Outcomes at late childhood of Chinese-speaking preschoolers with developmental language disorders comorbid with behavioral-emotional

Abstract

As part of an ongoing clinical service program for children with developmental delay in morphosyllabic Chinese-speaking Taiwan, we investigated the late childhood cognitive, functional and psychiatric outcomes of a specific cohort of preschool children with developmental language delay comorbi d wi th behavi oral-emoti onal problems. The institutional database of a developmental clinic was reviewed and preschoolers meeting the inclusion criteria were invited to be subjects. Follow-up evaluations included Wechsler Intelligence tests, parents’ version of the Child Behavioral Checklist and psychiatric interview of the adolescents themselves. Of the eligible subjects (initial preschool visit at average of 3.8 ± 1.3 years old), 44 individuals completed follow-up evaluations at average of 11.8 ± 1.5 years old. The follow-up results showed that 75% of the late childhood children still had problems in language and 38.6% had problems in academic performance. The mean nonverbal cognitive score at follow-up was 83.9 ± 15.4 while the mean verbal cognitive measure was 83 ±17.3. Total 75% of the subjects had current psychiatric disorders and the most frequent di agnosi s was attenti on defici t/hyperactivity disorder, which was noted to be increased from 50% in the preschool period to 70.5% in late childhood. We concluded that the majority of Chinese-speaking preschoolers with language delay and behavioral-emotional problems turned out to have communication and psychiatric conditions when they reached late childhood. Western researches on developmental course of preschool children with alphabetic language impairment could be extended to morphosyllabic Chinese. Specialized services are warranted for this group of preschool children to lessen prolonged vulnerabilities. Our findings may be helpful in the context of an Asian developing country, so that priorities can be established for the allocation of finite resources for intervention.

Keywords

• developmental language disorder
• attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
• preschool