Developing language in a developing body: genetic associations of infant gross motor behaviour and self‐care/symbolic actions with emerging language abilities

BackgroundMastering gross motor abilities in early infancy and culturally defined actions (e.g. self‐care routines) in late infancy can initiate cascading developmental changes that affect language learning. Here, we adopt a genetic perspective to investigate underlying processes, implicating either shared or “gateway” mechanisms, where the latter enable children to interact with their environment.MethodsSelecting heritable traits (h2, heritability), we studied infant gross motor (6 months) and self‐care/symbolic (15 months) skills as predictors of 10 language outcomes (15–38 months) in genotyped children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N ≤ 7,017). Language measures were combined into three interrelated language factors (LF) using structural equation modeling (SEM), corresponding to largely different age windows (LF15M, LF24M, LF38M, 51.3% total explained variance). Developmental genomic and non‐genomic relationships across measures were dissected with Cholesky decompositions using genetic‐relationship‐matrix structural equation modeling (GRM‐SEM) as part of a multivariate approach.ResultsGross motor abilities at 6 months (h2 = 0.18 (SE = .06)) and self‐care/symbolic actions at 15 months (h2 = 0.18 (SE = .06)) were modestly heritable, as well as the three derived language factor scores (LFS15M‐h2 = 0.12 (SE = .05), LFS24M‐h2 = 0.21 (SE = .06), LFS38M‐h2 = 0.17 (SE = .05)), enabling genetic analyses. Developmental genetic models (GRM‐SEM) showed that gross motor abilities (6 months) share genetic influences with self‐care/symbolic actions (15 months, factor loading λ; λ = 0.22 (SE = .09)), but not with language performance (p ≥ .05). In contrast, genetic influences underlying self‐care/symbolic actions, independent of early gross motor skills, were related to all three language factors (LFS15M‐λ = 0.26 (SE = .09), LFS24M‐λ = 0.28 (SE = .10), LFS38M‐λ = 0.30 (SE = .10)). Multivariate models studying individual language outcomes provided consistent results, both for genomic and non‐genomic influences.ConclusionsGenetically encoded processes linking gross motor behaviour in young infants to self‐care/symbolic actions in older infants are different from those linking self‐care/symbolic actions to emerging language abilities. These findings are consistent with a developmental cascade where motor control enables children to engage in novel social interactions, but children's social learning abilities foster language development.