Language development at ten months. Predictive of language outcome and school achievement ten years later?

Language development was followed from infancy to primary school age in order to examine the predictive significance for later language and scholastic outcome.

Participants were from a prospective longitudinal study of a birth cohort of initially 362 children. A subsample of 90 children (54 boys, 36 girls) was administered with the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REEL) in order to obtain age-appropriate measures of expressive and receptive language at the age of 10 months. At 11 years, children completed a comprehensive test battery assessing various intellectual skills and language performance. Scholastic measures included a school performance score and a recommendation for type of secondary school.

Both expressive and receptive language performance at 10 months were significantly associated with cognitive and educational outcome 10 years later. Infant language performance not only predicted later verbal and nonverbal skills but also school achievement at the end of primary school. Prediction was higher in girls than in boys and slightly better for verbal and academic than for nonverbal performance.

The results demonstrate the importance of early language abilities in predicting cognitive and academic outcome at school age.