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PubMed1981

A comparison of sign and verbal language training with nonverbal retarded children.

Twelve nonverbal, hearing, retarded children were matched and then randomly assigned to sign language training, speech training, and placebo groups. Four of the subjects received speech training using the Bricker. Dennison, and Bricker (1976) program, and four subjects received sign language training using an adaptation of the Bricker et al. program. The results indicated no statistically significant difference between the verbal and sign language groups through the sign group and verbal group did learn significantly more than the placebo group. A closer examination of the findings indicated that although all four of the sign language subjects learned some signs, only two of the four speech training subjects learned to say words. The findings were interpreted as indicating that some nonverbal retarded children will benefit from sign language than speech training. Suggestions for the direction of future research are given.

Child↗

PubMed1993

Verbal analogical reasoning in children with language-learning disabilities.

This study was designed to explore the influences of both cognitive and linguistic abilities on verbal analogy completion. School-age children classified as language-learning disabled were administered five types of verbal analogies: synonyms, antonyms, linear order, category membership, and functional relationship. The performance of the children with language-learning disabilities was compared with one group of normally developing children matched for mental age and another group matched for language age. Results indicated that the group matched for mental age performed better than the other two groups on all types of analogies. Although they had significantly higher mental ages, the children with language-learning disabilities did no better than the language-matched group on any analogy type except antonyms.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

The grammatical morphology of Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment: some competing hypotheses.

Many English-speaking children with specific language impairment have unusual difficulty with grammatical morphemes such as past tense and third-person singular verb inflections and function words such as articles. Unfortunately, the source of this difficulty is not yet clear, in part because some of the possible contributing factors are confounded in English. In the present study, alternative accounts of grammatical morpheme difficulties were evaluated using children with specific language impairment who were acquiring Hebrew. We examined the grammatical morpheme production and comprehension of 15 Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment, 15 normally developing compatriots matched for age and 15 normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance in words. The results provided tentative support for the notion that grammatical morphemes are less difficult for children with specific language impairment if they take the form of stressed and/or lengthened syllables and if they appear in a language in which nouns, verbs, and adjectives must be inflected. The possibility that features such as person, number, and gender are missing from the underlying grammars of these children seems less likely.

Child Language↗

PubMed1994

Relationships between language and gesture in normally developing and late-talking toddlers.

Seventeen toddlers with specific expressive language delay (14 boys and 3 girls between 18 and 33 months of age) were compared to two control groups, one matched for language production and the other matched for age and language comprehension, on measures of spontaneous and imitated gesture production. Late talkers performed like age/comprehension-matched controls on all experimental measures of gesture production and on production of later appearing, more symbolic gestures as reported by parents. Late talkers performed like language-matched controls on earlier appearing communicative gestures and gestural routines as reported by parents. All three groups produced more gestures in canonical imitation conditions than spontaneously. Results are discussed in the contexts of the Local Homology Model and characteristics of toddlers with specific expressive language delay.

Child Language↗

PubMed1999

Maternal education and measures of early speech and language.

The present study was designed to determine whether 4 measures of children's spontaneous speech and language differed according to the educational level of the children's mothers. Spontaneous language samples from 240 three-year-old children were analyzed to determine mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm), number of different words (NDW), total number of words (TNW), and percentage of consonants correct (PCC). A norm-referenced, knowledge-dependent measure of language comprehension, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R), was also included for purposes of comparison with the spontaneous measures. Three levels of maternal education were compared: less than high school graduate, high school graduate, and college graduate. Trend analyses showed statistically significant linear trends across educational levels for MLUm, NDW, TNW, and PPVT-R; the trend for PCC was not significant. The relationship of maternal education and other sociodemographic variables to measures of children's language should be examined before using such measures to identify children with language disorders.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Sentence processing strategies in children with expressive and expressive-receptive specific language impairments.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the sentence comprehension strategies used by children with expressive and expressive-receptive specific language impairments (SLI) within a language processing framework. Fourteen children with SLI (ages 6;10-7;11) meeting strict selection criteria were compared to seven age-matched and seven younger normal controls. Children were asked to determine the agent in sentences composed of two nouns and a verb (NVN, NNV, VNN) with animacy of the noun as a second factor. Results of group comparisons revealed that children with E-SLI and ER-SLI differed from each other in the comprehension strategies they employed as well as differing from both age-matched and younger normal language control groups. Children with E-SLI relied exclusively on a first noun as agent strategy across all conditions, whereas children with ER-SLI used animacy cues when available. Additionally, maximum likelihood estimates were calculated to investigate individual patterns of performance under different cue conditions. Results revealed a significant correlation between severity of receptive language abilities and the type of strategy used, with better receptive language skills being highly correlated with children's use of word order cues.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2004

Consonant production and language skills in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the phonemic inventories of syllable-initial consonants in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants, assessing the relationship between the children's mastery levels of consonant production and their receptive and expressive language skills. DESIGN: Descriptive study. SETTING: Chi-Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan. PATIENTS: The 30 prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants who participated in the study ranged in age from 6 years to 12 years 6 months, and their age at implantation ranged from 2 years 3 months to 10 years 3 months. The average length of device experience was 3 years 7 months (range, 1 year 7 months to 6 years 5 months). None of the children was identified with concomitant learning disabilities. OUTCOME MEASURES: The 21 Mandarin syllable-initial consonants were elicited using a set of 105 pictures. Two language assessment tools were used to evaluate the children's receptive vocabulary skills as well as their overall receptive and expressive language development. RESULTS: The mean +/- SD score for correct consonant production was 57.9% +/- 19.5%. Regarding the manner of articulation, plosives received the highest average correct percentage whereas nasals, affricates, fricatives, and the lateral approximant /l/ were less frequently correct. The children's overall percentage of correct scores for consonant production and receptive vocabulary measure were significantly correlated (r = 0.51; P =.005). Additionally, correlation coefficients were significant between the overall score for correct consonant production and both the scores for receptive language measure (r = 0.65; P<.001) and expressive language measure (r = 0.76; P<.001). The participants' consonant production skills were negatively correlated with age at implantation (r = - 0.46; P =.01) and positively correlated with length of experience with cochlear implant (r = 0.45; P =.02). CONCLUSIONS: Mastery levels of Mandarin syllable-initial consonants remained moderately low in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants. The present results suggest a significant association between consonant production skills and language development in these children.

Asian People↗

PubMed1976

The bedtime story and language development.

Reading to children contributes significantly to their language development in general and their reading growth in particular. Children learn to comprehend and produce oral and written language through a variety of language experiences. Exposure to the world of books through a regular story time contributes to the child's knowledge store of language, concepts, and ideas. Story time also provides practice in attending to and comprehending written language and promotes a positive association with books and reading. The developmental needs of children suggest practical guidelines for the selection and evaluation of books to read to young children. Pediatricians are in a unique position to educate parents about these developmental needs as well as language acquisition. They can guide parents in providing a rich literary experience that could contribute to the intellectual, social, and emotional growth of their children.

Books↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Dyslexia may show a different face in different languages.

Since research into dyslexic difficulties has been conducted predominately among those whose first language is English, assumptions may have been made about the nature of dyslexia which are dependent on the complex features of that language. This paper considers first a sample of 'transparent' languages without those particular inconsistencies of phoneme-grapheme correspondence: they seem to produce fewer children with problems but nevertheless do present some different inconsistencies of their own. Another 'opaque' language (French) is shown to present different problems from English. Finally, the paper considers what the difficulties for dyslexics could be in countries with languages having a morphemic script, e.g. Chinese and Japanese kanji. It is suggested that more research is needed into the ways in which particular languages generate particular dyslexic manifestations.

China↗

PubMed1999

Language area localization with three-dimensional functional magnetic resonance imaging matches intrasulcal electrostimulation in Broca's area.

In this study, intraoperative electrocortical stimulation mapping (ioESM), the current gold standard for the localization of critical language areas, is compared with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a 14-year-old girl with medically intractable epilepsy caused by a tumor in the region of Broca's area. Prior to the operation, four different fMRI tasks that target inferior frontal language areas were applied. Prior to the resection, ioESM as well as fMRI detected no language areas at the exposed cortical area. After removal of the tumor, a unique opportunity presented itself, where ioESM could be performed in the depth of a now exposed and intact gyrus. One specific locus that was indicated to be a critical language area by multiple-task fMRI was targeted. IoESM selectively confirmed the location of this language area to within an estimated 3 mm. We propose that the combined use of different fMRI tasks increases the sensitivity and specificity for the detection of essential language areas.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Language recovery after left hemispherectomy in children with late-onset seizures.

We investigated the language capabilities of the isolated right hemisphere in 6 children (age, 7-14 years) after left hemidecorticectomy for treatment of Rasmussen's syndrome. Patients were right-handed before surgery and had at least 5 years of normal language development before the onset of seizures. Language testing included speech sound (phoneme) discrimination, single word and phrasal comprehension, repetition, and naming. Within 4 to 16 days after surgery, patients showed improved phoneme discrimination compared with their performance shortly before surgery. Other language functions remained severely impaired until at least 6 months after surgery. By 1 year after surgery, receptive functions were comparable with, or surpassed, patient presurgery performance. Although word repetition was intact by 1 year after surgery, naming remained impaired, and patient speech was limited largely to production of single words. These results suggest that the right hemisphere is innately capable of supporting multiple aspects of phoneme processing. Recovery of higher level receptive and, to a lesser extent, expressive language functions is attributed to plasticity of the right hemisphere, which appears to persist beyond the proposed critical period for language acquisition and lateralization.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Primary progressive aphasia: PPA and the language network.

Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a behaviorally focal dementia syndrome with deterioration of language functions but relative preservation of other cognitive domains for at least the first two years of disease. In this study, PPA patients with impaired word finding but intact comprehension of conversational speech and their matched control subjects were examined using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI compared signal changes during phonological and semantic language tasks with those during a control task (matching letters). PPA patients showed longer reaction times and reduced accuracy versus controls on the language tasks, but no performance differences on the control task. VBM demonstrated reduced gray matter in left superior temporal and inferior parietal regions in the PPA group. However, these patients showed a normal pattern of activation within the classical language regions. In addition, PPA patients showed activations, not seen in normals, in fusiform gyrus, precentral gyrus, and intra-parietal sulcus. These activations were found to correlate negatively with measures of naming and task performance. The additional activations in PPA may therefore represent a compensatory spread of language-related neural activity or a failure to suppress activity in areas normally inhibited during language tasks.

Aged↗

PubMed2002

The importance of rapid auditory processing abilities to early language development: evidence from converging methodologies.

The ability to process two or more rapidly presented, successive, auditory stimuli is believed to underlie successful language acquisition. Likewise, deficits in rapid auditory processing of both verbal and nonverbal stimuli are characteristic of individuals with developmental language disorders such as Specific Language Impairment. Auditory processing abilities are well developed in infancy, and thus such deficits should be detectable in infants. In the studies presented here, converging methodologies are used to examine such abilities in infants with and without a family history of language disorder. Behavioral measures, including assessments of infant information processing, and an EEG/event-related potential (ERP) paradigm are used concurrently. Results suggest that rapid auditory processing skills differ as a function of family history and are predictive of later language outcome. Further, these paradigms may prove to be sensitive tools for identifying children with poor processing skills in infancy and thus at a higher risk for developing a language disorder.

Auditory Perception↗

PubMed2006

A survey of language barriers from the perspective of pediatric oncologists, interpreters, and parents.

BACKGROUND: Oncologists in the US increasingly face the challenge of communicating with non-English speaking parents of children with cancer. This study explores this challenge from the perspectives of a sample of pediatric oncologists, interpreters, and Spanish-speaking parents of children with newly diagnosed leukemia. PROCEDURE: Thirty-seven oncologists and 17 professional language interpreters based at two non-profit pediatric hospitals in the US were surveyed on the topic of language barriers in pediatric care. Seventeen parents who communicated with their child's oncologist through an interpreter were also surveyed. RESULTS: All groups expressed considerable concern over the process of communicating across a language barrier. For oncologists, these concerns included the accuracy and completeness of interpretations, complexity of information, and loss of confidence and control over the communication process. For interpreters, they included complexity of information, information overload, and lack of clinician sensitivity toward the cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds of limited English proficiency (LEP) families. Parent concerns included difficulties comprehending information and anxiety over the possibility of missing out on important information. All groups provided multiple suggestions for improving communication across a language barrier. CONCLUSIONS: Oncologists, interpreters, and parents expressed considerable concern over the process of communicating across a language barrier. Some of these concerns could be minimized through efforts to boost interpreter accuracy and completeness, including the use of more simple, easy to understand language. Other issues, such as differences in culture and socioeconomic background, warrant consideration of the intercultural knowledge and skills of interpreters.

Child↗

PubMed1997

A reconsideration of bilateral language representation based on the intracarotid amobarbital procedure.

Hemispheric language dominance was established for 368 epilepsy surgery candidates based on results of objective language performance during the intracarotid amobarbital procedure. Eight-three percent of patients were found to be left hemisphere dominant, while six percent were right dominant, and eleven percent demonstrated some degree of bilateral language representation. Bilateral patients were grouped according to modality-specific patterns of language performance in each hemisphere, with a majority demonstrating left hemisphere superiority in overall language processing. Variables affecting atypical language development are reviewed and results are considered in the context of previous research.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Pre- and perinatal hazards and family background in children with specific language impairments: a study of twins.

A clinical group composed of 84 twin pairs where one or both twins met stringent psychometric criteria for specific speech-language impairment was compared with 36 twin pairs with no history of speech-language difficulties. Twins with speech-language impairment tended to have more siblings than control twins and were significantly more likely to have an affected parent. Groups were closely similar in terms of length of gestation and mother's antenatal condition, except that maternal toxemia was unusually frequent in the clinical group. Children from the two groups did not differ in terms of Apgar scores or on a composite measure of perinatal hazards. Within the clinical group, MZ pairs with substantial differences in neonatal status did not differ in language outcome. It is suggested that if an association with toxemia can be replicated, this might reflect a common genetic basis for immune disorders and developmental language delay. Perinatal hazard was unrelated to subtype of speech-language impairment.

Child↗

PubMed1997

An artificial life approach to language.

The aim of the paper is to show that an Artificial Life approach to language tends to change the research agenda on language which has been shared by both the symbolic paradigm and classical connectionism. Artificial Life Neural Networks (ALNNs) are different from classical connectionist networks because they interact with an independent physical environment; are subject to evolutionary, developmental, and cultural change, and not only to learning; and are part of organisms that have a physical body, have a life (are born, develop, and die), and are members of genetic and sometimes, cultural populations. Using ALNNs to study language shifts the emphasis from research on linguistic forms and laboratory-like tasks to the investigation of the emergence and transmission of language, the use of language, its role in cognition, and language as a populational rather than as an individual phenomenon.

Animal Communication↗

PubMed2001

The bilingual brain: cerebral representation of languages.

The present article deals with theoretical and experimental aspects of language representation in the multilingual brain. Two general approaches were adopted in the study of the bilingual brain. The study of bilingual aphasics allows us to describe dissociations and double dissociations between the different subcomponents of the various languages. Furthermore, symptoms peculiar to bilingual aphasia were reported (pathological mixing and switching and translations disorders) which allowed the correlation of some abilities specific to bilinguals with particular neurofunctional systems. Another approach to the study of the bilingual brain is of the experimental type, such as electrophysiological investigations (electrocorticostimulation during brain surgery and event-related potentials) and functional neuroanatomy studies (positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging). Functional neuroanatomy studies investigated the brain representation of languages when processing lexical and syntactic stimuli and short stories. Neurophysiologic and neuroimaging studies evidenced a similar cerebral representation of L1 and L2 lexicons both in early and late bilinguals. The representation of grammatical aspects of languages seems to be different between the two languages if L2 is acquired after the age of 7, with automatic processes and correctness being lower than those of the native language. These results are in line with a greater representation of the two lexicons in the declarative memory systems, whereas morphosyntactic aspects may be organized in different systems according to the acquisition vs learning modality.

Brain↗