk children for further diagnosis.Methods: A sample of 527 children from one to six years of age were randomly selected from day nurseries, playgroups, and primary schools in order to scale milestones in language development. The questionnaire regarding these milestones was completed by parental report. The milestones were scaled according to the nonparametric Mokken Item Response Model for dichotomous responses, and the assumption of sample independence was evaluated.The external validation was examined by means of the relationship between age and the language-screening instrument SNEL and the relationship between the gold standard for language development and SNEL. For this latter, a weighted sample of 84 children from the large sample of 527 was used together with 14 children with language problems. The accuracy of the instrument in terms of sensitivity and specificity for different percentiles (ROC-curves) was studied in order to identify children with language problems. The accuracy was summarized by the area under the ROC curve (AUROC).Results: A sample independent scale of 14 milestones was found, with a strong scalability (H = 0.95), and a high reliability (Rho = 0.96). The SNEL scores increased with age. The sensitivity and specificity for the tenth percentile were respectively 0.94 and 0.83. The accuracy of SNEL was good (AUROC = 0.94).Conclusions: The unidimensional and sample-independent scale SNEL constitutes a new screening instrument that is short, sensitive, and easy to use in primary health and educational settings.

The Ordering of Milestones in Language Development for Children From 1 to 6 Years of Age

To scale language milestones in a group of 527 children to provide an instrument for screening language development. Procedure The questionnaire regarding these milestones was completed by parental report. It was evaluated whether the scaled milestones satisfied the assumptions of the Mokken item response model. The scalability of the final scale of 14 milestones was strong (H = .95), its reliability was high (rho = .96), and it satisfied the assumptions of the Mokken model. A single, unidimensional scale of diverse milestones was developed. It taps lexical, syntactic, and phonological skills, as well as both receptive and expressive language skills, and is well suited for mapping progress in language ability.

The Odds of Becoming a Precocious Reader of Finnish.

The authors examined the developmental relations between language acquisition and emergence of reading prior to formal literacy instruction. Sixty-one Finnish-speaking children were followed up once a year from infancy to school start (1 year 0 months–7 years 3 months). Before entering first grade, 43% of the children were classified as emergent readers and 30% as precocious readers. The readers had displayed more rapid vocabulary, inflectional, and metaphonological development than their agemates. Increased awareness of sound patterns emerged well before word reading. However, the striking growth spurt in phonemic awareness can be regarded more as a consequence of than a precursor to reading. The findings suggest that early mastery of words and word inflections increases the likelihood of becoming aware of sound patterns in words. Is the course of language development in very early childhood related to the emergence of reading skills prior to formal literacy instruction in Finnish children? To our knowledge, no study in any language has followed up a representative age group using a large set of measures to tap the relevant milestones of language development from the first year of life until the final months before entering school. In a recent cross-linguistic study by Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003), 13 European alphabetic languages were compared. The age at which children enter primary school in different countries did not influence reading acquisition. Nor did the gender of the child. In most languages studied, children became accurate and fluent readers by the end of first grade, but for some Germanic languages, such as Danish and particularly English, the rate of learning to read was more than twice as slow. The delayed wordreading skill was mainly attributed to the complexity of the syllabic structure and the inconsistent system of grapheme–phoneme correspondences. If phonology and orthography influence the rate of learning to read words, studies on English do not apply universally to all children (for oral-language learning, see Vihman, 1996).

Sensitivity in parenting interactions across the first two years: Influences on children's language and play

Language development is important for children's success in life. Therefore, language is monitored by child health care professionals and parents, but a uniform set of milestones in language development is lacking. Our aim was to identify a set of clear and distinctive milestones that empirically reflect language development in children aged 1 to 6 years of age.We obtained a community-based sample of 1381 parents reporting on milestones derived from clinical signs and currently used language screening instruments. We used nonparametric Item Response Theory analysis to identify milestones belonging to one unidimensional scale.Twenty-six milestones were excellently scalable (item H coefficients 0.62–0.90) and formed a strong scale (total H coefficient 0.83). The final set of identified milestones covered vocabulary, grammar, and communication, with an item ordering that holds for all children.This unidimensional set of 26 clear and distinctive milestones reflects language development in young children and can be used as an instrument to monitor language development.

An intervention for educating child care personnel on speech and language milestones

This study examined the impact of an educational intervention on knowledge of speech‐language development among child care personnel. Sixty‐ six child care employees from ten randomly selected day care centres were randomly assigned to either an intervention group or a control group. All subjects were initially given a 30 item test assessing their knowledge of speech and language development, with no expectation of retesting. The test contained twenty language development items and ten speech sound acquisition items. An educational handout containing information about basic speech and language development milestones was provided to the intervention group, followed by retesting of both groups at six weeks. Results showed that the intervention group scored significantly higher than the control group at post‐test on the language portion only. It appears that the handout was a simple and inexpensive method to moderately increase familiarity with language development.