Lexical skills and gesture use: A comparison between expressive and receptive/expressive late talkers

Abstract

Background: Studies on late talkers (LTs) highlighted their heterogeneity and the relevance of describing different communicative profiles.

Aims: To examine lexical skills and gesture use in expressive (E-LTs) vs. receptive-expressive (R/E-LTs) LTs through a structured task.

Methods and procedures: Forty-six 30-month-old screened LTs were distinguished into E-LTs (n= 35) and R/E-LTs (n= 11) according to their receptive skills. Lexical skills and gesture use were assessed with a Picture Naming Game by coding answer accuracy (correct, incorrect, no response), modality of expression (spoken, spoken-gestural, gestural), type of gestures (deictic, representational), and spoken-gestural answers' semantic relationship (complementary, equivalent, supplementary).

Outcomes and results: R/E-LTs showed lower scores than E-LTs for noun and predicate comprehension with fewer correct answers, and production with fewer correct and incorrect answers, and more no responses. R/E-LTs also exhibited lower scores in spoken answers, representational gestures, and equivalent spoken-gestural answers for noun production and in all spoken and gestural answers for predicate production.

Conclusions and implications: Findings highlighted more impaired receptive and expressive lexical skills and lower gesture use in R/E-LTs compared to E-LTs, underlying the relevance of assessing both lexical and gestural skills through a structured task, besides parental questionnaires and developmental scales, to describe LTs' communicative profiles.

Keywords: MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory; gestures; late talkers; lexical skills; picture naming game.