Language, Motor Ability and Related Deficits in Children at Familial Risk of Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder

It is known that impairments in linguistic ability and motor function tend to co-occur in children, and that children from families with parental mental illness such as schizophrenia tend to perform poorly in both domains, but the exact nature of these links has not yet been fully elucidated.

In this study, we leveraged the first wave of the Danish High Risk and Resilience Study (VIA 7), which includes both genetic data and measures covering multiple developmental domains. The VIA 7 cohort comprises 522 7-year-old children born to parents with schizophrenia (N = 202), bipolar disorder (N = 120) or neither (N = 200). We investigated the relationships between linguistic ability and motor function using correlation and regression analyses, focusing on developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and specific language impairment (SLI) and their potential associations with the three risk groups.

We found significant correlations between most measures of language and motor function and significant associations of DCD and SLI with language and movement measures, respectively, the largest effect being that of DCD on receptive language, with a significant interaction effect: DCD was associated with poorer performance in children from schizophrenia families compared to bipolar disorder and control families. Both disorders showed higher prevalence among children with familial high risk of mental illness. We did not find significant evidence of genetic overlap between DCD and SLI.

Our results suggest strong links between the domains of motor function and linguistic ability. Children of parents with schizophrenia are at high risk of comorbid language and movement disorders.