Prediction and persistence of late talking: A study of Italian toddlers at 29 and 34 months.

The team gave the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI to 29-month-old toddlers who were late talkers. Five months later they tested the same kids again to see if the early score warned of lasting delay.

No extra teaching was provided; they simply watched whether low words at 29 months meant low words at 34 months.

Nine out of ten toddlers who scored below the cutoff at 29 months still had very low expressive vocabulary five months later.

The early MB-CDI result was a strong red flag that delay would persist without help.

Riva et al. (2021) followed Italian babies at high autism risk and showed that both gestures and words at 12–18 months forecast later ASD symptoms. Their work extends this paper by starting earlier and adding gesture data.

Hsu et al. (2016) found a similar pattern in a mixed group: fewer words and gestures at 15 months predicted language impairment at preschool age. The new study is a close conceptual replication, but it isolates the vocabulary cutoff alone.

Thurm et al. (2007) and Gabriels et al. (2001) looked at toddlers with ASD and saw that joint attention, imitation, and therapy hours mattered more than early vocabulary. Those findings do not clash; they simply highlight different predictors for different populations.

If you screen Italian-speaking toddlers with the MB-CDI and they land below the 10th percentile, expect delay to stick around. Start language intervention right away instead of waiting to see if they “grow out of it.” Pair the vocabulary check with a gesture scan, as later studies suggest, for the clearest risk picture.