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PubMed1997

Verbs in the emergence of word combinations in young children with specific expressive language impairment.

Young children with specific expressive language impairment (SELI) are typically first identified by their delay in initial vocabulary learning. When their language difficulties persist they often have problems with verb constructions. The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of lexical development in children with SELI who were moving from the single-word to the multi-word stage of language production, with particular attention to verbs. The research examined the nature of the developing lexicon (lexicon size and composition) and realisation of lexical categories and their combinatorial properties transitivity of verbs) as the children began producing word combinations during a nine-week period of observation, three weeks of which involved treatment. Results indicated a moderate correlation between the developing lexicon, both in size and composition of vocabulary, and the emergence of word combinations as measured by mean length of utterance. Further, the data revealed the importance of intransitive and ditransitive verbs for children who demonstrated the greatest change in their language production. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and clinical importance.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1997

Why pragmatic impairment? A case study in the comprehension of inferential meaning.

This paper discusses a case study of Sarah (aged 9;8-10;3) who is reported to have pragmatic difficulties. The focus is on her comprehension of questions, which are asked on the basis of pictures and heard stories. Particular focus is on the pragmatic (or inferential) demands of the input questions and their relationship to the (in)appropriacy of the answer. Data from 16 normally functioning 6- and 8-year-old children are also presented for comparative purposes. The study shows that Sarah has difficulty with questions which require her to go beyond visually presented or verbally stated information. On one set of tasks she was to answer questions on the basis of composite pictures: for some of the questions, the answer was obvious from the picture (descriptive questions) and for others information needed to be inferred beyond the picture (for example, by imagining what had happened before and what is likely to happen next). Sarah's performance was poorer on the inferential questions than the descriptive questions and poorer than the performance of 6- and 8-year-old normally functioning control children. Although the control children also found the inferential questions more difficult than the descriptive questions, this difficulty was not as pronounced as Sarah's. This trend was also apparent in a set of tasks which required the children to answer questions on the basis of verbally told stories. This study suggests that pragmatically impaired children may have difficulty going beyond explicitly presented information and this would manifest as pragmatic production and comprehension problems. In cognitive terms, this may indicate difficulty with the process of inferencing.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed1997

Referential communication tasks: performance by normal and pragmatically impaired children.

Two groups of children, a pragmatically impaired (PI) group and a group of language-normal (LN) age-matched peers, were compared by use of a referential communication task. Experimenter and child both played the roles of listener and instructor during the task and, in addition, the experimenter sometimes failed to give adequate information when in the role of instructor. Lexical content and structural complexity were controlled, and it was hypothesised that difficulties for the PI group would arise when in the role of instructor, as a result of failing to specify necessary information in order for the experimenter to respond appropriately. In fact, the main difference between the two groups arose when the experimenter failed to give adequate information to the child; the LN children were quick to realise this and to request clarification, whereas the PI children requested clarification to a lesser extent and appeared less aware of the need to do so. Possible explanations for this pattern of results are explored.

Child↗
PubMed1997

Spatial cognition in language-impaired children.

Limited research evidence is available concerning the spatial abilities of children with specific language impairments. This paper reports a study of the ability of such children to use plan drawings. The participants were 23 language-impaired (LI) children (12 from special boarding schools, 11 from language units within mainstream primary schools), whose performance was compared with that of 23 non-language-impaired (NLI) children. The children were matched for age, their overall age range being between 7;0-11;11 (mean age 8;6). Tasks involved the production and utilisation of plan drawings of a model house. With one exception, results indicated that the LI children showed no deficit in ability on such tasks, and indeed out-performed their NLI peers on many of them. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Aptitude Tests↗
PubMed2004

The impact of child maltreatment on expressive syntax at 60 months.

Although child maltreatment has often been described as leading to language deficits, the few well-controlled investigations of language acquisition in maltreated children have focused on language content rather than form, or have used qualitative rather than quantitative measures. This study examines syntactic complexity in 19 maltreated and 14 nonmaltreated preschool-aged children. Mother-child dyads participated in play sessions that were transcribed and scored for the presence of morphosyntactic forms in child speech and for specific sentence constructions in maternal speech. Findings indicated that child maltreatment was associated with language delay in both vocabulary and production of syntactic structures. There were also qualitative differences in characteristics of maternal utterances between maltreating and comparison groups. Because maltreatment initially occurred before age 2, this study highlights the long-lasting negative influence of maltreatment on language development and also provides the first demonstration of child language delays and differences in maternal speech within a single maltreatment sample.

Child Abuse↗
PubMed2004

The development of complex sentence interpretation in typically developing children compared with children with specific language impairments or early unilateral focal lesions.

This study compared sentence comprehension skills in typically developing children 5-17 years of age, children with language impairment (LI) and children with focal brain injuries (FL) acquired in the pre/perinatal period. Participants were asked to process sentences 'on-line', choosing the agent in sentences that varied in syntactic complexity (actives, passives, subject clefts and object clefts), and in the presence or absence of a subject-verb agreement contrast. Results revealed that accuracy and processing speeds vary with syntactic complexity in all groups, reflecting the frequency and regularity of sentence types. Developmental changes continued throughout childhood, as children became faster and more accurate at processing more complex sentence structures. Children with LI and children with FL were quite profoundly delayed, displaying profiles similar to, or more impaired than those of younger children, but there was no evidence in the FL group for a disadvantage in left- vs. right-hemisphere-damaged children. Children with LI showed one unique pattern: higher than normal costs (reflected in reaction times) in using converging information from subject-verb agreement, in line with studies suggesting special vulnerabilities in grammatical morphology in this group. Results are discussed in terms of the Competition Model, a theory of language processing designed to account for the statistical changes in performance that are observed during development, and the probabilistic deficits in children with language impairments.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Concurrent and predictive validity of parent reports of child language at ages 2 and 3 years.

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; Dale, 1996; Fenson et al., 1994), parent reports about language skills, are being used increasingly in studies of theoretical and public health importance. This study (N = 113) correlated scores on the CDI at ages 2 and 3 years with scores at age 3 years on tests of cognition and receptive language and measures from parent-child conversation. Associations indicated reasonable concurrent and predictive validity. The findings suggest that satisfactory vocabulary scores at age 2 are likely to predict normal language skills at age 3, although some children with limited skills at age 3 will have had satisfactory scores at age 2. Many children with poor vocabulary scores at 2 will have normal skills at 3.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1982

The structure of conversations with 6- to 10-year-old deaf children.

In stage 1 classroom conversations between sixteen teachers and their pre-lingually deaf children were videotaped and analysed to examine both the styles used by teachers in controlling conversation and the functions pursued in dialogue. In stage 2 a sub-sample of four teachers with twenty children of known hearing losses and non-verbal intelligence was analysed in greater detail to examine relationships between these factors, teaching styles and the child's performance in dialogue. The analyses show that deaf children respond in a similar fashion to young hearing children in the way they react to different styles of teacher talk; that teachers differ in the functions they pursue in conversation; and that functions change as a consequence of the child's hearing loss but not mental age. The implications of the findings for linguistic development in pre-lingually deaf children are explored.

Child↗
PubMed1983

Language and social class: is verbal deprivation a myth?

A study was made of complex usages of language in the spontaneous conversation of 30 4-year-old girls, their mothers and their teachers, at home and at school. There were significant social class differences in frequency, but almost all the usages appeared in the talk of almost all the mothers and children at least once. The working class girls' language style changed more between home and school than did that of the middle class girls. The teachers' talk contained a higher proportion of these usages than the mothers', but the overall input to the children was less at school. The findings are discussed in relation to Labov's argument that verbal deprivation is a myth.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

An experimental evaluation of the effects of five styles of teacher conversation on the language of hearing-impaired children.

This study of conversation was undertaken to test experimentally conclusions reached in earlier work with deaf primary school children and pre-school hearing children. Both of these studies revealed significant negative correlations between a measure of teacher control of the conversations and measures of children's initiative and loquacity. This study was designed to investigate the direction of causality in these correlations. Teachers were asked to change their conversational styles in specific ways with the same pairs of children. On each of five occasions they were to bias their conversations towards one of five "levels of control"--enforced repetitions, two-choice questions, wh-type questions, personal contributions and phatics. The results show that as teachers change style, their children follow them with the predicted changes in initiative and mean length of turn.

Child↗
PubMed1985

Interactions of language-delayed and normal preschool boys with their peers.

This study examined the impact of specific language delay (LD) on peer interactions in preschool children. Three groups of dyads were studied: normal children interacting with normal children, normals interacting with LD children and LD children with each other. The normal children were more likely to initiate interaction when the partner was non-responsive and to attempt to dominate the interaction. The results of this study illustrate reciprocity in the social interactions of young children, the significant role of dominance and control in interaction and the sensitivity of preschool children to the characteristics of their peers.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1996

Nonword repetition as a behavioural marker for inherited language impairment: evidence from a twin study.

The Children's Nonword Repetition Test (CNRep) was given 39 children with persistent language impairment (LI), 13 with a history of having received speech-language therapy (resolved LI), and 79 controls, all aged from 7 to 9 years. The children with LI were twins who had participated in a previous genetic study. Children with resolved LI, as well as those with persistent LI, were significantly impaired on the CNRep. Comparisons of MZ and DZ twins indicated significant heritability of a CNRep deficit. It is concluded that CNRep provides a marker of the phenotype of heritable forms of developmental language impairment.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Towards a typology of specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: The population of children with specific language impairments (SLI) is heterogeneous. The present study was conducted to examine this heterogeneity more closely, by identifying and describing subgroups within the population of children with SLI in the Netherlands. METHOD: A broad battery of language tests and language-related cognitive tests were administered to 147 six-year-old and 136 eight-year-old children with SLI. RESULTS: Factor analyses revealed 4 factors indicating 4 distinctive linguistic domains for both age samples: 1) lexical-semantic abilities, 2) auditory conceptualization, 3) verbal sequential memory and 4) speech production. These empirical findings were further validated by the positive correlations found between the language factors and the judgments of teachers and speech therapists. Finally, a cluster analysis revealed 4 distinct clusters of SLI children for each sample with specific language profiles based on the 4 factors. Results were nearly the same for both age samples. CONCLUSIONS: The language problems that emerged from the two samples of children with SLI could be described as falling into four types. Based on these language types, four subgroups of children with SLI could be distinguished, each with a specific profile. Some subgroups had severe problems on one specific type of language problem; others had severe problems in more than one type of language problem when compared to the other subgroups of the same age sample. The different profiles may indicate that a more dynamic approach is needed in intervention, considering the presence of both compensating and restricting factors within each child with SLI.

Child↗
PubMed1980

The prevalence, stability and significance of developmental language delay in preschool children.

A sample of 937 children in Dunedin, New Zealand, was assessed at ages three and five years in order to estimate the nature, prevalence, stability and significance of developmental language delays in three-year-olds. Assessments included language development, intelligence, and fine and gross motor-co-ordination. Detailed results are given which described three types of language delay at age three: delayed verbal comprehension only, delayed verbal expression only, and delayed development in both aspects of language. Follow-up testing at age five indicated that the specific language delays were not highly stable, whereas delays in both aspects were highly stable. A large proportion of the latter children gained very low scores on the measures at age five, and they accounted for 84 per cent of all children with very low intelligence. The implications of the results for a screening programme to identify three-year-old children at high risk of later developmental delays are considered.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1980

Developmental dyspraxia in a family with X-linked mental retardation (Renpenning syndrome).

This paper describes the existence of severe developmental speech dyspraxia in a member of a family that is typical of other reports of X-linked mental retardation without physical abnormality (Renpenning syndrome). Other family members have evidence of motor or speech dyspraxia. Other reports of X-linked mental retardation have mentioned "verbal disability", which suggests that developmental dyspraxia may be quite common in these families. Developmental dyspraxia of speech is amenable to specific types of intervention: after two years of such intervention our patient's adaptive skills reflect his normal non-verbal intellectual ability, despite persistent speech deficits. This functional improvement shows how important it is to identify dyspraxia in young children, who may otherwise be labelled mentally retarded.

Apraxias↗
PubMed1980

Chromosome studies of children with specific speech and language delay.

Among 88 children with speech and language problems from whom chromosome results were obtained, four were identified with a chromosome anomaly. Three had sex chromosome aneuploidy and had developmental problems, particularly with articulation. The fourth child had low-grade trisomy 21 in blood, with minimal signs of Down's syndrome but with bilateral conductive hearing loss. It is suggested that delay in speech development is one facet of the developmental problems that may be significant in later behavioural problems in adolescent and adult males with X and Y aneuploidy.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Developmental language delay from three to seven years and its significance for low intelligence and reading difficulties at age seven.

A large sample of Dunedin (New Zealand) children was assessed at three, five and seven years to study the prevalence and stability of language delay, and to investigate the association between language delay at each age and low intelligence and reading problems at age seven. The prevalence of specific comprehension delay, specific expressive delay, and general language delay varied from 2.0 to 4.3 per cent. General language delays were the most stable. Every type of language delay at each age, particularly earlier, general and stable delay was associated with a significantly higher prevalence of low intelligence or reading difficulties at age seven than among the total sample.

Age Factors↗