Persistence of the developmental language disorder diagnosis, neurodevelopmental trajectories and attendance at offered interventions.

Aim: To study the diagnostic stability of developmental language disorders, other neurodevelopmental disorders and interventions received until age 6 years in children who screened positive for language delay, but not for autism, at age 2.5 years.

Methods: In 2016, in Gothenburg, Sweden, 100 monolingual or multilingual children underwent language assessment at a mean age of 2.9 years. At age 6 years, 85 of these children underwent language assessment. A review of paediatric records was performed after the clinical assessment to obtain information about other neurodevelopmental disorders and interventions received.

Results: At age 6 years, 74/85 (87%) of the children had persistent language disorders, and 20/85 (24%) had been diagnosed with at least one additional neurodevelopmental disorder. Five of them had autism. In general, families only attended half of the offered intervention sessions irrespective of intervention type and no difference between monolingual and multilingual families was found.

Conclusions: The persistence of language disorder and the presence of later additional neurodevelopmental disorders highlight the importance of longitudinal and multidisciplinary monitoring of children with delayed language development. Further studies and analyses are warranted to investigate the reasons behind the poor attendance rate for interventions offered.