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Predictive factors of persistence and recovery: pathways of childhood stuttering.

This article presents broad preliminary findings from a longitudinal study of stuttering pertaining to differentiation of developmental paths of childhood stuttering, as well as possible early prediction of High Risk, Low Risk, and No Risk for chronic stuttering. More than 100 preschool children who stutter have been closely followed for several years from near the onset of stuttering using a multiple data collection system, with 45 nonstuttering children serving as controls. Thirty-two stuttering and 32 control subjects who have progressed through several stages of the investigation were identified for the present indepth analyses. They represent four subgroups: I. Persistent Stuttering; II. Late Recovery; III. Early Recovery; IV. Control. Comparative data for the groups with special reference to differences in frequency of disfluency, acoustic features, phonologic skills, language development, nonverbal skills, and genetics are presented. The results suggest several promising predictors of recovery and chronicity.

Age of Onset↗

Effectiveness of anticipatory guidance: recent developments.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Anticipatory guidance is a key component of child health supervision. This review discusses the latest evidence on the effectiveness of anticipatory guidance and its impact on child and family functioning. RECENT FINDINGS: Anticipatory guidance on parent-infant interaction, sleep patterns, and injury prevention improve functional outcomes of children and their families. Recent findings also demonstrate that encouraging parents to share books with their children and free book distribution during well child care visits are associated with improved child language development and increased home literacy activities. Guidance promoting injury prevention and reading at home is supported by the best evidence. SUMMARY: Future models of child health supervision should address missed opportunities for anticipatory guidance and parents' desire for more information about what they can do to enhance their children's growth, development, and functioning.

Child Development↗

Recasts in parents' language to their school-age children who stutter: a preliminary study.

UNLABELLED: Language samples collected from 13 school-age children diagnosed as stutterers (CWS) in conversation with a parent and a similar corpus of data collected from a matched control group of 13 normally-fluent children (CWNS) were analyzed for the quality and quantity of recast usage in the parents' language. Recasts, a frequently studied type of child-directed language (CDL) pattern hypothesized to increase the length and complexity of young children's expressive language, have not been studied typically in older children's conversations with parents nor have they been studied in the CDL of parents of CWS. Comparisons of these samples revealed that both groups of parents were frequent users of imitations, as well as simple and complex type recasts. Indeed, the rank order of recast types used was identical for the two groups of caregivers. When parents' conversations with the CWS were analyzed further, it was noted that they were not more likely to focus on stuttered utterances as the utterances on which to base their recasts (i.e., "platform utterances") than on the child's fluently-produced utterances. These results suggest there is one additional conversation parameter for which there are evident similarities in the CDL used by parents of CWS and CWNS. Clinical implications gleaned from this preliminary study are discussed, as are suggestions for future study. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to describe (1) the role of recasts in young children's language development; (2) the types of recasts that were observed in the conversations of parents of CWS and CWNS; and (3) the similarities observed in the recasts produced by parents of CWS and CWNS.

Child↗

Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities.

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance. For non-speech formant transitions, 69% of the G-SLI children showed normal auditory processing, whereas for the same acoustic information in speech, only 31% did so. For rapidly presented tones, 46% of the G-SLI children performed normally. Auditory performance with speech and non-speech sounds differentiated the G-SLI children from their age-matched controls, whereas speed of processing did not. The G-SLI children evinced no relationship between their auditory and phonological/grammatical abilities. We found no consistent evidence that a deficit in processing rapid acoustic information causes or maintains G-SLI. The findings, from at least those G-SLI children who do not exhibit any auditory deficits, provide further evidence supporting the existence of a primary domain-specific deficit underlying G-SLI.

Adult↗

Time trends of child development in a Jerusalem community.

The study of the Development Quotient (DQ-according to the Brunet-Lezine test) of two-year-olds living in a geographically defined area in Western Jerusalem was carried out for the birth cohorts of 1971 to 1989 (n = 4314). An 'Early Stimulation' programme was implemented from 1975 through the Mother and Child Health Clinic. The stimulation programme provided mothers with skills to enhance the development of their children through social interaction, play and verbal stimulation from birth to two years of age. The mean DQ at 2 years old increased significantly from 104.6 (SD = 9.8) for the 1972 cohort to 108.9 (SD = 9.1) for those born in 1989. Coordination and posture subscores followed the trends of the total DQ while the trends in language development were less marked. There is indication that children whose mothers had 9-11 years of schooling benefited more than other children. Better achievement on the developmental test as expressed in the mean DQ was probably related to changing socio-demographic characteristics of the population, and the implementation of the 'Early Stimulation' programme. The widening gap of the DQ after an initial decrease among children whose mothers had < or = 8 years of schooling and those in higher educational groups during the 80s may have been caused by the fact that the latter are a very disadvantaged group of families compared with the rest of the population.

Analysis of Variance↗

Mild trigonocephaly with clinical symptoms: analysis of surgical results in 65 patients.

INTRODUCTION: It has been believed that isolated, mild trigonocephaly rarely presents with clinical symptoms. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We diagnosed and operated on 65 patients with mild trigonocephaly and developmental delay up to July 2000. There were 47 boys and 18 girls in our series. All patients had symptoms such as delay in language development, hyperactivity, autistic tendencies, and motor dysfunctions. Their facial features were characterized by a metopic ridge, depressed temples, heel-shaped rather than keel-shaped forehead, and slight hypotelorism. The most important physical sign was the palpable metopic ridge. Most patients did not exhibit any symptoms until they were more than 1 year old. Fifteen patients showed regression in language acquisition and use. Three-dimensional computed tomography revealed the metopic ridge, depressed pterional regions, hypotelorism, and small anterior fossae. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed on all patients and demonstrated no abnormal findings in the brain. Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was performed on 83% of patients and revealed decreased cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the frontal lobes of 76% of those patients. Decompressive cranioplasty of the frontal bone involving the skull base was performed on all patients. RESULTS: In most (61 out of 65) patients a degree of postoperative improvement in clinical symptoms was noted, especially in behavioral problems. Postoperative SPECT demonstrated increased CBF in the frontal lobes in 95% of the patients. CONCLUSION: Based on these results, it can be postulated that mild trigonocephaly is frequently associated with developmental delays and that these symptoms can be improved to a certain degree by decompressive cranioplasty.

Child↗

Reconstruction of human evolution: bringing together genetic, archaeological, and linguistic data.

The genetic information for this work came from a very large collection of gene frequencies for "classical" (non-DNA) polymorphisms of the world aborigines. The data were grouped in 42 populations studied for 120 alleles. The reconstruction of human evolutionary history thus generated was checked with statistical techniques such as "boot-strapping". It changes some earlier conclusions and is in agreement with more recent ones, including published and unpublished DNA-marker results. The first split in the phylogenetic tree separates Africans from non-Africans, and the second separates two major clusters, one corresponding to Caucasoids, East Asians, Arctic populations, and American natives, and the other to Southeast Asians (mainland and insular), Pacific islanders, and New Guineans and Australians. Average genetic distances between the most important clusters are proportional to archaeological separation times. Linguistic families correspond to groups of populations with very few, easily understood overlaps, and their origin can be given a time frame. Linguistic superfamilies show remarkable correspondence with the two major clusters, indicating considerable parallelism between genetic and linguistic evolution. The latest step in language development may have been an important factor determining the rapid expansion that followed the appearance of modern humans and the demise of Neanderthals.

Archaeology↗

Stress changes the representational landscape: evidence from word segmentation.

Over the past couple of decades, research has established that infants are sensitive to the predominant stress pattern of their native language. However, the degree to which the stress pattern shapes infants' language development has yet to be fully determined. Whether stress is merely a cue to help organize the patterns of speech or whether it is an important part of the representation of speech sound sequences has still to be explored. Building on research in the areas of infant speech perception and segmentation, we asked how several months of exposure to the target language shapes infants' speech processing biases with respect to lexical stress. We hypothesize that infants represent stressed and unstressed syllables differently, and employed analyses of child-directed speech to show how this change to the representational landscape results in better distribution-based word segmentation as well as an advantage for stress-initial syllable sequences. A series of experiments then tested 9- and 7-month-old infants on their ability to use lexical stress without any other cues present to parse sequences from an artificial language. We found that infants adopted a stress-initial syllable strategy and that they appear to encode stress information as part of their proto-lexical representations. Together, the results of these studies suggest that stress information in the ambient language not only shapes how statistics are calculated over the speech input, but that it is also encoded in the representations of parsed speech sequences.

Female↗

Word acquisition reflects lateralization of hand skill.

Right hand preference distinguishes Homo sapiens from our closest primate relative, the chimpanzee. Are differences in degrees of handedness associated with differences in the rate of language development? To answer this question, verbal performance is examined in relation to hand skill in a UK national birth cohort dataset. Using 3-D data plots, we show that increasing dominant-hand skill is associated with increasing verbal ability, and stronger lateralization is associated with earlier acquisition of words. Thus, right-handed bias is relevant to the lateralization of language; variation along this dimension may represent species-specific genetic or 'epigenetic' diversity.

Journal Article↗

Time engaged in reading. A critical factor in reading achievement.

The reading achievement of deaf children may be low not only as a result of factors related to the hearing loss, such as a lag in language development. Environmental factors such as the quantity and quality of reading instruction, for example, may also cause low reading achievement. This study looked at the amount of time spent reading and the types of teacher interactions during reading instruction in classrooms at a school for deaf children and associated satellite classes in New Zealand. It was found that the deaf children spent very low levels of time engaged in reading and were subjected to teacher interactions that may inhibit the development of meaning-based reading skills. The quantity and quality of reading instruction for deaf children may differ from that experienced by most hearing children in New Zealand.

Audiovisual Aids↗

Observed and reported expressive vocabulary and word combinations in bilingual toddlers.

The consistency of parental reports of expressive vocabulary and word combinations with observed expressive language among 21- to 27-month-old children exposed to English and Spanish on a regular basis was the focus of this investigation. Parental reports were obtained using the Spanish-English Vocabulary Checklist (Patterson, 1998), an adaptation of the Language Development Survey (Rescorla, 1989). The number of different words parents reported was correlated (r = .66) with the number of different words the children used during a 30-min videotaped interaction with the reporting parent. Parental reports of whether the child was combining words and estimates of proportion of the child's use of Spanish and English also were consistent with the children's language use during the 30-min language samples.

Child Language↗

Infants and young children in orphanages: one view from pediatrics and child psychiatry.

A large body of medical knowledge exists that can inform the public policy debate as to whether the current needs and future life prospects of poor children could better be served in orphanages than by continuing safety net programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, and Supplemental Social Security Income, which maintain children in families. This special article explores a century of pediatric and child psychiatry research covering five areas of potential biologic and social risk to infants and young children in orphanage care: (1) infectious morbidity, (2) nutrition and growth, (3) cognitive development, (4) socioaffective development, and (5) physical and sexual abuse. These data demonstrate that infants and young children are uniquely vulnerable to the medical and psychosocial hazards of institutional care, negative effects that cannot be reduced to a tolerable level even with massive expenditure. Scientific experience consistently shows that, in the short term, orphanage placement puts young children at increased risk of serious infectious illness and delayed language development. In the long term, institutionalization in early childhood increases the likelihood that impoverished children will grow into psychiatrically impaired and economically unproductive adults.

Child↗

HyperCare: a prototype of an active database for compliance with essential hypertension therapy guidelines.

HyperCare is a prototype of a decision support system for essential hypertension care management. The medical knowledge implemented in HyperCare derives from the guidelines for the management of mild hypertension of the World Health Organization/International Society of Hypertension, and from the recommendations of the United States Joint National Committee on Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure. HyperCare has been implemented using Chimera, an active database language developed at the Politecnico di Milano. HyperCare proves the possibility to use active database systems in developing a medical data-intensive application where inferential elaboration of moderate complexity is required.

Databases as Topic↗

Neuropsychological and behavioral sequelae of amitriptyline overdose in infancy.

This study reports on the neuropsychological and behavioral problems of a 3(1/2) year-old boy who was poisoned by his Nanny with a massive dose of amitriptyline hydrochloride subsequent to a period of supranormal development. At the age of 8 months, the child was discovered at home in respiratory distress (he was "blue and not breathing"). Blood gases and toxin screens revealed a serum level of 1065 ng/ml for amitriptyline. The parents have reported a series of serious behavioral and emotional problems since this incident. Neuropsychological data gathered recently at the age of 3(1/2) years indicated a variety of nonfocal signs. Language development, serial processing skills, and attentional mechanisms showed the greatest degree of impairment.

Journal Article↗

Translation of Broca's 1865 report. Localization of speech in the third left frontal convolution.

Modern texts continue to cite Broca's 1861 study of a single patient, Tan, as the first definitive localization of a cerebral function, specifically, articulate speech. We describe the development of Broca's theory from his initial support in 1861 for Bouillaud's view that speech is localized in both frontal lobes to his description in 1865 of a center for articulate speech in the third left frontal convolution. We have translated Broca's 1865 French report. Despite the revival of "classical" anatomically based concepts of discrete aphasic syndromes, numerous clinicoanatomical correlation studies have failed to confirm the specific language impairment described by Broca. Broca's own descriptions of language development in the third right frontal convolution following left hemisphere damage also raise questions about the validity of theories of brain-behavior relationships based on punctate localization of specific mental functions.

Aphasia↗

Processing limitations in children with specific language impairment: the role of executive function.

Research suggests that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have processing limitations; however, the mechanisms involved have not been well defined or investigated in a theory-guided manner. The theory of constructive operators was used as a framework to explore processes underlying limited processing capacity in children with SLI. Mental attentional capacity, mental attentional interruption, and 2 specific executive functions (shifting and updating) were examined in 45 children with SLI and 45 children with normally developing language, aged 7 to 12 years. The results revealed overall group differences in performance on measures of mental attention, interruption, and updating, but not shifting. The findings supported the premise that mental attention predicted language competence, but that this relationship was mediated partially by updating.

Attention↗

[Autism and hyperlexia].

INTRODUCTION: Hyperlexia is described in children who present alterations or retardation in development and is frequently characterised by their teaching themselves to read at an early age. This ability to decode words does not correlate with their intellectual level and can course with different degrees of mental retardation. It is always accompanied by difficulty in establishing social relationships. Autism is a disorder that is prototypical of the autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), which are essentially characterised by qualitative alterations in social interaction, in communication and language development, and in the presence of a limited repertory of interests, accompanied by stereotyped or peculiar responses. METHOD: The presence of hyperlexia in autistic children is more frequent than in other development disorders. This phenomenon is linked with the increased skills involving visual memory, visual discrimination and motivation/interest towards visually represented material that is to be found in people with autism. However, not all autistic individuals present hyperlexia and not all children with hyperlexia present autism, although evidence shows that hyperlexia is a phenomenon that is observed with greater frequency in autism and in ASD. CONCLUSION: Hyperlexia, understood as meaning a little island of ability in children with autism and ASD, poses a number of questions and represents an important challenge in neuropsychological research in this population.

Age Factors↗