A First Estimate of the Prevalence of Developmental Language Disorder in Mexico: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

This was a retrospective study that aimed to provide a first estimate of the prevalence of developmental language disorder (DLD) in Mexico, where there is currently a lack of epidemiological data on this disorder. Children aged 4;0 to 6;11 years in the cities of Mexico, Queretaro, and Monterrey were classified into two groups: those with DLD (N = 46) and those with typical language development (N = 497). The diagnosis of DLD was based on standardized norm-referenced assessment and language sample analyses. Children with other disabilities were excluded from the final sample. The final sample consisted of 543 children (55% male; 45% female) aged 4;0 to 6;11 years. The estimated prevalence of DLD was 8.5%. The study has clinical implications given that the prevalence of DLD in Mexico may raise awareness of this long-lasting disorder and may help health and educational authorities establish a system to early identify and diagnose children with DLD.

Keywords

developmental language disorder - Spanish-speaking children - monolingual Spanish speakers - prevalence

Disclosure

A.A.B. is the first author of the Manual de Tamiz de Problemas de Lenguaje (TPL), which was published by Manual Moderno Publishing Company. Therefore, she receives royalties from the sales.

Publication History

Article published online:
16 April 2024

• References

• Andreu, L., Ahufinger, N., Igualada, A. & Sanz-Torrent, M. (2021). Descripción del cambio del TEL al TDL en contexto angloparlante. Revista de Investigación en Logopedia, 11(Núm. Especial), 9–20
• Auza B, A., Harmon, M. T., & Murata, C. (2018a). Retelling stories: grammatical and lexical measures for identifying monolingual Spanish speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Communication Disorders, 71, 52–60
• Auza Benavides, A., Kapantzoglou, M., & Murata, C. (2018b). Two grammatical tasks for screening language abilities in Spanish-speaking children. American Journal of Language Pathology, 27, 690–705.
• Auza, A., Murata, C., Márquez-Caraveo, M. E., & Morgan, G. (2018c). Manual del Tamiz para detectar Problemas del Lenguaje (TPL). Manual Moderno (pp. 64)
• Auza B, A., Murata, C., & Peñaloza, C. (2023). Predictive validity of a parental questionnaire for identifying children with developmental language disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1110449 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1110449
• Auza, A., & Peñaloza, C. (2019). Factores individuales y familiares en el Trastorno del Desarrollo del Lenguaje (TDL)", Iztapalapa. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 86(40), 11–36
• Auza, A., Peñaloza, C., & Murata, C. (2019). The influence of maternal education on the linguistic abilities of monolingual Spanish-speaking children with and without specific language impairment. In: E. Aguilar Eva, L. Buil-Legaz, R. López-Penadés, V. A. Sanchez-Azanza & D. Adrover-Roig (Eds.) Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages (pp. 93–112). John Benjamins. ISBN: 9789027203212
• Azcoaga, J. E., Bello, J. A., Citrinovitz, J., Derman, B., & Frutos, W. M. (1987). Los retardos del lenguaje en el niño. Neuropsicología Paidós
• Barbieri, Z., Maggiolo, M., & Alfaro, S. (1999). Trastornos de la comunicación oral en niños que asisten a control de salud en un consultorio de atención primaria. Revista Chilena de Pediatria, 70(1), 36–40
• Barragan, B., Castilla-Earls, A., Martinez-Nieto, L., Restrepo, M. A., & Gray, S. (2018). Performance of low-income dual language learners attending English-only schools on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition, Spanish. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49(2), 292–305
• Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 44, 905–924
• Bedore, L., & Leonard, L. (2005). Verb inflections and noun phrase morphology in the spontaneous speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Linguistics, 26, 195–225
• Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., Gillam, R. B., & Ho, T. H. (2010). Language sample measures and language ability in Spanish-English bilingual kindergarteners. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43(6), 498–510
• Beitchman, J. H., Nair, R., Clegg, M., Ferguson, B., & Patel, P. G. (1986). Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in children with speech and language disorders. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 25(4), 528–535
• Bishop, D. V. (2014). Ten questions about terminology for children with unexplained language problems. International journal of language & communication disorders, 49(4), 381–415
• Bishop, D. V. M., Snowling, M. J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh, T., & The CATALISE Consortium. (2017). Phase 2 of CATALISE: a multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry. Accessed March 26, 2024 at: https://peerj.com/preprints/2484.pdf
• Bishop, D. V. M., & Leonard, L. B. (Eds.). (2000). Speech and Language Impairments in Children: Causes, Characteristics, Intervention and Outcome. Psychology Press
• Black, E., Peppé, S., & Gibbon, F. (2008). The relationship between socio-economic status and lexical development. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 22(4-5), 259–265
• Calder, S. D., Brennan-Jones, C. G., Robinson, M., Whitehouse, A., & Hill, E. (2022). The prevalence of and potential risk factors for developmental language disorder at 10 years in the Raine Study. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 58(11), 2044–2050
• Castilla-Earls, A., Bedore, L., Rojas, R., Fabiano-Smith, L., Pruitt-Lord, S., Restrepo, M. A., & Peña, E. (2020). Beyond scores: using converging evidence to determine speech and language services eligibility for dual language learners. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(3), 1116–1132
• Castilla-Earls, A., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., & Auza, A. (2021). Elicited vs. spontaneous language as methods for the assessment of grammatical development: the DEME assessment tool. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 41(4), 164–171
• Chilosi, A. M., Brovedani, P., Cipriani, P., & Casalini, C. (2023). Sex differences in early language delay and in developmental language disorder. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 101(5), 654–667
• Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Erlbaum Associates
• Conti-Ramsden, G., & Botting, N. (1999). Classification of children with specific language impairment: longitudinal considerations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 42(5), 1195–1204.
• De Barbieri, Z., Maggiolo, M., & Alfaro, S. (1999). Trastornos de la comunicación oral en niños que asisten a control de salud en un consultorio de atención primaria. Revista Chilena de Pediatria, 70, 36–40
• Delacre, M., Lakens, D., & Leys, C. (2017). Why psychologists should by default use Welch's t-test instead of student's t-test. Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 30(1), 92
• Eisenberg, S., & Guo, L. Y. (2016). Using language sample analysis in clinical practice: measures of grammatical accuracy for identifying language impairment in preschool and school-aged children. Seminars in Speech and Language, 37(2), 106–116
• Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., & Simon-Cereijido, G. (2009). Using language sampling in clinical assessments with bilingual children: challenges and future directions. Seminars in Speech and Language, 30(4), 234–245
• Gad-Allah, H., Abd-Elraouf, S., Abou-Elsaad, T., & Abd-Elwahed, M. (2012). Identification of communication disorders among Egyptian Arabic-speaking nursery schools' children. Egyptian Journal of Ear, Nose, Throat and Allied Sciences, 13(2), 83–90
• Hannus, S., Kauppila, T., & Launonen, K. (2009). Increasing prevalence of specific language impairment (SLI) in primary healthcare of a Finnish town, 1989-99. International Journal of Communication Disorders, 44(1), 79–97
• Harrison, L. J., & McLeod, S. (2010). Risk and protective factors associated with speech and language impairment in a nationally representative sample of 4- to 5-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 53, 508–529
• Heilmann, J. J., Miller, J. F., & Nockerts, A. (2010). Using language sample databases. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 41(1), 84–95
• Hoff, E. (2003). Causes and consequences of SES-related differences in parent-to-child speech. In: M. H. Bornstein & R. H. Bradley (Eds.). Socioeconomic Status, Parenting and Child Development (pp.147–160). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía. (2020). Las personas con discapacidad en Mexico [People with Disabilities in Mexico]. Accessed March 26, 2024 at: https://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/olap/consulta/general_ver4/MDXQueryDatos.asp?c=
• Jensen, S. K. G., Berens, A. E., & Nelson, C. A., III. (2017). Effects of poverty on interacting biological systems underlying child development. The Lancet. Child & Adolescent Health, 1(3), 225–239
• Kapantzoglou, M., Restrepo, M. A., Gray, S., & Thompson, M. S. (2015). Language ability groups in bilingual children: a latent profile analysis. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 58(5), 1549–1562.
• Kapantzoglou, M., Thompson, M. S., Gray, S., & Restrepo, M. A. (2016). Assessing measurement invariance for Spanish sentence repetition and morphology elicitation tasks. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 59(2), 254–266.
• Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (2004). Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children 2a (KABC) edition. AGS Publishing
• Kroonenberg, P. M., & Verbeek, A. (2018). The tale of Cochran's rule: my contingency table has so many expected values smaller than 5, what am I to do? The American Statistician, 72(2), 175–183
• Lara-Díaz, M. F., Mateus-Moreno, A., & Beltrán-Rojas, J. C. (2021). Reading and oral language skills in children with developmental language disorder: influence of socioeconomic, educational, and family variables. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 718988. Advance online publication. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718988
• Leonard, L. B. (2014). Children with Specific Language Impairment. (2nd ed.). MIT Press
• Mayer, M., & Mayer, M. (1975). One Frog Too Many. Dial Press
• McLennan, D., Barnes, H., Noble, M., Davies, J., Garrett, E., & Dibben, C. (2010). The English Indices of Deprivation 2010. Accessed March 26, 2024 at: https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/the-english-indices-of-deprivation-2010(af4f62e9–8f1e-4fdf-8196–00ec7049c23a)/export.html
• McLeod, S., & Harrison, L. J. (2009). Epidemiology of speech and language impairment in a nationally representative sample of 4- to 5-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 52(5), 1213–1229
• Melchiors Angst, O. V., Pase Liberalesso, K., Marafiga Wiethan, F., & Mota, H. B. (2015). Prevalence of speech-language disorders in kindergarten children of public schools and the social indicators. Revista CEFAC, 17, 727–733
• Miller, J. & Iglesias, A. 2010. Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT), Research Version 2010 [Computer Software]. SALT Software, LLC
• Morgan, G. P., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2009). Variability in the grammatical profile(s) of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Hispanic Child Languages: Typical and Impaired Development. John Benjamins, 283–303
• Morgan, G. P., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2013). Comparison of Spanish morphology of bilingual and monolingual Spanish-speaking children with and without language impairment? Journal of Bilingualism, Language and Cognition, 16(3), 578–596
• Norbury, C. F., Gooch, D., Wray, C., Baird, G., Charman, T., Simonoff, E., Vamvakas, G., & Pickles, A. (2016). The impact of nonverbal ability on prevalence and clinical presentation of language disorder: evidence from a population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 57(11), 1247–1257
• Norbury, C., Griffiths, S., Vamvakas, G., Baird, G., Charman, T., Simonoff, E., & Pickles, A. (2021). Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with prevalence of developmental language disorders, but not rate of language or literacy growth in children from 4 to 11 years: evidence from the Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study (SCALES). But Not Rate of Language or Literacy Growth in Children from, 4.
• Numeroff, L. J. (1985). Si le das una galletita a un ratón. Harper Collins
• Oryadi-Zanjani, M. M., Vahab, M., Rasouli, J., Ashkbousi, R., & Barpoosh, N. (2015). The Prevalence of Specific Language Impairment in 5-year-old Persian-Speaking Children in Shiraz City of Iran—2015. Journal of Rehabilitation Sciences & Research, 2(4), 93–96
• Parise, C., & Maillart, C. (2009). Specific language impairment as systemic developmental disorders. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22, 109–122
• Peña, E. D., Gutierrez-Clellen, V., Iglesias, A., Goldstein, B., & Bedore, L. M. (2014). BESA: Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment Manual. AR-Clinical Publications
• Restrepo, M. A. (1998). Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 41, 1398–1411
• Rizzoli-Córdoba, A., Ortega-Ríosvelasco, F., Villasís-Keever, M. Á., Pizarro-Castellanos, M., Buenrostro-Márquez, G., Aceves-Villagrán, D., O'Shea-Cuevas, G., & Muñoz-Hernández, O. (2014). Confiabilidad de la detección de problemas de desarrollo mediante el semáforo de la prueba de Evaluación del Desarrollo Infantil: ¿es diferente un resultado amarillo de uno rojo? Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México, 71(5), 277–285
• Ruxton, G. D. (2006). The unequal variance t-test is an underused alternative to Student's t-test and the Mann–Whitney U test. Behavioral Ecology, 17(4), 688–690
• Romero-Martínez, M., Shamah-Levy, T., Franco-Núñez, A., Villalpando, S., Franco, A., Cuevas-Nasu, L., Romero-Martínez, M., & Hernández-Ávila, M. (2012). Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición 2012. Resultados Nacionales. Cuernavaca, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (MX). Accessed March 26, 2024 at: https://ensanut.insp.mx/informes/ENSANUT2012ResultadosNacionales.pdf
• Rudolph, J. M. (2017). Case history risk factors for specific language impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26(3), 991–1010
• Semel, E., Wiig, E. H., & Secord, W. A. (2006). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Fourth Edition, Spanish Edition. Pearson
• Simón-Cereijido, G., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. (2007). Spontaneous language markers of Spanish language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(2), 317–339
• Skovlund, E., & Fenstad, G. U. (2001). Should we always choose a nonparametric test when comparing two apparently nonnormal distributions? Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 54(1), 86–92
• Stevenson, J., & Richman, N. (1976). The prevalence of language delay in a population of three-year-old children and its association with general retardation. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 18, 431–441
• Tchoungui Oyono, L., Pascoe, M., & Singh, S. (2018). The prevalence of speech and language disorders in French-speaking preschool children from Yaoundé (Cameroon). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 61, 1238–1250
• Tomblin, J. B., Records, N. L., Buckwalter, P., Zhang, X., Smith, E., & O'Brien, M. (1997). Prevalence of specific language impairment in kindergarten children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 40, 1245–1260
• Valade, F., Béliveau, M. J., Breault, C., Chabot, B., & Labelle, F. (2023). Individual and cumulative risk factors in developmental language disorder: a case-control study. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 28(1), 398–414
• Villanueva, P., de Barbieri, Z., Palomino, H. M., & Palomino, H. (2008). Alta prevalencia de trastorno específico de lenguaje en isla Robinson Crusoe y probable efecto fundador. Revista Medica de Chile, 136, 186–192
• Wu, S., Zhao, J., de Villiers, J., Liu, X. L., Rolfhus, E., Sun, X., Li, X., Pan, H., Wang, H., Zhu, Q., Dong, Y., Zhang, Y., & Jiang, F. (2023). Prevalence, co-occurring difficulties, and risk factors of developmental language disorder: first evidence for Mandarin-speaking children in a population-based study. The Lancet Regional Health. Western Pacific, 34, 100713