Speech and language development are central to human social interactions and life and determine an individual's successful adult life outcomes. Language development is a unique complex communication system that happens effortlessly in the early years of a child’s development (Morse & Cangelosi, 2017). Children learn various languages through several different environments to develop their mature linguistic knowledge as they grow into adolescents and, eventually, adults. The process of language and speech development does not naturally happen for some children. Early identification of language issues in children and applying effective intervention measures to address the language problems that are cognitive, behavioral, academic, and psychosocial related can help prevent children's future victimization with these issues. Existing studies show evidence that disproportionately problematic outcomes among children and adolescents with language impairment, and some of them suffer these disadvantages into their adult lives. Research indicates disturbing effects among children with language impairment. Such outcomes are disadvantages in their speech and language competence, increased chances of suffering psychiatric disorders, intellectual functioning, educational adjustment and achievement, and psychosocial difficulties (Hibbin, 2016). This literature review focused on the impacts of negative language development on the psychosocial and emotional development of children. Language development in children positively or negatively affects their psychosocial and emotional development depending on their ability, environment, and health. Speech and language-impaired children stand a greater risk of future psychosocial and emotional problems than children who don't have such impairments.
Stages of Language Development in Children
Language development in children has a predictable pattern even though there is an irrefutable variation in the ages at which children attain milestones. The language acquisition in children could vary from when the children starting from the initial verbal inflections. Additionally, characterization of the stages of language development can be distinct depending on the focus. Morse & Cangelosi (2017) explain language development in children occurs in five main stages in a developmental sequence in terms of the development of lexical and syntax knowledge. These stages include the babbling stage, one-word/one-unit/one-morpheme or holophrastic stage, the two-word phase, the telegraphic or initial multiword phase, and the later multiword stage. The first babbling stage involves typically between the ages of 6 to 8 months and consists of the child showing repetitive CV patterns. The one-unit stage happens between the ages of 9 to 18 months and involves the child understanding single or open-class words and word trunks. In the second two-word phase between 18 and 24 months, the child can construct short sentences using straightforward semantic associations. In the multi-morpheme phase between the ages of 24 to 30 months, the child makes lexical sentences that may be less functional and grammatical morphemes. In the final stage of the later multiword stage of ages 30 months and beyond, the child can construct grammatical and functional structures.
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Language Development and Psychiatric Disorders
Children that suffer language and speech impairments have added the suffering rates of attention-deficit hyperactivity and the anxiety disorders (ADHD) in both their childhood and adolescence phases. A study by Lee et al. (2020) sought to determine the association or relationship between language impairments and emotional disorders. Their study was based on the previous studies that suggested existing emotional problems of anxiety and depression in children and adults. The researchers wanted to determine if language development could have contributed to the anxiety and depression. Lee and his team identified and assessed 4300 children and matched them with controls. They had two major groups of speech and language impaired diagnosed children and those who were not. The research findings indicated a significant positive test outcome for depression and anxiety in later life or the children with previous speech and language deficiencies compared to the typical controls. The authors used Cox regression analyses to adjust gender, age, and comorbidities. Their results indicate a 95% positive connection linking anxiety disorders to speech or language deficiencies with an adjusted hazard ratio (AHR of 2.87, 95%, and confidence level (CI) of range between 2.20-3.76 units.
The number of language-impaired boys in the subjects or research sample was twice girls, but both genders showed the same risk levels of anxiety and depressive disorders. Additionally, intellectual disabilities and infantile autism were significant causative contributors to language impairment in the sample studied. The authors suggest a need for early interventions for language-impaired children. The authors insist that parents, caregivers, and professionals must undertake early interventions in language-impaired children. They argue it will help prevent future anxiety and depressive disorders, particularly between elementary learning in their schooling and the youth development stage. The research is reliable, accurate, and can be replicated in different regions or environments and on all ages of children and adolescents. Findings from a study by Lee et al. (2020) reveal that impaired language development can lead to future psychiatric disorders. Children with typical language development are less likely to suffer psychiatric disorders later since there is a direct association between language impairment and psychiatric disorders.
Language Development and Juvenile Delinquency
Children that have poor verbal skills, especially boys, have a likelihood of suffering juvenile delinquency. A study by Anderson et al. (2020) on juvenile delinquents sought to determine the relationship between childhood language development and the likelihood of becoming juvenile delinquents. The researchers compared the linguistic expertise of adolescent juvenile lawbreakers (delinquents) males against their non-delinquent peers. The authors use the informal language model analysis of modified TOAL-2 measure and Clinical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on 24 institutionalized delinquents and non-delinquents. The study subjects were of ages 14.4 years to 17.9 years with a corresponding average full-scale intelligence quotient of 99.75% and 101.25 % and no corroborated handicapping settings. In their study, the researchers found that language-impaired children had a higher likelihood of ending up as juvenile delinquents than their typical counterparts.
The researchers' outcomes of the one-way ANOVA analysis showed significant distinctions in language skills between the two groups under study. The juvenile delinquents who have poor language and speech comprehension and prowess. In contrast, the non-delinquents had better language skills. The researchers also note significant differences in descriptive statistics of academic performance between the two groups. The researchers conclude that the language-impaired children were at risk of becoming juvenile delinquents in the future and thus crucial for stakeholders to make early intervention measures (Anderson et al., 2020). There is a direct association between incarceration and disorderly conduct with language impairments. Language-impaired children suffer attention deficits and difficulties in internalizing problems. Additionally, they become more aggressive and engage in more anti-social behavior. Language-impaired boys have higher parent-rated levels of delinquency indications by the ages of 19-20, further affected by demographic and family variables. The researchers found that language impairments in girls did not affect their likelihood of becoming delinquents. Therefore, the language developmental impacts on children and their likelihood of becoming delinquents are on males and neutral on females even though female-impaired girls still suffer other effects as they grow into youths or adults.
Language Development and Behavioral Problems in Children
Children with language impairment in their childhood are likely to show concurrent and future behavioral problems than children that typically develop their language. Willinger et al. (2018) undertook a study to determine the relationship between children's behaviors and language development disorders. Their study was premised on increasing reported cases of behavioral deficiencies in local California Junior School. The research aimed to examine the univariate and the multivariate variations in behavioral problems in language-impaired children. Language impairment more than speech impairment in children contributes to persistent behavior problems with language-impaired youth, often having social difficulties and likely to suffer bullying and social exclusion by their peers. In some cases, these social problems due to language impairment have spilled into their adulthood. Willinger and his researchers' team determined the issues in kids with emotional and receptive-expressive linguistic development issues. The study was on 94 children suffering from language development disorders (LDD) for 4-6 years old with matching age and gender. The outcome of the findings was that 34 % of the LDD subjects showed behavioral problems related to language development impairments. Additionally, the univariate group showed distinct differences, and the multivariate step-wise social, anxious-depression, and attention issues. Neurodevelopmental immaturity is a possible factor that raises the risk of behavioral problems that contribute to language-impaired children with speech and language disorders to exhibit unwanted behaviors.
A different study by Eadie et al. (2020) sought to examine the relationship between language skills of language-impaired children with their behavioral, emotional, and social difficulties of an Australian community. Eadie and his researchers studied a sample of 41 primary school students enrolled in a specialist learning unit. The research was premised on the current limited understanding between school-going children's behaviors, their interactions, and language development impairment. The study explored relationships between language disorders and social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties (SEBD). The language-impaired children with language development impaired were observed and tested for two years. The critical aspects that language-impaired children studied were their language skills, comorbid neurodevelopmental disorders, and maltreatment history. Findings from the study reveal that 75% of the study sample who met the SEBD criterion also met the LD criterion. The children who had higher internalizing levels recorded positive and desirable behaviors than the control sample subjects. The authors found no relationship between the LD and SEBD severity. Moreover, there was a considerable overlap of LD and SEBD for the children with maltreatment history. The language-impaired children showed persistent behavior problems, which was further aggravated by maltreatment history. The language-impairment adversely affected the children's behavior and communication difficulties, which affects the steady progress in academic and social skills. The language development issues affected the children's social and academic skills that weighed heavily on their engagement at school and, ultimately, their behavior in other life circles (Eadie, et al., 2020).
Language Development and Academic Performance
Speech and language skills in humans underpin several other areas of children’s development. According to a study by Nook et al. (2020), a child's language development provides the foundation of other learning areas such as reading, writing, and access to the academic curriculum. The researchers carried a five-year study from 2013-2018 on 100 children of ages (4-7) in five years up to when they were ages (9-12) years old in Taiwan. They collected data through observation, analysis, and interviews and kept language developmental milestones for each child. From their study, the researchers note that children who had robust or typical language development were better at writing, writing, and scored higher than their counterparts who had language development problems. The researchers further determined a direct relationship between language impairment and poor academic performance. In their study, 97% of the children who had language-impaired scored an average of 30-60% in their academic work. On the contrary, 95% of their typical counterparts scored between 55-95% on average within the five years.
Language-impaired children who are clinically-referred performed poorly on average than the general children populations, with these findings confirmed with other epidemiological studies. Nook and his team reported that children of ages five were eight times more likely to suffer learning disabilities when they turned 19 than children who didn’t have language impairments. The results are associated with information processing and cognitive development that are different in children with language impairment in short-term memory and auditory processing, unlike in their typical counterparts. The research results could be biased in extrapolation to a different country, considering the researchers assumed the children had the same family environments and the same social support systems. The researchers conclude that children with typical language development have performed better academically than their counterparts that have language development impairment (Nook et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Recent studies indicate that language impairments persist in children live through their adolescent stages into adulthood. As a result, the psychosocial and emotional problems that come with such language impairments could persist in their lives into adulthood. Language impairments in children and adolescents of ages 5, 12 and 19 lead to significantly elevated behavior problems psychiatric disorders, particularly anxiety disorder (Hibbin, 2016) . Language issues in childhood have contributed to social phobia, ADHD, and delinquency (in boys rather than girls). The reviewed studies and research show that language impairment persists into adulthood with more than adverse outcomes for language-impaired children than the non-impaired ones. There are prominently concurrent and long-standing deficiencies in language-impaired children’s academic and cognitive domains related to their peers who have early language difficulties. Boys that are language-impaired in their childhood were at risk of antisocial and delinquent behaviors. Simultaneously, girls with language impairments were more likely to suffer sexual abuse and embark on early parenting than their typical peers. Notable findings from the studies reviewed show that by the age of 25, there is no difference between youth who had language impairments from childhood and those who didn’t as both groups will likely get employment and have the same quality of life perceived social support.
References
Anderson, S. A., Hawes, D. J., & Snow, P. C. (2020). Language impairments among youth offenders: A systematic review. Children and Youth Services Review, 65 , 195-203.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2016.04.004.
Eadie, P. A., Snow, P. C., Stark, H. L., Sidoti, N., & Berndt, J. (2020). Language Skills of Vulnerable Children With Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Difficulties: An Australian Primary School Sample. Behavioral Disorders 10(3) , 19-23.https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0198742920945635.
Hibbin, R. (2016). The psychosocial benefits of oral storytelling in school: developing identity and empathy through narrative. Pastoral Care in Education, 34(4) , 281-231.https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2016.1225315.
Lee, Y.-C., Chen, V. C.-H., Yang, Y.-H., Kuo, T.-Y., Hung, T.-H., Cheng, Y.-F., et al. (2020). Association Between Emotional Disorders and Speech and Language Impairments: A National Population-Based Study. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 51(3) , 355-365.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-019-00947-9.
Morse, A. F., & Cangelosi, A. (2017). Why are there developmental stages in language learning? A developmental robotics model of language development. Cognitive Science, 41 , 32-51.https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12390.
Nook, E. C., Stavish, C. M., Sasse, S. F., Lambert, H. K., Mair, P., McLaughlin, K. A., et al. (2020). Charting the development of emotion comprehension and abstraction from childhood to adulthood using observer-rated and linguistic measures. Emotion, 20(5) , 773. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0000609.
Willinger, U., Esther, B., Diendorfer-Radner, G., Judith, S., Ulrike, S., & Brigitte, E. (2018). Behaviour in children with language development disorders. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 48(9) , 607-614.https://doi.org/10.1177%2F070674370304800907.
