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A short‐term follow‐up of children with poor word production at the age of 18 months
Author(s) -
Westerlund M,
Eriksson M,
Berglund E
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
acta paediatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2004.tb03000.x
Subject(s) - medicine , percentile , pediatrics , recall , vocabulary , percentile rank , predictability , language development , term (time) , demography , developmental psychology , statistics , linguistics , psychology , philosophy , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , sociology
Aim : (a) To study the stability of poor language development assessed by a new screening instrument based on parents' recognition of words their 18‐mo‐old children use; (b) to evaluate the predictability of the less‐than‐eight‐words cut‐off used by Child Health Centres (CHCs) in Sweden at the present 18‐mo check‐up—an assessment based on parents' recall of their children's vocabulary. Methods : All failures of the less‐than‐eight‐words criterion, corresponding to about 10% of 1000 children from a community‐based study, were followed up within half a year after the first assessment. The follow‐up instrument was an extensive, internationally well‐known and structured parent questionnaire, standardized for Swedish children. Results : Almost half of the followed‐ ups performed below the 10th percentile and more than two‐thirds were found below the 20th percentile. Thus, after a few months about one‐third of the children had caught up to a fairly normal level of performance. Two of the children who had recovered performed above median. More relaxed cut‐off criteria were applied ad hoc , reducing the proportion of children with a fast recovery. Conclusion : Age of language assessment and/or the level of cut‐off criterion presently used at Swedish CHCs should be reconsidered.