Reading outcomes of children with delayed early vocabulary: A follow-up from age 2-16.
Combined receptive-expressive delay plus family dyslexia risk at age 2 predicts lasting reading comprehension problems.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gonzalez-Barrero et al. (2018) tracked 146 toddlers who were late talkers. They tested them every few years until age 16.
They split the kids into two groups. One group had both receptive and expressive delays plus family risk for dyslexia. The other group had only expressive delays.
At the end, they checked who still had reading problems in high school.
What they found
Kids with both early receptive and expressive delays plus family risk kept struggling with reading comprehension. The late talkers who only had expressive problems mostly caught up.
The mixed-delay group still read below grade level at 16. The expressive-only group read like their peers.
How this fits with other research
Cicchetti et al. (2014) showed that family history of reading trouble predicts later reading problems. Maria et al. add the key detail: the risk matters most when paired with early receptive delay.
Dudley et al. (2019) found that syntactic comprehension at 28 months flags persistent language disorder. Maria et al. extend this by showing the same marker also forecasts reading deficits into high school.
Cheng et al. (2024) recommend probing expressive language when assessing reading in children with DLD. Maria et al. agree, but stress you must also check receptive skills at age 2 to spot the highest-risk group.
Why it matters
If you screen a 2-year-old, test both what they understand and what they say. When both are low and the family has reading issues, start extra language support early. These kids need more than speech therapy; they may need structured reading intervention before kindergarten. Track their progress yearly and share the risk profile with teachers so no one waits for failure.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Delays in expressive vocabulary have been associated with lower outcomes in reading. AIM: The aim is to conduct a long-term follow-up study to investigate if early expressive vocabulary delay (late talking) predicts reading development in participants age 16 and under. We examine further if the prediction is different in the presence of family risk for dyslexia (FR) and early receptive vocabulary delay. METHODS: Expressive and receptive vocabulary skills were assessed at the age of 2-2.5 years, and reading skills in Grades 2, 3, 8 and 9 (age 8-16). The longitudinal sample consisted of 200 Finnish-speaking children, of which 108 had FR for dyslexia and 92 came from families without reading difficulties. We compared the reading development of five subgroups: 1) FR and no vocabulary delay; 2) FR and late talkers, 3) FR, late talkers and co-existing receptive vocabulary delay; 4) no FR and late talkers; and 5) no FR and no vocabulary delay. RESULTS: The group with FR and expressive and receptive vocabulary delay had difficulties in reading comprehension, but not in reading fluency. The late talkers without receptive vocabulary difficulties tended to become typical readers. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Delays in early vocabulary can lead to a reading comprehension deficit, with the specification that expressive vocabulary deficit alone can alleviate in time, whereas the combined deficit is a stronger risk marker.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2018.05.004