Longitudinal growth of receptive language in children with cerebral palsy between 18 months and 54 months of age.
Katherine C Hustad, Ashley Sakash, Aimee Teo Broman and 1 others
PMID 29786137WHAT IT FOUND
For children with cerebral palsy, language comprehension scores at 24 and 30 months strongly separated later growth paths.
Children who could not speak at 48 to 54 months had severe delays and little progress.
Key findings
01Children in the anarthria group had average age-equivalent language scores of 6.1 months at 24 months and 10.0 months at 48 months, with a slope of 0.16.
02The developmentally typical trajectory group had average age-equivalent scores of 19.6 months at 24 months and 47.4 months at 48 months, with a slope of 1.16.
03Language comprehension scores at 24 and 30 months very strongly separated the two later growth classes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The anarthria results may reflect testing barriers rather than true comprehension, because motor impairment can prevent children from demonstrating answers on standardized items. The study used standardized receptive language tests, not functional comprehension in everyday communication contexts. Children were English-speaking, from one US region, and had no autism spectrum disorder, so results may not apply to all children with cerebral palsy. Later speech-language profiles were classified retrospectively at 48 to 54 months using clinical judgement.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflict declaration. The article is tagged as Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the low anarthria scores as proof that those children cannot understand language. The paper says motor impairment can block demonstration of comprehension on standardized tests, particularly for items above about a 12-month developmental level.