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PubMed1998

A cross-sectional study of speech- and language-abilities of children with normal hearing, mild fluctuating conductive hearing loss, or moderate to profound sensoneurinal hearing loss.

A total of 1528 pre-school children (mean age 4 years and 9 months), being identified as speech or language delayed, were evaluated with respect to micro-otoscopy, nose and throat pathology, hearing function, and speech-language abilities. Subjects were classified into groups of (I) constant normal hearing, (II) fluctuating conductive hearing loss and (III) bilateral moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss requiring hearing aids. In groups II and III, severe speech and language pathologies were found more frequently than in group I. Additionally, auditory perception skills were less in group II, even if peripheral hearing function was normalized. Group III was affected more than group II, but not significantly. The results indicate that in children having speech or language delay for severals reasons, mild fluctuating hearing loss can additionally alter language acquisition, but less than in cases of moderate or profound sensoneurinal hearing loss. The need of early detection of sensoneurinal hearing loss appears widely accepted; this study demonstrates also the necessity of early diagnosis of mild fluctuating hearing loss, especially in children with speech-language delay.

Acoustic Impedance Tests↗
PubMed1987

Autonomous languages of twins.

Twins are regularly reported to invent languages of their own, unintelligible to others. These languages are known as autonomous languages, cryptophasia or idioglossia. Despite current belief, this is not a rare phenomenon. Autonomous languages exist in about 40% of all twins, but often disappear soon. In this study, nine autonomous languages are compared: the circumstances in which they emerge, how these languages relate to the parents' language (the model language) and how they are structured. The prototypical situation is one in which two or more close siblings (not necessarily twins) grow up closely together during the language acquisition period. If an adult model language is frequently absent, the children use each other as a model and acquire the language imperfectly. The language may stabilise at that level. If a model is completely absent, the children probably do not create a language. In all cases known, the language consists of onomatopoeic expressions, some invented words, but for the greatest part of words from the adult language adopted to the constrained phonological possibilities of young children. These words being hardly recognizable, the language may turn out to be completely unintelligible to speakers of the model languages, but they resemble each other in that they lack morphology and that word order is based on pragmatic principles such as saliency and the semantic scope of words. Neither the structure of the languages nor its emergence can be explained by other than situational factors.

Child Language↗
PubMed2005

Development and lateralization of language in the presence of early brain lesions.

There is a broad consensus that language is, in most right-handers and in a substantial part of left-handers, controlled by the left hemisphere. This seems to be, at least in part, genetically determined, as neuroanatomical asymmetries have been observed already prenatally (e.g. a larger left planum temporale). Left hemisphere lesions in adolescents and adults accordingly lead to persistent language deficits. However, this is not the case in lesions acquired prenatally or in early childhood.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

What developmental disorders can tell us about the nature and origins of language.

Few areas in the cognitive sciences evoke more controversy than language evolution, due in part to the difficulty in gathering relevant empirical data. The study of developmental disorders is well placed to provide important new clues, but has been hampered by a lack of consensus on the aims and interpretation of the research project. We suggest that the application of the Darwinian principle of 'descent with modification' can help to reconcile much apparently inconsistent data. We close by illustrating how systematic analyses within and between disorders, suitably informed by evolutionary theory-and ideally facilitated by the creation of an open-access database-could provide new insights into language evolution.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed2003

Training day care staff to facilitate children's language.

This exploratory study investigated the outcome of in-service training on language facilitation strategies of child care providers in day care centers. Sixteen caregivers were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Caregivers were taught to be responsive to children's initiations, engage children in interactions, model simplified language, and encourage peer interactions. At posttest, the experimental group waited for children to initiate, engaged them in turn-taking, used face to face interaction, and included uninvolved children more frequently than the control group. In turn, children in the experimental group talked more, produced more combinations, and talked to peers more often than the control group. The results support the viability of this training model in early childhood education settings and suggest directions for future research.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

An evaluation of the facilitative effects of inverted yes-no questions on the acquisition of auxiliary verbs.

According to the Auxiliary Clarification Hypothesis (ACH), yes-no questions with sentence-initial auxiliaries (i.e., inverted questions) facilitate children's initial acquisition of auxiliary verbs. Sixteen 3-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 18 2-year-olds with typical language (TL) participated in an experiment to evaluate the ACH. The children were not yet making use of auxiliaries. Half of the children participated in twenty 30-min "enrichment" sessions over a 2-month period, during which an assistant produced 30 inverted question recasts in response to the child's own utterances. Fifteen question recasts contained the auxiliary is, and 15 contained the modal will. The other half of the children participated in play sessions but were not exposed to inverted is and will questions. Contrary to predictions based on the ACH, the results revealed no positive effects of the enrichment for is, for will, or for the broader BE and Modal auxiliary categories for either group of children. The children with TL demonstrated advantages over the children with SLI for the general category of BE forms but not for the category of Modals. Inverted questions may be too complex to foster the initial acquisition of auxiliaries in children not already using them productively.

Child Language↗
PubMed1983

Contemporary accounts of the cognition/language relationship: implications for speech-language clinicians.

The role of cognition in children's language acquisition is a topic of current debate. This article provides a review of the normative literature and a discussion of questions regarding children who have difficulty acquiring language. Key terminology is described, along with basic issues. Major research questions are identified, along with the competing hypotheses that have been proposed and the evidence associated with each hypothesis. Implications for models of language disorders and remediation activities are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1988

Responses to requests for clarification by linguistically normal and language-impaired children in conversation.

This study compared the conversational repair strategies employed by 8 language-impaired children (mean chronological age 9:2 years) and their linguistically normal age- and language-matched peers in response to a stacked series of requests for clarification. A 30-min language sample was elicited by an adult examiner from each of the subjects. During the course of the conversation, the examiner initiated 10 stacked request for clarification sequences. Each sequence consisted of three different neutral requests for clarification (Huh?, What?, and I didn't understand that.) and the subject's response to each request. All of the subjects appeared to recognize the obligatory nature of the neutral clarification requests employed. However, there were differences noted in the performance of the three groups. These included differences related to language maturity as well as differences specific to language condition.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Maternal recasts and other contingent replies to language-impaired children.

Mothers' recasts and other contingent replies to their children's utterances were examined in two groups of mother-child dyads. In one group there were 14 dyads that contained language-impaired children; in the other there were 14 dyads that contained non-language-impaired children. Results indicated that mothers' overall use of recasts, as well as other contingent replies, was highly similar for the two groups, except that complex recasts were used more often by the mothers of non-language-impaired children. Differences in discourse functions were also observed. Mothers of language-impaired children used recasts less often than mothers of non-language-impaired children to respond to, or request clarification of, their children's utterances. Further, they more often used such replies to serve the functions of information requests, assertion, or direction. Recasts were also found to vary in relation to observed differences in children's intelligibility and in contrasting patterns of dialogue initiation for the two kinds of dyads.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1980

The effects of children's language comprehension level on adults child-directed talk.

The present study attempted to test quasi-experimentally the hypothesis that children's language comprehension level is the major determinant of the modifications characteristic of child-directed talk (CDT). Language comprehension level was varied by selecting four-year-old, language-impaired children with two levels of comprehension. Data on 21 measures of structural and pragmatic aspects of CDT were obtained from videotapes of 20 half-hour, freeplay sessions in which each of ten adults talked individually with one child from each level. A t test for paired samples generated four significant differences (p less than 0.05). Language addressed to the high comprehending children contained (1) more frequent use of the semantic category state, (2) greater lexical diversity, (3) more frequent reference to nonpresent objects, persons, and events, and (4) less frequent nonverbal cueing. Variation in the children's comprehension strategies appears to provide a better explanation for these differences than variation in their comprehension of language structure. An alternate explanation of the results, the conversational model, proved of limited value in explaining structural CDT modifications.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

The acquisition of personal pronouns and proper names by an identical twin pair.

Twins have been reported to suffer both identity confusion and language delay as a result of their twinship. Evidence for such difficulties was sought by studying the acquisition of personal pronouns and naming conventions in one pair of identical twin boys from age 2:1 to 2:10. The twins' acquisition of personal pronouns was in accordance with nontwin norms. Their apparent delay in conventional proper name use was attributed to the invention of the word Gaga as a referent for self and other twin. As proper name use emerged, Gaga use declined, whereas personal pronouns remained relatively independent. We concluded that the twins gave no evidence of either an identity confusion or a genuine delay in naming. Rather, the difference in the acquisition of names between these twins and nontwins was the additional step of first naming the twinship before naming each twin, which nontwins would not have a reason to do.

Child Language↗
PubMed1988

Language and gesture in late talkers.

The relationship between language and symbolic gesture was studied in a group of young children who were in the lowest 10% for language production for their age based on information obtained from language inventories filled out by their parents. On a single scheme imitation task, designed to be a gestural analog of lexical production, subjects performed like controls matched for language production. On a multischeme imitation task, designed to be a gestural analog of syntax, subjects performed like age-matched controls, and significantly better than language-matched controls. Potential reasons for this dissociation are discussed in the context of predictors of early language success or impairment.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1991

Approaches to the prediction of language abilities in a sample of children who have developmental delays.

Prediction of the quality of language was explored using planned comparisons of three approaches, one cognitive, one neurodevelopmental, and one a combination of the two. Subjects were 37 children, ages 5-9 years, whose significant developmental delays included language and speech skills. The cognitive predictors were mental age (MA) and IQ from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Neurodevelopmental predictors consisted of fine motor skill quotients (MQs) and dichotic speech processing scores. Chronological age (CA) was also evaluated as a predictor. A composite language ability score constituted the dependent variable. Results of regression analyses showed that CA and MQ, and MA and MQ, were nearly equal in their predictive strengths and were substantial predictors of composite language scores. Larger multiple correlations (low .8 range) were found when combinations of MA, IQ, and MQ or CA, IQ, and MQ were used as predictors. Statistical control over the 4-year age range revealed that approximately equal amounts of prediction of language scores were attributable to CA and a combination of MA, IQ, and MQ. Each of the latter variables contributed important amounts of unique variance to the language score prediction. Dichotic ear scores did not relate to cognitive or language scores and were ineffectual as predictors in regression analysis. Results indicated that children of the type studied have language and speech delays that show substantial relationships to their verbal cognitive abilities and MQs, in addition to their CAs.

Age Factors↗