The poor-communicating two-year-old and his family.

Two groups of children have been studied. Each group consisted of 21 two-year-olds, who had been matched individually for age, sex and social class, but who had widely differing abilities in both comprehension and expression of language.High-risk families were defined as those in which there was evidence of significant social or emotional deprivation. There was a statistically significant correlation between delayed language development in a two-year-old and evidence of psychosocial deprivation in his family.