Socio-Emotional Profiles of Young Children With and Without Developmental Delay

Abstract Children with developmental delay often encounter unique challenges, but little is known about patterns of socio-emotional development that may differentiate young children with and without developmental delay during early childhood. Using parent reports from Ages & Stages Social-Emotional, 2nd edition, we analyzed data from 5,997 children to predict parent-reported developmental delay status via Random Forests, logistic regression, mutual information, ROC AUC, and ANOVA. Mean ranks were computed to identify consistently informative items. Findings revealed several common and unique predictors across several developmental stages, with socio-emotional behaviors being more strongly associated with developmental delay than other behaviors. These included feeding issues (2–6 months), joint attention (12–18 months), communication (24–36 months), and self-regulation (48–60 months). The implications of these findings for early screening and early intervention are discussed.