Follow-up of expressive language and general development at 12, 18 and 36 months for children with no canonical babbling at 10 months

Little is known about the developmental trajectories in children who do not use canonical babbling (CB) at 10 months. The aim was to examine how speech, language, cognitive and motor abilities developed in children without CB. For 15 children identified as not having CB, consonant production, expressive vocabulary and general development were assessed at 12, 18 and 36 months from audio-video recordings. Twelve (79%) children still lacked CB at 12 months. At 18 months, six (40%) had parent-reported expressive vocabulary results below the 10th percentile, and two (14%) did not use dental/alveolar stops. The percentage of consonants correct for the group was at the level of peers at 36 months (89%, SD 0.17), but the group had fewer established target consonants than age norms. Most children had a small expressive vocabulary in comparison with Swedish age norms for younger children as well as with age-matched norms for other Nordic languages. The general development (Bayley-III) for three children (21%) who did not use speech was 1-2 SD below the average range in at least one domain (cognitive, language or motor), but the results for the whole group were within the average range. In conclusion, the heterogeneity in early consonant development in the study group resembles that of children in clinical groups with known risk for speech and language difficulties and the expressive vocabulary resembles that of children with delayed expressive vocabulary. For about one-fifth of the children, the absence of canonical babbling at age 10 months could be seen as an early sign of a more comprehensive developmental disability.