English-speaking autistic children use the hesitation marker um less often than non-autistic children but use uh at a similar rate. It is unclear why this is the case. We employed a sample of Dutch-speaking children from the Preschool Brain Imaging and Behavior Project to examine hesitation markers in autistic and non-autistic preschoolers with the aim to 1) make a crosslinguistic comparison of hesitation marker usage and 2) examine hypotheses regarding the underlying linguistic mechanisms of hesitation markers: the symptom hypothesis and the signal hypothesis. We found initial group differences in all hesitation markers but these results were rendered insignificant after controlling for age, sex and nonverbal cognition. We found significant correlations between hesitation marker usage and expressive and receptive language, but not autism traits. Lastly, we show interesting cross-linguistic differences in hesitation marker usage between Dutch-speaking participants and previously described English-speaking participants, such as a preference for um over uh.

Maternal depression and anxiety are potential risk factors to children's language environments and development. Though existing work has examined relations between these constructs, further work is needed accounting for both depression and anxiety and using more direct measures of the home language environment and children's language development. We examined 265 mother-infant dyads (49.6% female, Mage = 17.03 months) from a large city in the Western United States to explore the relations between self-reports of maternal depression and anxiety and observational indices of the home language environment and expressive language as captured by Language Environment Analysis (LENA) and parent-reported language comprehension and production. Results revealed maternal depressive symptoms to be negatively associated with home language environment and expressive language indices. Maternal anxiety symptoms were found to be negatively associated with children's parent-reported language production. These findings provide further evidence that maternal mental health modulates children's home language environments and expressive language.

Recent advances in the treatment of children with severe congenital heart defects, such as hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and other forms of univentricular heart (UVH), have significantly improved their survival rates. However, these children are at risk for various neurodevelopmental deficits. The aim of the present study was to assess cognitive development, expressive language, and behavior in 30-month-old children with univentricular heart. The participants were 22 children with HLHS, 14 with UVH, and 41 healthy control subjects. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development II, MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories, and Child Behavior Checklist were used for assessments. The results revealed that children with HLHS exhibited a significantly lower mean mental development index, more delays in expressive language functions, and more behavioral problems than did the control children. Two children with HLHS (9%) had mental development indexes below 50, indicating significantly delayed performance. The children with UVH differed from the control children with respect to their lower mean mental development index. These findings suggest that at the age of 30 months, neurodevelopmental deficits are especially prevalent in children with HLHS. Thus, early developmental screening, intervention, and neuropsychological follow-up until school age is recommended particularly for the children with HLHS. (JINS, 2011, 17, 1094–1103)