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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Why did language develop?

Language developed for communication, to facilitate learning the use of tools and weapons, to plan hunting and defence, to develop a "theory of mind" and the tools of thought, and to attract and keep a mate. The adaptations required took place over many millions of years. The first important one was left-sided specialisation of the neural apparatus controlling involuntary emotional vocalisations that began more than 200 million years ago. The next was the development in primates of "mirror neurones" in the pre-motor cortex some 45 million years ago. These enabled the imitation and voluntary control of previously involuntary manual gestures and vocalisations. The third important adaptation was the descent of the larynx, 100,000 years ago, which greatly increased the phonological range of vocalisations that could be made. Thus, language did not develop all at once as suggested by Chomsky, but evolved gradually building upon adaptations originally meeting quite different needs.

Brain↗
PubMed1982

Relationship of maternal language to language development and language delay of children.

Maternal language characteristics associated with language-delayed children were examined. Two age groups of Down syndrome children were matched on mean length of utterance (MLU) with two groups of nonretarded, language-delayed children and two groups of "normal" children, mostly from middle-class families. Twenty-minute audio tapes were recorded for each dyad in the home during free play, and the first 10 minutes were transcribed and coded into functional types of maternal language. Mothers of nonretarded, language-delayed children used more language irrelevant to the interaction than did mothers of Down syndrome children, who, in turn, used more irrelevant language than did mothers of "normal" children. Mothers of nonretarded, language-delayed children focused less on their children's utterances than did other mothers and more on their physical behavior. Maternal language patterns appeared to be related more to language problems for nonretarded, language-delayed children than for Down syndrome children.

Child Language↗
PubMed1993

Grammatical morpheme acquisition in 4-year-olds with normal, impaired, and late-developing language.

The production of the grammatical morphemes studied by Brown and his colleagues was examined in free speech samples from a cohort of 4-year-olds with a history of slow expressive language development (SELD) and a control group of normal speakers. Results suggest that children with SELD acquire morphemes in an order very similar to that shown in previous acquisition research. Children who were slow to begin talking at age 2 and who continued to evidence delayed expressive language development by age 4 showed mastery of the four earliest acquired grammatical morphemes, as would be expected, based on their MLUs, which fell at Early Stage IV. Four-year-olds with normal language histories produced all but one of the grammatical morphemes with more than 90% accuracy, as would be expected based on their late Stage V MLUs. Children who were slow to acquire expressive language as toddlers, but who "caught up" in terms of sentence length by age 4 did not differ in MLU from their peers with normal language histories. However, they had acquired fewer of the grammatical morphemes. The implications of these findings for understanding the phenomenon of slow expressive language development are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1993

Narrative skills in 4-year-olds with normal, impaired, and late-developing language.

Two groups of children who were slow in expressive language development (SELD) at age 2 and a matched group of toddlers with normal language were re-evaluated at age 4. Assessment included measures of productive syntactic skills in spontaneous speech and narrative abilities in a standard story retelling task. Four-year-olds who continued to perform below the normal range in sentence structure production scored significantly lower than their normally speaking peers on all measures of narrative skill. Children who were slow to begin talking at age 2 but who, by age 4, had moved into the normal range in basic sentence structure production showed no statistically significant differences, in terms of several of the measures of narrative ability, from either normally speaking 4-year-olds or from the group with persistent delay. The implications of these findings for the management of early language delay and its relation to school learning disability are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

Screening Kit of Language Development: a preschool language screening instrument.

The Screening Kit of Language Development ( SKOLD ) was designed to meet the following criteria: Validity for 2.5-4 year old children, standardization for speakers of standard and Black English, and appropriateness for paraprofessional screeners . This paper describes the development, content, administration, scoring, reliability, and validity of SKOLD .

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2003

Intentional communicative behaviours of Turkish-speaking children with normal and delayed language development.

BACKGROUND: Language profiles may predict whether children with slower language development will catch up to their peers by overcoming this transient phenomenon or will be at risk for persistent language disorders. The research of the last decade has focused on this topic. Some researchers have emphasized the significance of developing communicative intentions, which provide a potential predictor of later language competence. In Turkey, children with slower language development may not be diagnosed partly because of the lack of sufficient standardized assessment/evaluation tools, educational and therapeutic media, and qualified speech-language therapists. In devising appropriate evaluation instruments, it is necessary to examine cross-linguistic variation in early language acquisition. The purpose of this study therefore is to observe, describe and assess early communicative behaviours of 15-36 months old Turkish-speaking children by using a functional communicative approach. METHODS: The research was designed within a qualitative-descriptive paradigm, involving qualitative data collection, observation and data analysis procedures. A total of 16 children, eight typically developing and eight language delayed, served as subjects. The classification system used in this study for coding children's communicative intentions was mostly based upon a system used by Dore (1977). Each variable was referred to as one of three intentional categories: regulating behaviours (request for object, request for action and protest), social interaction (direct attention, greeting and acknowledgement) and joint attention (comment/statement, asking for information and responding). A non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test was carried out to verify the descriptive measures in comparing the delayed and normal group performance. RESULTS: As expected, the mode of expressing communicative intentions varied as a function of age for both groups. Children with normal language development were observed to express intentions within the category of joint attention more frequently whereas the children with delayed language expressed intentions related to the variables of regulating behaviours and social interaction.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Similarities in weak syllable omissions between children with specific language impairment and normally developing language: a preliminary report.

UNLABELLED: Two-year-olds with normally developing language (NL) and older children with specific language impairment (SLI) omit initial weak syllables from words (e.g., "banana" approximately "nana"). Previous research revealed a phonetic "trace" of syllables omitted by children with NL (Carter, 1999; Carter & Gerken, submitted for publication). The present study asked whether similar evidence could be found for omissions by children with SLI. Fourteen children with SLI produced sentences containing reduced or unreduced disyllabic proper names (e.g., "Feed_cinda," from "Feed Lucinda" vs. "Feed Cindy"). Acoustic analyses revealed a significantly longer duration for verb-onset to name-onset of sentences containing the reduced name, indicating that although segmental material is omitted, an acoustic trace remains. In addition, a phonological examination showed similarities between groups regarding sentential and syllabic factors that affect omission rates, as well as an interesting difference that suggests different strategies the groups use in acquiring adult targets. LEARNING OUTCOMES: As a result of reading this article, participants should (1) have a better understanding of similarities and differences in the language production of children with specific language impairment and normally developing language, with regard to prosodic development, (2) be familiar with several models of the phenomenon of weak syllable omissions in children's developing language, and (3) recognize the importance of using a combination of linguistic analysis types when studying issues in child language production.

Child↗
PubMed1996

[Value of the Heidelberg Language Development Test in diagnosis of children with language development disorders].

Diagnosis of developmental speech and language disorders in accordance with the ICD-10 is to be based on the psychometric assessment of speech and language performance. In the present study the clinical validity of the Heidelberger Sprachentwicklungstest (HSET) for diagnosing expressive language disorders was assessed by comparing HSET subtest results for 92 children aged 4 to 10 years who had various speech and language disorders with the children's scores on another language test, a cognitive test and clinical findings. The HSET scores differed considerably from the clinical ratings of the severity of the language disturbance. The correlations between the HSET scores and the score on the other language test was also low. Although the correlations of the HSET scores with the performance IQ was low, the correlations with the verbal IQ were high. The implications of these findings for the use of the HSET in diagnosing children with language impairments are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1985

Correlates of language development in language-disordered children.

This study organized a large data archive gathered over 8 years on 718 children with language disorders. Descriptive data categorized by demographic/background, physical/development, social/personality, and language/academic characteristics were analyzed to provide a broad description of this group of children. Sets of descriptor variables in five domains were identified from program records and were used to predict language performance at program entry and relative language improvement over 2-3 years. Age was the strongest predictor for all analyses. In general, the primary research factors in the study (53 variables representing IQ, language history, socioeconomic status, physical/neurological, and social-emotional background) failed to account very well for either language performance at program entry or for relative language gain. In prediction of pretest language performance, IQ and physical factors played the strongest role. The two factors contributing significantly to prediction of relative gain were IQ (although surprisingly weakly) and social-emotional status. Characteristics of those children who progressed most while in the program were identified.

Adolescent↗