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Using a standardized articulation test, comparisons were made between the articulation of autistic children and (1) a group of predominantly subnormal language matched controls; (2) developmental receptive dysphasic controls. The autistic children's articulation was significantly superior to that of both control groups. The findings are discussed in relation to differences in the pattern of language impairment in the three groups.
Investigated the Sequential and Simultaneous processing distinctions of high-functioning autistic children and children with a developmental receptive language disorder (DRLD). Twenty autistic subjects and 20 DRLD subjects were matched on age and gender, and compared to each other on their Sequential and Simultaneous processing abilities utilizing the K-ABC and selected subtests of the WISC-R. Results showed that both groups manifested a relative sequential processing deficit. However, the groups did not differ significantly on their overall sequential and simultaneous processing capabilities relative to their degree of language impairment. The application of the sequential and simultaneous processing model to the WISC-R provided consistent convergent and discriminant validation for the assessment of these processes with the WISC-R.
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The paper uses both the author's experience of research training, and the empirical studies of autism in which he participated over the last 40-plus years, to derive research lessons and to consider the needs and prospects for future research. Attention is drawn to: the importance of mentors; the need to use technologies in a hypothesis-testing fashion; the important of possible creative/innovative leaps and of recognition of the unexpected; the need to ask challenging questions and to recognize when the original ideas were mistaken. There is great value in broadening the scientific strategies used to investigate a particular condition and much is to be gained by deliberately seeking parallels with other conditions.
Previous studies have repeatedly shown verbal intelligence deficits in adolescent antisocial individuals, but it is not known whether these deficits are in place prior to kindergarten or, alternatively, whether they are acquired throughout childhood. This study assesses whether cognitive deficits occur as early as age 3 years and whether they are specific to persistently antisocial individuals. Verbal and spatial abilities were assessed at ages 3 and 11 years in 330 male and female children, while antisocial behavior was assessed at ages 8 and 17 years. Persistently antisocial individuals (N = 47) had spatial deficits in the absence of verbal deficits at age 3 years compared to comparisons (N = 133), and also spatial and verbal deficits at age 11 years. Age 3 spatial deficits were independent of social adversity, early hyperactivity, poor test motivation, poor test comprehension, and social discomfort during testing, and they were found in females as well as males. Findings suggest that early spatial deficits contribute to persistent antisocial behavior whereas verbal deficits are developmentally acquired. An early-starter model is proposed whereby early spatial impairments interfere with early bonding and attachment, reflect disrupted right hemisphere affect regulation and expression, and predispose to later persistent antisocial behavior.
C. Jarrold, W. Butler, E. M. Cottington, and F. Jiminez (2000) proposed that weak central coherence is a primary cognitive deficit in autism and speculated that it may even account for theory of mind impairments. The current study investigated whether weak central coherence could account for deficits in 2 behaviors purported to tap capabilities fundamental to a theory of mind: joint attention and pretend play. Twenty-one children (ages 3-5 years) with autism spectrum disorders were matched to 21 control children on chronological age, nonverbal ability, and gender. Pretend play did not differentiate the groups. Weak central coherence, poor joint attention, and low verbal ability contributed significantly and independently to the prediction of autism group membership, a finding consistent with 3 independent cognitive deficits underlying autism.
This study of 4-year-old twins investigated the genetic and environmental origins of comorbidity between language impairment and nonverbal ability by testing the extent to which language impairment in one twin predicted nonverbal ability in the co-twin. Impairment of language ability was defined as scores below the 15th percentile on a general language scale derived from a battery of diverse language tests. Four hundred thirty-six children, members of 160 monozygotic (MZ) and 131 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, were identified as language impaired. Language-impaired probands also suffered significant impairments in nonverbal ability. DeFries-Fulker extremes analysis showed evidence for substantial genetic mediation of the phenotypic relationship between language impairment and poor nonverbal ability in that language problems in one twin predicted poor nonverbal ability in the co-twin, much more so for MZ twins than for DZ twins. This finding held even when we excluded those children with language impairment whose nonverbal score indicated general cognitive delay. These results point to a general genetic factor that includes both language and nonverbal problems.
Psychoeducational data were collected from the files of 1,250 hearing-impaired children in Iowa public schools in an effort to identify educational and linguistic profiles related to different degrees of hearing loss. The files of most mildly to moderately hearing-impaired children do not reflect complete assessment of language, academic, or intellectual skills even when support services are being provided. The data reveal deficits that often are inconsistent with the reports and patterns of achievement on which the allocation of support services for hearing-impaired children have been based. The appropriateness of many of the assessment tools in use is questionable.
BACKGROUND: Specific language impairment is assumed to be caused by deficits in auditory perception and therefore the training of auditory abilities is recommended as a treatment. Our study focussed on the question of whether a correlation between language disorders and auditory perception abilities can be proven empirically. PATIENTS: 23 language impaired children and 52 controls aged 7 to 11 years were examined. METHOD: Auditory abilities were measured by means of a battery of nonverbal and verbal tests. The children had to identify tones of different frequencies, loudness, duration or patterns as well as every day sounds and mixtures of such sounds. Noise-overlaid, time-compressed and frequency-limited speech tasks, and binaural summation tasks were also used. In addition, phoneme discrimination ability and auditory memory were assessed. RESULTS: Language impaired children scored low on phoneme discrimination and auditory memory tests but not on nonverbal or verbal auditory perception tasks. There are significant correlations between their expressive language ability and their scores on phoneme discrimination, auditory memory and sound duration identification tests. CONCLUSIONS: The results do not support the assumption that developmental language disorders are associated with auditory perception deficits. However, there are indications that auditory memory and time processing are deficient. Thus, training of auditory perception does not appear to be a suitable treatment for language impaired children.
BACKGROUND: There is an increasing demand for the assessment of speech and language in clinical and research situations in countries where there are few assessment resources. Due to the nature of cultural variation and the potential for cultural bias, new assessment tools need to be developed or existing tools require adaptation. However, there are few guidelines on how to develop 'culturally appropriate' assessment tools. AIMS: To review the literature on cross-cultural assessment in order to identify the major issues in the development and adaptation of speech and language assessments for children and to illustrate these issues with practical examples from our own research programme in Kenya. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Five broad categories pertaining to cross-cultural assessment development were identified: the influence of culture on performance, familiarity with the testing situation, the effect of formal education, language issues and picture recognition. It was outlined how some of these issues were addressed in our research. The results of the review were integrated to produce a list of ten guidelines highlighting the importance of collaboration with mother tongue speakers; piloting; familiar assessment materials; assessment location; and practice items and prompts. CONCLUSIONS: There are few clinicians and assessors, whether in the UK or abroad, who do not assess or treat children from a culture different to their own. Awareness of cultural variation and bias and cooperative efforts to develop and administer culturally appropriate assessment tools are the foundation of effective, valid treatment programmes.
This study investigates the use of language while engaged in solving a complex spatial problem. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been reported to lag behind age peers in certain cognitive tasks, despite normal range non-verbal intelligence test scores. It was hypothesized that these delays could reflect some failure to employ language to direct and facilitate thought. Dyads of preschool children were taped during a three-dimensional construction task. Task-relevant utterances were then coded for function and addressee. The speech of six children with SLI, aged 4;10, was compared with that of two control groups, one matched by age, the other by language level. The SLI group used less problem-solving speech and fewer modal expressions than their age peers. Not all differences were statistically significant, but the pattern of findings indicated that what differences did occur were due to overall reductions in the amount of speech rather than any specific failure to use language as a tool of thought. Correlations between the use of problem-solving speech and a measure of cognitive style indicated clear group differences. For children in the control groups, greater use of private speech was associated with greater cognitive efficiency; for children in the SLI group the relationship was in the opposite direction, greater use of private speech being associated with less cognitive efficiency. In all three groups, problem-solving speech could be addressed either to partner or to self, although some individual preferences were observed. The findings, while preliminary, suggest new directions for studies of cognitive deficits in children with SLI. They also indicate the importance of including socially directed utterances, and controls for language proficiency, in future research on private speech.
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It is argued that the development of phonological representations in deaf children does not necessarily depend on auditory speech experience, neither at the perception nor at the production level. Instead, this development depends upon early experience of an input in which all phonological contrasts are well specified, independently of input modality. This is argued on the basis of the studies investigating phonological and morpho-phonological abilities of profoundly deaf children early exposed to Cued Speech. The paper is concluded with some speculations about the effect of early exposure to CS on the development of language specific processes housed in the left-hemisphere.
BACKGROUND: Language abilities of siblings of children with autism were examined to explore the possibility that language abilities are behavioral markers specific to the genetic liability for autism, as part of the broader phenotype. METHOD: Language abilities were compared among 27 siblings of children with autism, 23 siblings of children with mental retardation of unknown etiology (MR), and 22 siblings of children with developmental language disorders (DLD). Groups were matched by siblings' age, gender, birth order, family size, ethnicity, family income and by probands' gender and mental age. RESULTS: Siblings of children with autism achieved higher scores than siblings of children with DLD on receptive, expressive, and total language scales of the Children's Evaluation of Language Fundamentals and on verbal IQ. Moreover, within the DLD group, school problems in the domains of reading and arithmetic were more prevalent than within the other two groups. Only 2 siblings of children with autism received clinical diagnoses based on DSM-IV criteria compared to 3 siblings of children with MR and 7 siblings of children with DLD. CONCLUSIONS: After excluding data of the diagnosed siblings, no differences in language abilities could be discerned among the groups, except that more siblings in the DLD group were identified as having language difficulties. In summary, although language deficits characterize autism, siblings of children with autism were not found to demonstrate deficits in language skills assessed by formal language tests, IQ, or academic skills.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is characterized in part by mental impairment, as well as craniofacial and ocular anomalies. These conditions are traditionally associated with childhood hearing disorders, because they all have a common embryonic origin in malformations of the first and second branchial arches, and have similar critical periods of vulnerability to toxic insult. A review of human and animal research indicates that there are four types of hearing disorders associated with FAS. These are: (1) a developmental delay in auditory maturation, (2) sensorineural hearing loss, (3) intermittent conductive hearing loss due to recurrent serous otitis media, and (4) central hearing loss. The auditory and vestibular systems share the same peripheral apparatuses (the inner ear and eighth cranial nerve) and are embryologically and structurally similar. Consequently, vestibular disorders in FAS children might be expected. The evidence for vestibular dysfunction in FAS is ambiguous, however. Like other syndromes associated with craniofacial anomalies, hearing disorders, and mental impairment, FAS is also characterized by a high prevalence of speech and language pathology. Hearing disorders are a form of sensory deprivation. If present during early childhood, they can result in permanent hearing, language, and mental impairment. Early identification and intervention to treat hearing, language, and speech disorders could therefore result in improved outcome for the FAS child. Specific recommendations are made for intervention and future research.