Language and internalizing and externalizing behavioral adjustment: Developmental pathways from childhood to adolescence

Abstract

Two independent prospective longitudinal studies that cumulatively spanned the age interval from 4 years to 14 years used multi-wave designs to investigate developmental associations between language and behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior problems). Altogether 224 children, their mothers, and teachers provided data. Series of nested path analysis models were used to determine the most parsimonious and plausible paths among the three constructs over and above stability in each across age and their covariation at each age. In both studies, children with poorer language skills in early childhood had more internalizing behavior problems in later childhood and in early adolescence. These developmental paths between language and behavioral adjustment held after taking into consideration children’s nonverbal intellectual functioning, maternal verbal intelligence, education, parenting knowledge, and social desirability bias, as well as family socioeconomic status, and they applied equally to girls and boys.

Predicting receptive vocabulary change from childhood to adulthood: A birth cohort study

“…Taken together the work of Bornstein and colleagues and the results of the current study, suggest comorbidity between language and behavioural problems. As proposed by Bornstein et al (2013), it is possible that poor behavioural adjustment may limit language development, which is consistent with the present study. For example, in social or academic situations internalising symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) may undermine the use of children's language which in turn may limit their use of language both academically and in social situations (Bornstein et al, 2013).…”

“…As proposed by Bornstein et al (2013), it is possible that poor behavioural adjustment may limit language development, which is consistent with the present study. For example, in social or academic situations internalising symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) may undermine the use of children's language which in turn may limit their use of language both academically and in social situations (Bornstein et al, 2013). However given the constraints of the present study further research using longitudinal studies is needed to further investigate this hypothesis and to disentangle the direction of the association between language and behavioural problems.…”

“…Bornstein et al (2013) used a more general measure of language, as opposed to the current study which focused only on receptive vocabulary, and thus it may be the different language competencies across samples which influenced the results. Furthermore, Bornstein et al (2013) did not categorise language impairment and instead used a continuous scale which meant they did not examine distinct changes in language profiles over time. Taken together the work of Bornstein and colleagues and the results of the current study, suggest comorbidity between language and behavioural problems.…”

“…Bornstein and colleagues (2013), for example, found children with lower language skills at age 4 had more internalising behaviour problems at 7, 10 and 14 years which supports the notion that language proficiency in early childhood affects behavioural adjustment in late childhood and early adolescence. Furthermore, Bornstein et al (2013) reported that internalising and externalising problems did not predict subsequent language development. However, there are several key differences between the two studies which may explain the conflicting findings.…”

Language disorder from infancy to adulthood: predictors and outcomes

“…Instead there is a strong body of evidence showing that it is language deficiencies (including delays in receptive vocabulary) which result in behavioural adjustment problems in children and adolescents across both internalising and externalising domains (Bornstein, Hahn, & Joan, 2013;Petersen et al, 2013;Yew & O'Kearney, 2013). However, contrary to the results of the current study, some of this previous work has shown that this relationship did not hold in reverse.…”