PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Child Language”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding.

This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15-24-month-olds. At both time points, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental and nonmental state vocabulary levels were obtained via parental report. The results demonstrated that mother use of desire language with 15-month-old children uniquely predicted a child's later mental state language and emotion task performance, even after accounting for potentially confounding variables. In addition, mothers' tendency to refer to the child's over others' desires was the more consistent correlate of mental state language and emotion understanding.

Affect↗
PubMed1992

[Use of pronouns: formal and functional aspects in the early phases of language development].

This article presents findings from empirical studies of the development of the use of pronouns in early child language. This presentation includes discussion of 1) when personal, reflexive, possessive, and indefinite pronominal forms appear in child-initiated contexts, 2) which errors emerge, and 3) which communicative functions utterances with pronouns have in dialogue. A first comparison of German-speaking and (American-)English-speaking children's usage is offered, focussing in particular on the use of the pronominal forms I/ich, you/du, and my/mein. This crosslinguistic comparison reveals differences in the age of first use, but simultaneously suggests similarities in functional characteristics of such usage. The findings are discussed in connection with the question of the development of children's communicative competence.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

On the relation between mental representation and naming in a child with specific language impairment.

The naming and drawing responses of a child with specific language impairment (age 5.5 years) were used to test the hypothesis that deficient storage in the mental lexicon plays a role in the naming problems associated with SLI. In confrontation- and repeated naming, the child demonstrated frequent semantic substitutions and occasional phonologic substitutions. Stochastic modelling of his repeated naming revealed storage deficits to be a source of these errors. Comparative picture naming, picture drawing allowed exploration of this storage deficit and revealed that, for some semantic naming errors, sparse semantic representations were clearly at fault but for others, sparse phonological input and output representations played a role. Phonological naming errors, in contrast, were typically associated with strong semantic representations. Clinical, theoretical, and methodological contributions of this cognitive neuropsychological case study are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1996

Why do mothers cradle babies on their left?

Many explanations have been put forward for the observed preference of mothers to cradle babies on the left side. These include handedness, the importance of the maternal heartbeat, left breast sensitivity, socio-psychological factors, and advantages in monitoring the infant. We propose that protection and facilitation of affective communication is at the core of cradling; and explore the relation between left-cradling and the role of the right hemisphere in early mother-infant interaction. Left-cradling not only directs maternal communication to the infant's right hemisphere but also facilitates affective feedback to the maternal right brain. The underlying neuro-linguistic mechanisms proposed in this article may be important in the early course of child language development and may also serve to illuminate our understanding of the evolution of human language.

Animals↗
PubMed1985

Therapeutic considerations with the language impaired preschool child.

This paper examines the relevance of language impairment to the development of psychiatric disorders of childhood. The literature showing a relationship between language impairment and psychiatric disorders is briefly reviewed. Although deficiencies of both expressive and receptive language have been associated with psychiatric disorder, this discussion focuses on disturbances of "receptive language". Some cases are described which illustrate the connections between deficient receptive language and disturbances of development. These disturbances of development range from excessive temper tantrums, with defiant and oppositional behavior, to mannerisms, the insistence on sameness and frank autistic symptoms. These disorders are understood in a developmental context in which deficiencies of receptive language are seen to interfere with the normal unfolding of the child's developing individuation, autonomy and independence. Depending on the severity of the language disorder and the responsivity of the environment, this results in a continuum of behavioral problems with oppositional and defiant behaviour at one end, and mannerisms and autistic symptoms on the other end. The implications for therapy and long term development are discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2000

Automatic disambiguation of morphosyntax in spoken language corpora.

The use of computer tools has led to major advances in the study of spoken language corpora. One area that has shown particular progress is the study of child language development. Although it is now easy to lexically tag every word in a spoken language corpus, one still has to choose between numerous ambiguous forms, especially with languages such as French or English, where more than 70% of words are ambiguous. Computational linguistics can now provide a fully automatic disambiguation of lexical tags. The tool presented here (POST) can tag and disambiguate a large text in a few seconds. This tool complements systems dealing with language transcription and suggests further theoretical developments in the assessment of the status of morphosyntax in spoken language corpora. The program currently works for French and English, but it can be easily adapted for use with other languages. The analysis and computation of a corpus produced by normal French children 2-4 years of age, as well as of a sample corpus produced by French SLI children, are given as examples.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Characterization of the linguistic profile of a family with Perisylvian Syndrome].

BACKGROUND: Perisylvian syndrome refers to a variety of clinical manifestations associated to lesions in the perisylvian or opercular regions. Polymicrogyria is the most common structural malformation found. The syndrome may be inherited and the clinical spectrum includes subtle language disturbances on one end and more severe characteristics such as prominent pseudobulbar signs and refractory epilepsy on the other end. Other studies have already associated perisylvian polymicrogyria with developmental language disorders or specific language impairment. AIM: to describe the language deficits of four members of a family with Perisylvian Syndrome, and to correlate these deficits to neuroimaging data. METHOD: The patients underwent neuroimaging investigation, psychological assessment using the Weschler Intelligence Scales, and specific speech-language evaluation. The following tests were used for the assessment of vocabulary, phonology, syntax, pragmatics, reading and writing: Thematical Pictures of Yavas, ABFW-Child Language Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and other specific protocols. RESULTS: Magnetic resonance imaging revealed perisylvian polymicrogyria in all of the subjects, with varied locations and extensions. Speech-language assessment indicated significant oral and written language deficits in all of the subjects. CONCLUSION: The obtained data indicate that language impairment can co-exist with reading deficits in members of the same family. Neuroimaging findings reveal cortical alterations that are associated to specific language impairments within the spectrum of the Perisylvian Syndrome. Another important aspect evidenced by this study is the similarities in the language profiles of siblings and mother, suggesting that a variety of linguistic manifestations exist within the spectrum of the syndrome. Perisylvian polymicrogyria can be one of the neurobiological malformations involved in the manifestation of these deficits.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The relation of maternal language to variation in rate and style of language acquisition.

The main thrust of this paper is to question whether in earlier studies the 'motherese hypothesis' has been adequately tested. The present study first explores concurrent relations between maternal and child language at an early age, using the Snyder, Bates & Bretherton (1981) questionnaire to assess vocabulary at 1;1. With a large sample of 45 subjects, videotaped at 1;1 and 1;8, it was possible to analyse earlier talkers separately from later talkers. The results indicate pre-existing differences between the mothers of earlier and later talkers as early as 1;1--some 5 months before other studies have examined the possible facilitative effects of 'motherese'. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, when the sample was divided according to stylistic preference at 1;8, several associations between maternal language at 1;1 and MLU at 1;8 emerged for the non-expressive group which were non-existent for the expressive group. These results imply that earlier studies may have been looking for the effectiveness of maternal input too late. Moreover, it may continue to be difficult to demonstrate consistent effects of child-directed speech as long as researchers continue to ignore individual differences in style of language acquisition.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

Use of contrastive stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children.

Studies in child language have shown that contrastive stress appears to be an early developing device to mark the topic-comment distinction, and thus is important for the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge. This study examined the use of contrastive stress by autistic children with mean-length-of-utterance (MLU) scores between 1.9 and 4.1 morphemes. Normal and aphasic subjects at similar MLU levels served as contrast groups. The contrastive stress task required that the subjects verbally assess the counterfactual nature of a presupposition in a yes-no question. Toy manipulation was used to elicit the desired responses in a play situation. Listener judgment served as the basis for analyzing results. Although all subject groups were able to perform the task, differences were seen in the number of correct responses and the patterns of stress misassignment .

Aphasia↗
PubMed1998

Generic noun phrases in mother-child conversations.

Generic noun phrases (e.g. Tigers are fierce) are of interest for their semantic properties: they capture 'essential' properties, are timeless, and are context-free. The present study examines use of generic noun phrases by preschool children and their mothers. Mother-child pairs were videotaped while looking through a book of animal pictures. Each page depicted either a single instance of a particular category (e.g. one crab) or multiple instances of a particular category (e.g. many crabs). The results indicated a striking difference in how generics vs. non-generics were distributed, both in the speech of mothers and in the speech of preschool children. Whereas the form of non-generic noun phrases was closely linked to the structure of the page (i.e. singular noun phrases were used more often when a single instance was presented; plural noun phrases were used more often when multiple instances were presented), the form of generic noun phrases was independent of the information depicted (e.g. plural noun phrases were as frequent when only one instance was presented as when multiple instances were presented). We interpret the data as providing evidence that generic noun phrases differ in their semantics and conceptual organization from non-generic noun phrases, both in the input to young children and in children's own speech. Thus, this simple linguistic device may provide input to, and a reflection of, children's early developing notion of 'kinds'.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Eligibility criteria for language impairment: is the low end of normal always appropriate?

PURPOSE: The assumption that children with language impairment will receive low scores on standardized tests, and therefore that low scores will accurately identify these children, is examined through a review of data in the manuals of tests that are intended for use in identifying such children. METHOD: Data from 43 commercially available tests of child language were compiled to identify whether evidence exists to support their use in identifying language impairment in children. RESULTS: A review of data concerning the performance of children with impaired language failed to support the assumption that these children will routinely score at the low end of a test's normative distribution. A majority of tests reported that such children scored above 1.5 SD below the mean, and scores were within 1 SD of the mean for more than a quarter (27%) of the tests. The primary evidence needed to support the purpose of identification, test sensitivity and specificity, was available for 9 of the 43 tests, and acceptable accuracy (80% or better) was reported for 5 of these tests. IMPLICATIONS: Specific data supporting the application of "low score" criteria for the identification of language impairment is not supported by the majority of current commercially available tests. However, alternate sources of data (sensitivity and specificity rates) that support accurate identification are available for a subset of the available tests.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2001

Predicting spoken language level in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Thirty-five children who received an autism spectrum diagnosis at the age of 2 years (24 with autism, 11 with PDD-NOS) were re-evaluated 2 years later to examine factors related to the development of spoken language. Child variables (play level, motor imitation ability and joint attention) and environmental variables (socioeconomic status and hours of speech/language therapy between ages 2 and 3) were used to predict an aggregate measure of language outcome at age 4. After controlling for age 2 language skills, the only significant predictors were motor imitation and number of hours of speech/language therapy. Implications of these results for understanding the early developmental course of autism spectrum disorders and the effects of intervention are discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗