Poster #119 - Receptive Vocabulary and Gesture Use by Hebrew Speaking Late Talkers

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Lexical development during the second year of life is characterized by great variability in toddlers’ rate of vocabulary growth (Fenson et al., 1994). Most children learn new words without noticeable effort, and after undergoing a lexical spurt their expressive vocabulary grows rapidly. However, around 10% of children have difficulties learning new words and their expressive lexicons accumulate very slowly. These children are defined as Late Talkers (LT) who are at risk for later identified developmental disorders (Rescorla, 2009). The characterization of LT lexical growth trajectories, with an emphasis on receptive vocabulary and gesture use, is of great importance. The present study compares the growth function of words in comprehension and the use of gestures during the second year of life in TD and LT Hebrew-speaking toddlers.

Participants & Procedure: Hebrew-speaking parents of 881 healthy toddlers (12-24 months old) reported on their child’s receptive and expressive lexicons, gesture use, and symbolic play activities. Parents completed a computerized version of the Hebrew adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories as well as a background questionnaire. All toddlers who were ranked in the bottom 10th percentile between the ages of 18-24 months were assigned to the LT group (n=55).

Analysis: LT receptive vocabulary and gesture-use were compared to TD according to their productive lexicon size: 1-10 words (LT(n)=6, 18-20 months, TD(n)=90, 12-17 months), 11-50 words (LT(n)=32, 18-24 months, TD(n)=232, 12-20 months), 51-200 words (LT(n)=13, 21-24 months, TD(n)=313, 12-24 months). A qualitative analysis of the type of gestures used by both groups was conducted.

Results: The LT group had more words in their receptive vocabulary than the TD group at a similar lexical level when the expressive vocabulary size of both groups was 1-10 words (M(LT)=148, M(TD)=84, p<.01) and 11-50 words (M(LT)=189, M(TD)=152, p<.05) but not when the expressive vocabulary size was larger than 50 words (figure 1). When compared to the TD group at a similar lexical level, children belonging to the LT group produced significantly more different gestures only in the lexicon range of 11-50 spoken words (M(LT)=36, M(TD)=32, t=2.16, p<.05). LT children who produced less than 10 different words or more than 50 words did not differ in that respect from TD (figure 2). Item analysis of the first 30 gestures of LT and TD revealed that the LT group tended to use more physically complex gestures and less communicative gestures.

Discussion: Our findings show that in the early stages of language development, when the expressive vocabulary size is smaller than 50 words, LT children exhibit a larger gap between comprehension and production of new words in comparison to TD toddlers with the same expressive lexical levels. Their gestures seem to be more complex and it might be explained by a) better physical abilities, and b) greater non-linguistic experiences related with their older age. The differences between the LT and TD groups diminish as the children in these two groups reach expressive lexicons of 50 different words or more. This finding has theoretical as well as clinical implications.

Authors

• Hila Gendler Shalev, Kibbutzim College, Tel Aviv University
  Presenting Author

• Esther Dromi, Tel-Aviv University
  Non-Presenting Author