Objective The current study examined whether the timing of recovery from late onset of productive vocabulary (e.g., either earlier or later blooming) was a factor in cognitive and achievement outcomes in first grade. First Grade Cognitive and Achievement Outcomes for Late Talkers: Does Rate of Recovery Matter? Erika S. Armstrong & Margaret Tresch Owen The University of Texas at Dallas, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, P.O. Box , Richardson, TX Introduction It is well known that children vary in when they begin to use words and how quickly vocabulary size increases over the second year (e.g., Bates, Bretherton, & Snyder, 1988). Most children achieve a 50-word vocabulary by 24 months; however, other children only say a few words by this time and are identified as “late talkers.” Approximately 50% of the 2-year-old late talkers will “bloom” quickly; that is, they will perform within the normal range on a test of expressive language before their third birthday. Another 20-30% will bloom later, scoring in the average range between their third and fifth birthdays (e.g., Rescorla, 2005). As a group, children who were late to begin talking often score lower than typically developing children on language assessments in school. It is not known, however, whether rate of recovery is associated with school-age outcomes; i.e., whether late talkers who recover earlier have better outcomes than those who recover later. References Bates, E., Bretherton, I., & Snyder, L. (1988). From first words to grammar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2001). Nonmaternal care and family factors in early development: An overview of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Applied Developmental Psychology, 22, Rescorla, L. (2005). Age 13 language and reading outcomes in late-talking toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, Method Participants The participants were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) data set, a national prospective longitudinal study. They included 657 first-graders (311 males; 346 females) from a wide range of income levels and a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Participants were assigned into language groups retrospectively based on three expressive language assessments given at 24, 36, and 54 months. Language group assignments were as follows: Procedure As part of the SECCYD study, language-related subtests from the Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery – Revised were used to assess the children’s cognitive aptitude and achievement in first grade. Cognitive (language) measures included the Picture Vocabulary, Memory for Sentences, and Incomplete Words subtests. Achievement (pre- reading) measures included the Letter-Word Identification and Word Attack subtests. Results Multivariate analyses of variance were conducted using a priori comparisons. It was hypothesized that Typically Developing Children would perform significantly better on school-age cognitive and achievement measures than Early Late Bloomers and that Early Late Bloomers would perform significantly better than Later Late Bloomers. It was also hypothesized that children with Expressive Language Delay would perform significantly below all the other groups. Therefore, repeated contrasts were used whereby the mean of each group (except the last) was compared to the mean of the subsequent group. In addition, because maternal education and family income level (as measured by income-to-needs ratio) were significantly related to school- age outcomes (ranging from r(656) =.11 to r(657) =.37), these factors were used as covariates in the analyses. Planned contrast results by language group are graphed below with means and standard error bars. Means for the same subtest that do not share a common letter differed using the repeated contrast at p <.025 or less. Language Group 24m CDI Percentile Score 36m Reynell Expressive Std. Score 54m PLS Expressive Std. Score Typically Developing Children (n=536)> 10 th ≥ 85 Late Talkers Early Late Bloomers (n=61)≤ 10 th ≥ 85 Later Late Bloomers (n=26)≤ 10 th < 85≥ 85 Expressive Lang. Delayed (n=34)≤ 10 th < 85 abbcccabbab ab aaabaaab Discussion The current study confirms prior findings that children who have normal- range language skills upon entering school perform significantly better on language and reading tasks than children who have below-average language skills. Therefore, for children who are late to begin talking, “recovery” from delayed onset of productive vocabulary prior to starting school is important for normal-range school performance. However, “blooming” in expressive language does not guarantee that school performance on specific cognitive/linguistic tasks will be equal to children with normal histories of language development. While the Early Late Bloomers performed the same as the Typically Developing Children on a phonological processing task, the Later Late Bloomers scored significantly lower. Both the Early and Later Late Bloomers performed significantly worse than the Typically Developing Children on an expressive vocabulary task as well as a short-term memory task that utilizes comprehension-knowledge. This is particularly telling since the Early Late Bloomers, according to their defining criteria, have had “normal-range” language skills for at least 3 years. It does not appear, though, that being a Late Bloomer has an impact on early pre-reading achievement skills such as letter-word identification or simple non-word decoding. However, given their poorer performance on the cognitive/linguistic tasks, it would be of interest to determine whether there are differences in later reading skills involving comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Interestingly, when comparing the two groups of Late Bloomers (Early vs. Later), the rate at which a child recovered did not matter. There were no significant differences between the scores for the two late blooming groups on any of the tasks administered. This suggests that there may be two distinct subgroups of children who are late to begin talking: (1) children with a mild cognitive/linguistic weakness who will bloom yet who will not perform as well as children with typically developing language, and (2) children with a more severe cognitive/linguistic deficit who continue to demonstrate difficulty with language-related skills into school. These findings have research implications for better understanding language development as well as clinical implications for providing early intervention services to late talking toddlers and educational implications for classroom support.