Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
Purpose: Typically developing toddlers extract patterns from their input to addwords to their spoken lexicons, yet some evidence suggests that late talkersleverage the statistical regularities of the ambient language differently than dopeers. Using the extended statistical learning account, we sought to comparelexical-level statistical features of spoken vocabularies between late talkers andtwo typically developing comparison groups.Method: MacArthur–Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories AmericanEnglish Words and Sentences (N = 1,636) were extracted from Wordbank, adatabase of CDIs. Inventories were divided into three groups: (a) a late talkergroup (n = 202); (b) a typically developing age-matched group (n = 1,238); and(c) a younger, typically developing group (n = 196) matched to the late talkerson expressive language. Neighborhood density and word frequency were calcu-lated for each word produced by each participant and standardized to z scores.Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate group differences.Results: The late talker and younger, language-matched groups’ spoken vocab-ularies consist, on standardized average, of words from denser phonologicalneighborhoods and words higher in frequency of occurrence in parent–childspeech, compared to older, typically developing toddlers.Conclusions: These findings provide support for the extended statistical learn-ing account. Late talkers appear to generally be extracting and using similarpatterns from their language input as do younger toddlers with similar levels ofexpressive vocabulary. This suggests that late talkers may be following adelayed, not deviant, trajectory of expressive language growth.
DOI
10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00769 Sections
PMID
39302886
Recommended Citation
Simmons, E. S., & Paul, R. (2024). Are late talkers just late? Neighborhood density and word frequency properties of late talkers' spoken vocabularies. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 67(10), 3794–3802. Doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00769
Publication
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research
Issue
10
Pages
3794-3802
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
