Lexical skills and gesture use: A comparison between expressive and receptive/expressive late talkers.
Toddlers who both understand and say few words also gesture less—an easy clinic red flag.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Verganti et al. (2024) watched two groups of late-talking toddlers. One group had only expressive delays. The other group had both receptive and expressive delays.
The team gave each child a quick picture-naming task. They counted how many items the child could name and how many gestures the child used while trying.
What they found
Kids with both receptive and expressive delays named fewer pictures and used fewer gestures. Kids with only expressive delays did better on both measures.
The gap was large enough to see during a short clinic visit.
How this fits with other research
Gonzalez-Barrero et al. (2018) followed similar groups for 14 years. They found that toddlers who start with both receptive and expressive delays stay poor readers into high school, while expressive-only late talkers usually catch up.
Chen et al. (2024) looked at minimally verbal autistic youth. They saw the same pattern: receptive language falls further behind with age, just as Caterina’s toddlers already show at age two.
Cicchetti et al. (2014) reviewed expressive-only late talkers and said most do well. Caterina’s data add a warning: the smaller subgroup with receptive delays needs closer watch and earlier help.
Why it matters
You can spot the higher-risk toddlers in minutes. Give a simple naming task and watch for gestures. If the child names few items and barely points or waves, plan deeper receptive-language testing and start intervention sooner. This quick screen costs nothing and can save years of struggle.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Studies on late talkers (LTs) highlighted their heterogeneity and the relevance of describing different communicative profiles. AIMS: To examine lexical skills and gesture use in expressive (E-LTs) vs. receptive-expressive (R/E-LTs) LTs through a structured task. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Forty-six 30-month-old screened LTs were distinguished into E-LTs (n= 35) and R/E-LTs (n= 11) according to their receptive skills. Lexical skills and gesture use were assessed with a Picture Naming Game by coding answer accuracy (correct, incorrect, no response), modality of expression (spoken, spoken-gestural, gestural), type of gestures (deictic, representational), and spoken-gestural answers' semantic relationship (complementary, equivalent, supplementary). OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: R/E-LTs showed lower scores than E-LTs for noun and predicate comprehension with fewer correct answers, and production with fewer correct and incorrect answers, and more no responses. R/E-LTs also exhibited lower scores in spoken answers, representational gestures, and equivalent spoken-gestural answers for noun production and in all spoken and gestural answers for predicate production. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Findings highlighted more impaired receptive and expressive lexical skills and lower gesture use in R/E-LTs compared to E-LTs, underlying the relevance of assessing both lexical and gestural skills through a structured task, besides parental questionnaires and developmental scales, to describe LTs' communicative profiles.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104711