A family approach to functional sign language.
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Many etiologic factors have been implicated in delayed language development in the preschool child including: low birth weight, perinatal insults to the CNS, and chronic/recurrent middle ear disease with conductive hearing impairment during the first years of life. The results of an in-depth evaluation of 24 children, who manifested preschool language delay significant enough to require remedial intervention, are reported. A suggested early identification model employing High Risk Factors and a Developmental Screening Questionnaire for use by otolaryngologists, pediatricians and audiologists is presented.
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BACKGROUND: Approaches to intervention with young children with delayed or deviant communication skills have tended to focus directly on the production and comprehension of linguistic forms. Research in developmental psychology, however, has highlighted the role of joint attention and action within a mutually negotiated frame in early communicative development. AIMS: An approach to intervention was developed which uses graded participation in such 'formats' to promote language development in 3- to 5-year-olds with significant delays or deviance in communication skills. This study was designed to evaluate this in comparison with a more conventional approach. SAMPLE: The sample comprised twenty 3- to 5-year-olds attending a diagnostic nursery or a speech and language support centre attached to a mainstream primary school. METHOD: In the intervention, developmentally ordered sequences of exchange games provided predictable ruled-based and structured joint contexts of action, within which verbal and non-verbal exchanges between an adult and child could be meaningfully used. In the control condition, participants received more conventional intervention focusing more directly on language per se. Level of participation in dyadic play was assessed in terms both of role and cognitive complexity, and for the present study language development was assessed using the verbal subtests of the WPPSI. The study entailed both a between- and a within-subjects design. RESULTS: Cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons confirmed that this form of intervention was significantly more effective than the control condition in increasing children's level of participation in social game formats and in promoting their language development; moreover, these were significantly correlated. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that the development of language skills can be promoted more effectively through (re-) constructing the interpersonal framework of pre-linguistic communicative development than through conventional intervention focusing directly upon language per se.
An experimental test of whether intentional communication elicits maternal responses purported to facilitate language development is presented. Fifty-eight prelinguistic children with disabilities and their mothers participated. Children were randomly assigned to two staff-implemented treatments that were designed to experimentally increase intentional communication ability. We predicted that treatment effects on maternal responses would vary by maternal education level and maternal responsive interaction style at the pretreatment period. We predicted any treatment effect on maternal responses would be mediated by posttreatment intentional communication. Results indicated that treatment effects on maternal responses varied by pretreatment maternal education level. A pattern of results also supports the conclusion that posttreatment intentional communication to mother was, at least in part, responsible for the effect on posttreatment maternal responses.
Our purpose in this exploratory investigation was to examine the relationship between degree of impairment in grammatical morpheme comprehension and event-related potential measures of differentiated processing of speech syllables in 10 children with Down syndrome. Results strongly support the hypothesized association. Graphs of the association indicate that children with less impaired grammatical comprehension had greater amplitude differences in event-related potentials to contrast of syllables within preselected poststimulus latency ranges. The theoretical and clinical ramifications of these results are discussed.
We compared the expressive syntax and vocabulary skills of 35 boys with fragile X syndrome and 27 younger typically developing boys who were at similar nonverbal mental levels. During a conversational speech sample, the boys with fragile X syndrome used shorter, less complex utterances and produced fewer different words than did the typically developing boys after controlling for their nonverbal MA, speech intelligibility, and mother's education. The boys with fragile X used less complex noun phrases, verb phrases, and sentence structure, but did not use fewer questions and negations. These findings suggest that the language difficulties in boys with fragile X reflect an overall expressive language delay and not a specific syntactic or vocabulary delay.
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BACKGROUND: PEDIATRICS (ISSN Numbers: Print, 0031-4005; Online, 1098-4275). Published in the public domain by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Speech and language development is a useful indicator of a child's overall development and cognitive ability and is related to school success. Identification of children at risk for developmental delay or related problems may lead to intervention services and family assistance at a young age, when the chances for improvement are best. However, optimal methods for screening for speech and language delay have not been identified, and screening is practiced inconsistently in primary care. PURPOSE: We sought to evaluate the strengths and limits of evidence about the effectiveness of screening and interventions for speech and language delay in preschool-aged children to determine the balance of benefits and adverse effects of routine screening in primary care for the development of guidelines by the US Preventive Services Task Force. The target population includes all children up to 5 years old without previously known conditions associated with speech and language delay, such as hearing and neurologic impairments. METHODS: Studies were identified from Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases (1966 to November 19, 2004), systematic reviews, reference lists, and experts. The evidence review included only English-language, published articles that are available through libraries. Only randomized, controlled trials were considered for examining the effectiveness of interventions. Outcome measures were considered if they were obtained at any time or age after screening and/or intervention as long as the initial assessment occurred while the child was < or =5 years old. Outcomes included speech and language measures and other functional and health outcomes such as social behavior. A total of 745 full-text articles met our eligibility criteria and were reviewed. Data were extracted from each included study, summarized descriptively, and rated for quality by using criteria specific to different study designs developed by the US Preventive Services Task Force. RESULTS: The use of risk factors for selective screening has not been evaluated, and a list of specific risk factors to guide primary care physicians has not been developed or tested. Sixteen studies about potential risk factors for speech and language delay in children enrolled heterogeneous populations, had dissimilar inclusion and exclusion criteria, and measured different risk factors and outcomes. The most consistently reported risk factors included a family history of speech and language delay, male gender, and perinatal factors. Other risk factors reported less consistently included educational levels of the mother and father, childhood illnesses, birth order, and family size. The performance characteristics of evaluation techniques that take < or =10 minutes to administer were described in 24 studies relevant to screening. Studies that were rated good to fair quality reported wide ranges of sensitivity and specificity when compared with reference standards (sensitivity: 17-100%; specificity: 45-100%). Most of the evaluations, however, were not designed for screening purposes, the instruments measured different domains, and the study populations and settings were often outside of primary care. No "gold standard" has been developed and tested for screening, reference standards varied across studies, few studies compared the performance of > or =2 screening techniques in 1 population, and comparisons of a single screening technique across different populations are lacking. Fourteen good- and fair-quality randomized, controlled trials of interventions reported significantly improved speech and language outcomes compared with control groups. Improvement was demonstrated in several domains including articulation, phonology, expressive language, receptive language, lexical acquisition, and syntax among children in all age groups studied and across multiple therapeutic settings. Improvement in other functional outcomes such as socialization skills, self-esteem, and improved play themes were demonstrated in some, but not all, of the 4 studies that measured them. In general, studies of interventions were small and heterogeneous, may be subject to plateau effects, and reported short-term outcomes based on various instruments and measures. As a result, long-term outcomes are not known, interventions could not be compared directly, and generalizability is questionable. CONCLUSIONS: Use of risk factors to guide selective screening is not supported by studies. Several aspects of screening have been inadequately studied to determine optimal methods, including which instrument to use, the age at which to screen, and which interval is most useful. Trials of interventions demonstrate improvement in some outcome measures, but conclusions and generalizability are limited. Data are not available addressing other key issues including the effectiveness of screening in primary care settings, role of enhanced surveillance by primary care physicians before referral for diagnostic evaluation, non-speech and language and long-term benefits of interventions, and adverse effects of screening and interventions.
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The objective of this work was to follow-up language development of full-term infants/small for gestational age (RNT/PIG) and preterm infants/adequate for gestational age (RNPT/AIG). The assessments were done monthly, up to their 18th months of age. Twenty infants were evaluated, 10 of each group. The Ethical Committee of the institution approved the project. It was used the Protocol for Anamneses and the Early Language Milestone Scale - ELM Scale. Both groups were compared with 47 full term, adequate for gestational age infants. The results had shown that up to the 6th month, the infants showed a normal performance for their age. In the 9th month, there was a delay in babbling production. In the 12th month, infants of the RNT/PIG group showed a significant statistically delay expressing polysyllabic babbling and infants of the RNPT/AIG group showed delay in the production of the first words. In the 18th month, the delay persisted in one infant of the RNT/PIG group.
BACKGROUND: A follow-up study of an individual with Specific Language Impairment. AIM: To describe the oral and written language development of an adolescent during 13 years of intervention. METHOD: A Male subject, 16 years old, in the second year of high school, who was assessed during the years with different language and auditory procedures. RESULTS: The Subject still presents oral and written language deficits, but these do not compromise intelligibility in any level. CONCLUSION: The studied subject presented significant language development during the therapeutic process. However, corroborating with other literature data, deficits still remain.