Lexical selectivity in danish toddlers with cleft palate

Area of Science:

• Pediatric speech-language pathology
• Developmental linguistics
• Craniofacial anomalies research

Background:

• Children with cleft palate often face speech and language challenges.
• Early lexicon development is crucial for overall language acquisition.
• Lexical selectivity, the non-random selection of words, is a known phenomenon in early language development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate lexical selectivity in Danish toddlers with cleft palate at 18 months of age.
• To compare the early lexicon of children with cleft palate to that of their non-cleft peers.
• To determine if early sound production patterns influence word choices in this population.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study design was employed.
• Thirty-four children with unilateral cleft lip and palate and 35 controls were video recorded during play.
• Transcriptions using the International Phonetic Alphabet established consonant inventories and productive vocabulary size.

Main Results:

• Children with cleft palate demonstrated significant lexical selectivity at 18 months.
• Their early word production closely mirrored consonant class distributions observed at 11 months.
• The early lexicon of children with cleft palate differed qualitatively from that of non-cleft children.

Conclusions:

• Danish toddlers with cleft palate exhibit lexical selectivity in their early vocabulary.
• This finding aligns with studies on English-speaking toddlers but shows some qualitative distinctions.
• Lexical selectivity may be a characteristic feature of early language development in children with cleft palate.