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Background: Exposure to neglect can severely compromise children's pragmatic skills (social language use). The disruptions of parent-child interactions that typically occur in context of neglect may compromise several parental behaviors which are known to foster language skills such as pragmatics., Objectives: 1- Compare the behaviors of neglectful and non-neglectful parents in four domains which are of interest for pragmatic language development, namely, responsive, supportive, affective, and control behaviors, and 2- Identify parental behaviors associated with the levels of pragmatic ability of 42-month-old neglected children., Participants: Study sample consisted of 21 neglected children living in their biological family, recruited in four Youth Centers in the province of Québec (Canada) and 95 non-neglected children recruited in child-care centers., Method: Parental behaviors were video recorded in context of free-play with the child at the participants' homes between 2015 and 2017, and subsequently analyzed using the Coding Observations of Parent-Child Interactions (COPI), developed to observe ten parental behaviors associated with early language development. The level of pragmatic ability of children was established using the Language Use Inventory: French, a standardized questionnaire completed with parents of both groups., Results: Parents in situation of neglect scored lower than parents in the control group on eight of the ten behaviors (p < .001). Parental reciprocity was associated with the level of pragmatic ability of 42-month-old neglected children (p = .04)., Conclusions: The results of this exploratory study provide insight on the associations between parental behaviors and the level of pragmatic language skills of children experiencing neglect., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Crown Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to compare the pragmatic language skills (i.e., social communication skills) of 42-month-old neglected children with those of same-aged non-neglected children and (2) to measure the prevalence of pragmatic difficulties among the neglected children. The study sample was composed of 45 neglected and 95 non-neglected 42-month-old French-speaking children. The Language Use Inventory: French (LUI-French) was completed with all parents. This measure, comprised of 159 scored items divided into 10 subscales, was used to assess the children's pragmatic skills. The 10th percentile on the LUI-French (95% confidence interval ) was used to identify children with pragmatic difficulties. The neglected children had lower scores than the non-neglected children on all 10 dimensions of pragmatics evaluated ( p < .01), as well as lower LUI-French Total Scores ( p < .001). The effect sizes of these differences varied between 0.84 and 2.78. Forty-four percent of the neglected children presented significant pragmatic difficulties compared to 4.2% of their non-neglected peers ( p < .001). It can be concluded that exposure to neglect significantly compromises children's pragmatic skills. These results support the need for interventions geared toward neglected children and their families to support the early development of their pragmatic skills.

Language is the most frequently compromised area of development in English-speaking neglected children, particularly the morphosyntactic component of language. This is very worrisome given its central role in academic success and social participation. No previous study has examined the morphosyntactic skills of French-speaking neglected children, despite the morphological richness of French. This study aimed to fill this gap. Forty-four neglected (mean age = 48.32 months, SD = 0.45) and 92 non-neglected (mean age = 48.07 months, SD = 0.24) French-speaking children participated. Measures of morphosyntactic skills were derived from a sample of spontaneous language collected during standardized semistructured play and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software (2012) . Four morphosyntactic indicators were compared using analyses of variance and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests: the mean length of utterances (MLU), verbal inflections, word-level errors, and omission errors. The results indicate that 25.6% of the neglected children presented clinically significant morphosyntactic difficulties, as evidenced by a significantly shorter MLU ( M = 5.60, SD = 1.13; M = 6.90, SD = 1.30), fewer verbal inflections, and more frequent word omission errors compared to their non-neglected peers. The results confirm that French-speaking neglected children present many morphosyntactic difficulties. This study argues for sustained speech-language services for these children.

Research data show that exposure to abuse and neglect has detrimental effects on a child's language development. In this meta-analysis, we analyze studies (k = 23), to compare the language skills (receptive language, expressive language, pragmatics) of children who have experienced abuse and/or neglect with the language skills of children who have not experienced abuse and/or neglect and to examine whether age or type of maltreatment moderate the relationship between maltreatment and language skills. Results confirm that the language skills of children who have experienced abuse and/or neglect are delayed when compared to children who have not experienced abuse and/or neglect. Compared to older children, young children seem particularly vulnerable to abuse and neglect. No significant differences were demonstrated concerning the type of maltreatment suffered by the child. These findings support the necessity of early detection of language problems in abused and neglected children as well as early intervention in order to implement interventions that will positively stimulate their development., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Objectives: This research sought to determine if the language delay (LD) of severely neglected children under 3 years old was better explained by a cumulative risk model or by the specificity of risk factors. The objective was also to identify the risk factors with the strongest impact on LD among various biological, psychological, and environmental factors., Methods: Sixty-eight severely neglected children and their mothers participated in this cross-sectional study. Children were between 2 and 36 months of age. Data included information about the child's language development and biological, psychological, and environmental risk factors., Results: Prevalence of LD is significantly higher in this subgroup of children than in the population as a whole. Although we observed that the risk of LD significantly increased with an increase in the cumulative count of the presence of the child's biological-psychological risk factors, the one-by-one analysis of the individual factors revealed that the cumulative effect mainly reflected the specific impact of the child's cognitive development. When we considered also the environmental risk factors, multivariate logistic regression established that cognitive development, the mother's own physical and emotional abuse experience as a child, and the mother's low acceptability level towards her child are linked to LD in severely neglected children., Conclusions: Language development is the result of a complex interaction between risk factors. LD in severely neglected children is better explained by the specificity of risk factors than by the cumulative risk model., Practice Implications: Most prevention and early intervention programs promote and target an increase in the quantity and quality of language stimulation offered to the child. Our results suggest that particular attention should be given to other environmental factors, specifically the mother's psychological availability and her sensitivity towards the child. It is essential to suggest interventions targeting various ecological dimensions of neglectful mothers to help break the intergenerational neglect transmission cycle. It is also important to develop government policies and ensure that efforts among the various response networks are concerted since in-depth changes to neglect situations can only come about when all interested parties become involved., (Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Estimate the prevalence of communication problems in children under three taken into care by Youth Centres in Quebec for negligence. Prevalence is calculated for the pragmatic aspect, receptive and expressive language, according to age and sex., Method: This is a cross-sectional study. A representative sample of 84 children was drawn consecutively from the lists of new children registered at the Youth Centres., Results: 46.4% of the children present a problem in at least one area of communication. The prevalence and seriousness of the problems increase significantly with age. Boys are significantly more affected than girls., Conclusion: Negligence constitutes a threat to the development of communication. According to the data reported in this study, there is substantial justification for early intervention, promotion and prevention programs with regard to communication problems among neglected children.

Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study aimed to describe inferential comprehension abilities of neglected French-speaking preschool children from 42 to 66 months of age in comparison to non-neglected peers, to examine the association with receptive vocabulary, and to determine whether rates of change in inferential abilities over time was stable between the two group conditions. Method: An inferential comprehension task and the French version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition were administered to a group of neglected children (n = 37–40) and to a group of same-age non-neglected children (n = 71–91) at 42, 54, and 66 months old, as part of the Early Longitudinal Language and Neglect study. Results: Results show that children exposed to neglect obtain significantly lower scores compared to their same-age peers on inferential comprehension and receptive vocabulary measures at all three time points (p < .001) with large to very large effect sizes and indicate moderate to strong correlations between the two variables. Children from the neglected group present difficulties in inferencing compared to same-age non-neglected peers, a disadvantage that remains stable over time. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the significant gap in inferential comprehension abilities between neglected and non-neglected preschool children. These results reiterate the importance of early detection of language comprehension difficulties in young children coming from vulnerable environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Child neglect affects approximately 1% of children under the age of 6 years in the United States and Canada annually. Nearly 50% of children who experience neglect present significant language difficulties before starting school. Child neglect can thus be considered a major public health issue. Child neglect is an ecological and systemic phenomenon characterized by a dual disruption: first, in the relationship between the parent and child and second, in the relationship between the family and the wider community. Empirical research has quite convincingly demonstrated that parenting behaviors constitute a malleable variable upon which it is possible to act to foster the language development of young children. However, given the multidimensional nature of child neglect, interventions aimed directly at parents are simply not enough to support the language skills of children in this context. Based on a complex family and social conception of neglect, the objective of this article is to propose a logical model illustrating public health services for children experiencing neglect. Such a logical model provides for multiple interventions at the child, family and community levels. Conclusions: Broader efforts should be made to support the parents in overcoming the challenges of parenthood by addressing the multiple risk factors to which they are exposed. This can be achieved both by striving toward positive environmental conditions, characterized by responsive caregiving in the home and community, and by implementing multilevel interventions within an interdisciplinary and intersectoral approach. The resulting recommendations align with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a law that requires states to provide services to children in early intervention programs (Part C) and kindergartens/ schools (Part B). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]