Gestures, signs, and words in early language development.
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This study was designed to compare the effects of speech and speech-plus-sign stimulation during comprehension treatment on the oral language learning and generalization of action + object relational meanings. Ten home-reared Down's syndrome children in Early Stage 1 received concurrent comprehension treatment in Speech and Speech-Sign conditions using a miniature linguistic system. Upon attainment of criterion level performance in both conditions, generalization tasks were administered to measure the effects of the comprehension treatment on the comprehension and the production of treated and untreated action + object combinations. The results obtained from this study indicated that the two treatment conditions did not differ significantly for either learning or generalization. The data did, however, indicate that individual patterns of acquisition were evident among the children. Caution is advised concerning the automatic adoption or rejection of manual sign as part of oral language intervention programs.
Simultaneous sign and spoken language training was conducted with young, language-disordered children under standardized training and follow-up conditions with a stringent learning criterion to determine if language learned was stable over time. Twenty-one children between 36 and 86 months with no or nonfunctional language participated in the study. Diagnoses included autism, mental retardation, combined autism and mental retardation, and developmental aphasia. Children completed a mean of 74 signed speech training sessions. Sessions were twice daily, 5 days a week. Follow-up evaluations were made approximately 6 months after training. Of the 21 children, 17 learned at least one word and 7 children learned multiple-word phrases during the training. Most language learned in training was found to be retained at follow-up approximately 6 months later. Gestural imitation, play style, language age, developmental age, and fine motor skills had strong correlations with language learning and retention.
In previous studies, evidence concerning the extent of automatic word recognition in deaf children and the influence of language fluency on word and sign recognition (as indexed by the Stroop task) has been contradictory. This study examined the effects of English and sign language fluency in the automatic word and sign recognition of deaf and hearing adults. Results indicated that responding in sign took longer and created more Stroop interference than responding orally. Two groups of certified interpreters revealed this finding to be independent of hearing status. Most important, deaf subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing signs than words, whereas hearing subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing words than signs. This pattern was unaffected by language fluency. The findings clarify the results of previous studies both theoretically and methodologically.
OBJECTIVE: To quantify progress after cochlear implantation for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective review of speech and language and speech perception test scores of children with autism who have received a cochlear implant at our center. SETTING: University of Michigan Medical Center, Cochlear Implant Program. PATIENTS: Six children, ages 3 to 16 years, who received cochlear implants at the our center. All children were diagnosed as having ASD by a neuropsychologist, either before or after receiving a cochlear implant. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Children participated in preoperative and postoperative speech and language and speech perception testing. A survey was administered to parents to evaluate subjective impressions of cochlear implant benefit and quality of life before and after implantation. RESULTS: Improved scores were recorded for children on whom standardized expressive and receptive vocabulary testing was possible. Children who could not complete standardized tests demonstrated improvement in raw scores. Improvement on the Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale was noted for the 4 of 7 children who completed the scale preoperatively and postoperatively. Survey results suggested changes in responsiveness to sound, interest in music, vocalization, and eye contact following implantation. Five of the 6 families indicated that they would recommend a cochlear implant to another family in a similar situation. CONCLUSIONS: Gains made by children in our study were small compared with the general implant population; however, when compared with themselves preoperatively, these children did demonstrate progress. Improvements in behaviors and interaction point to a quality of life benefit following implantation that is difficult to quantify.
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The present paper reviews, outlines, and explores the literature concerned with the speech-language disorder of childhood autism. The problems of communication of the autistic child are compared and contrasted with those of children with a variety of other language disorders (e.g. receptive developmental dysphasia). Based upon the review of normal preverbal communicatory and symbolic development, it is concluded that childhood autism involves a pervasive language disorder encompassing communication in general, as well as certain symbolic-representational abilities necessary for language. An overview of the attempts to teach speech to autistic children in then undertaken with special emphasis on the possible implications of developmental knowledge for these training pursuits. Finally, the role of neurologic substrates in the language and communication disorder of autism is presented.
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In manual-cued speech (MCS) a speaker produces hand gestures to resolve ambiguities among speech elements that are often confused by speechreaders. The shape of the hand distinguishes among consonants; the position of the hand relative to the face distinguishes among vowels. Experienced receivers of MCS achieve nearly perfect reception of everyday connected speech. MCS has been taught to very young deaf children and greatly facilitates language learning, communication, and general education. This manuscript describes a system that can produce a form of cued speech automatically in real time and reports on its evaluation by trained receivers of MCS. Cues are derived by a hidden markov models (HMM)-based speaker-dependent phonetic speech recognizer that uses context-dependent phone models and are presented visually by superimposing animated handshapes on the face of the talker. The benefit provided by these cues strongly depends on articulation of hand movements and on precise synchronization of the actions of the hands and the face. Using the system reported here, experienced cue receivers can recognize roughly two-thirds of the keywords in cued low-context sentences correctly, compared to roughly one-third by speechreading alone (SA). The practical significance of these improvements is to support fairly normal rates of reception of conversational speech, a task that is often difficult via SA.
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Fifty-two children who had deaf parents and were thought to have normal hearing were evaluated for speech, hearing, and language problems. Standardized tests, audiological evaluations, and informal conversation and play techniques were used. Of the 52 children of deaf parents, less than half were considered to be developing speech and language normally and 12% had previously undiagnosed hearing loss. The prevalence of speech and language problems and hearing losses is higher in this population than in the population at large. The children appeared to be using two systems to communicate, one with hearing people and one with the deaf. Of the children having some speech and language difficulty, approximately half had problems that were not associated with other known physiological or environmental factors that might affect speech and language. Although there were no children of intelligible mothers who had speech and language problems, there were children developing normally who had parents whose speech intelligibility was poor. Contrary to indications in the literature, speech and language problems did not disappear after the children entered school. A large number of school-age children as well as preschoolers appeared to be having speech and language problems. The amount of time spent with hearing adults during the preschool years or the presence of older normal-hearing and -speaking siblings did not seem related to speech and language difficulty. However, when an elder sibling had speech and language difficulty, the younger siblings tended to have similar problems. The relationship between sign and oral language development is ambiguous, but there is no indication that the use of sign language deters oral language development. In view of the high incidence of communication problems in this population, annual audiological evaluations and counseling of deaf parents concerning aspects of hearing loss and normal language development are recommended. The problems encountered in providing therapy are discussed.