Typical and Atypical Language Development in Infants and Toddlers Adopted From Eastern Europe

Abstract

Longitudinal language development data were collected on 130 infants and toddlers adopted from Eastern Europe. The children were followed by means of parent surveys from the age at adoption up through age 36–40 months. The surveys collected data on expressive vocabulary growth, mean length of the three longest utterances, and development of four bound grammatical morphemes. Additional language data were collected using a modified version of the Rossetti Infant-Toddler Language Scale (1990). A multivariate factor analysis found no significant correlation between preadoption medical and developmental risk factors and eventual language development outcomes. The majority of children acquired English using the same developmental trajectories as nonadopted peers. By age 36–40 months, children adopted at younger ages had fully caught up to English language norms. Children adopted at older ages lagged behind, with the length of delay related to age at adoption. On the basis of these data, clinical guidelines are provided for assessing and treating speech and language disorders in internationally adopted children.

Disentangling the effects of cognitive development and linguistic expertise: A longitudinal study of the acquisition of English in internationally-adopted children

“…The background questionnaire was based on one used by Glennen and Masters (2002) and Pollock (2005). It asked about the child's history and health, their level of proficiency in their birth language, their adoptive family, their current use of English and their native language, and their current language environment.…”

“…Many of these children are well within the critical or sensitive period for learning language (Newport, 1990). These older children appear to rapidly lose their birth language (Glennen & Masters, 2002) and become fluent speakers of their adoptive language (Pallier, et al, 2003). But we know almost nothing about how they get there.…”

“…But we know almost nothing about how they get there. While a number of researchers have studied language development in children adopted as infants or toddlers (see e.g., Glennen & Masters, 2002;Roberts, Pollock, Krakow, Price, Fulmer & Wang, 2005;Pollock, 2005), there is little work on acquisition in children who were adopted after 30 months.…”

Speech and language development in six infants adopted from China

“…The majority of research to date has documented language development in children adopted from Russia and Eastern Europe whose second first language is English (e.g., Fisher et al, 1997;Glennen & Masters, 2002). However, these findings may not apply to Chinese children, whose birth language differs greatly from European languages and who may have better health and orphanage conditions (Miller & Hendrie, 2000;Cecere, 2001).…”

“…Detailed analyses of the children's phonological, lexical, and social-communicative behaviors at 6 months postadoption were conducted. Children's performances on the various measures of communicative development were compared to normative data of monolingual, US-born children, as well as data from other young internationally adopted children (Glennen & Masters, 2002).…”