Inquiry: Are Late Talkers Early Walkers (& vice versa)?

[Lois Bloom]

There are, indeed, complementary effects in development, both competitive
and collaborative, and these occur at both the molar and the molecular
levels.  For an example of large developmental effects over longitudinal
time between progress in language (first words and a vocabulary spurt),
and object play (specifically, constructing thematic relations between
objects) (result: developments in the two occur together), see:

Lifter, K., & Bloom, L. (1989). Object play and the emergence of language.
Infant Behavior and Development, 12, 395-423.

And between these same achievements in language and emotional expression
(result: the two compete with each other developmentally), see:

Bloom, L., & Capatides, J. (1987).  Expression of affect and the emergence
of language. Child Development, 58, 1513-1522.

And between emotional expression and the emergence of syntax, see:

Bloom, L. & Tinker, E. (2001). The intentionality model and language
acquisition: Engagement, effort, and the essential tension. Monographs of
the Society for Research in Child Development, 66 (4, Serial No. 267).

However, the question that began the present discussion in Childes had to
do with such molar developments in language and walking and, so far, I
have seen no report of such effects one way or the other.  We didn't find
them.

However, I would not be surprised to find more molecular effects in the
microgenetic unfolding of such actions.  I suspect, for example, that the
one-year-olds we studied were not saying words, much less phrases and
simple sentences (or expressing emotion), while trying to stack the 1-in.
cubes to make a tower, or while taking their first steps.  Those are
empirical questions, but we didn't ask them.

However, we did find such microgenetic effects in real time between
language and emotional expression, see:

Bloom, L., & Beckwith, R. (1989), Talking with feeling: Integrating
affective and linguistic expression in early language development.
Cognition and emotion, 3, 313-342. Reprinted in C. Izard (Ed.),
Development of emotion-cognition relations (pp. 313-342). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.

And between language (child and mother speech), emotional expression, and
object play; see Bloom & Tinker (2001).

For a vintage study showing competition as well as collaboration *within*
the domain of language (lexicon, syntax, and discourse), see:

Bloom, L., Miller, P., & Hood, L. (1975). Variation and reduction as
aspects of competence in language development.  In A. Pick (Ed.),
Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, (Vol. 9, pp 3-55). Minneapolis MN:
University of Minnesota Press.  Reprinted in L. Bloom (1991). Language
development from two to three (pp. 86-142). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Effects such as these may or may not have to do with questions of
modularity.  But there are other ways of looking at them (e.g., Bloom &
Tinker, 2001; Bloom, 1993).

--Lois Bloom