Social communication status as a risk factor for language development in young children adopted from Eastern European institutional care.

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between initial social communication status and language development in infants and toddlers recently adopted from Eastern European institutional care. The responding joint attention (RJA) and initiating joint attention (IJA) skills of 61 children were measured at arrival and compared against receptive and expressive language outcomes 6 months later. Birth weight, height at arrival and age at arrival were also examined as risk factors for slower language development. Results indicated that receptive and expressive language outcomes were positively related to higher social communication skills. Specifically, RJA and IJA were significant predictors of receptive language development, and RJA was a significant predictor of overall expressive language development, above the contribution of age. Vocabulary was predicted by age at arrival and IJA skills. Height and birth weight were not predictive of language outcomes. Joint attention skills did not distinguish between higher and lower language performance when children were divided based on language cut-off scores. This study also found that adoption before an age of vocabulary acquisition did not distinguish between children with lower and higher language acquisition in this sample.