Towards a Characterization of Late Talkers: The Developmental Profile of Children with Late Language Emergence through a Web-Based Communicative-Language Assessment

Abstract

Children acquire language naturally, but there is variation in language acquisition patterns. Indeed, different internal and external variables play a role in acquiring language. However, there are open research questions about the contribution of different variables to language development. Moreover, with societal changes and due to the pandemic situation, there has been a growing interest in testing digitalization related to indirect language acquisition assessment. In this study, a web-based assessment survey was developed to (1) describe the relation between expressive vocabulary, Socio-Conversational Skills (SCS), gender, parental education, executive functions (EFs), and pretend play; (2) determine whether the survey can detect differences between late talkers (LTs) and children with typical language development; (3) identify children with “overall high” and “overall low” communicative-language scores to test the validity of expressive vocabulary as a main indicator to detect LTs. The parents of 108 Italian children (51 males) aged 24–36 months participated in the study. The results showed that expressive vocabulary correlates with measures of SCS (assertiveness and responsiveness) and is reliable in identifying LTs (d = 2.73). Furthermore, SCS and EFs contribute to better characterizing the developmental profile of children aged 24–36 months.