{"doi":"10.31219/osf.io/dzueb","title":"Infant Neural Speech Encoding Forecasts Language Difficulties in Preschool Years","abstract":"AbstractImportance: Developmental language problems must be detected early to capitalize on the high effectiveness of early intervention. Because developmental language problems are not formally diagnosed until preschool years, a method must be developed and validated to forecast language problems from as early as infancy. Objective: To develop and validate predictive models of language problems using neural data collected from as early as infancy and language problems detected at up to 36 months of age.Design: A cohort study with initial electroencephalography (EEG) neural encoding of speech data collected between 3 weeks and 24 months of age and language outcome data collected between 7 and 36 months of age. The data reported were collected between 2016 and 2024. The cutoff date for analysis was March 25, 2024.Setting: Laboratory and home. Participants: A total of 726 healthy children from a community sample were recruited, 534 of whom with complete EEG and follow-up language data were included in the final analysis.Exposure: Early- and long-latency EEG responses to three speech stimuli (two native and one non-native) were collected. No intervention was involved.Main Outcome Measures: The Chinese Communicative Development Inventory – Cantonese version (CCDI-C) and the language subscale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, third edition (Bayley-III).Results: Random Forest was used as the machine learning algorithm to classify children into binary groups of below or at or above 16th percentile on the outcome measures. Different predictive models were constructed and compared, including those with and without EEG and clinical measures. Models with non-neural measures (e.g., gestational age and birth weight) predicted a language outcome above chance level. Models with EEG measures alone outperformed any models without neural features, with sensitivity and Area Under Curve (AUC) scoring well above 90% for the best models. When validated using unseen data, both sensitivity and AUC remained at 88%.Conclusion & Relevance: EEG neural encoding of speech can be a new procedure for screening language developmental problems as early as infancy. Families with children who are screened positive may consider early intervention in the form of parent coaching to promote better language development.","journal":"OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)","year":2024,"id":493989,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9309,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1340752,"name":"Shaoqi Pan","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1251746,"name":"Ching Man Lai","orcid":"0000-0001-8204-6608","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1340753,"name":"Peggy Chan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":376483,"name":"Gangyi Feng","orcid":"0000-0003-2239-5296","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1089700,"name":"Hugh Simon Lam","orcid":"0000-0001-9912-0544","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":31777,"name":"Tak Yeung Leung","orcid":"0000-0002-9153-0343","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1089696,"name":"Nikolay Novitskiy","orcid":"0000-0002-4039-5209","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1089699,"name":"Ting Fan Leung","orcid":"0000-0002-6469-1926","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":376487,"name":"Patrick C. M. Wong","orcid":"0000-0002-6105-5027","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:09:07.920649Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}