Prosociality from early adolescence to young adulthood: A longitudinal study of individuals with a history of language impairment.

Attrition was substantial: the language impairment group fell from 130 participants at ages 11 and 16 to 84 at age 24, and only 73 provided data at all three time points. Attrition was partly due to funding constraints, and the peers who remained at age 24 had higher receptive language and PIQ scores than those who did not. Prosociality was measured by self-report on a 5-item scale, not by observation or other informants. Participants with language impairment had all attended language units and received intensive language support, so the findings may not apply to young people with language impairment in other educational settings. The study is observational. It shows associations between prosocial trajectory and later social outcomes, but cannot determine whether prosociality caused better outcomes. Friendship difficulty scores were very low, with group means from 0.1 to 0.6 on a 0 to 8 scale, so differences may be small. Only three prosocial measurement points were available, and the number of trajectory groups can depend on the number of measurement occasions.

The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.

Do not read the better friendship and community integration outcomes as proof that prosociality causes those outcomes. The study measured associations over time, and the authors state that causal direction cannot be determined.