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At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

PubMed2006

Specific language impairment: effect on later language development: a literature review.

BACKGROUND: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are at considerable risk for later language development. However there has not been a good literature review to provide understanding and to get information relative to parental counseling and decision making for further management. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the literature review on SLI and effect on later language development. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Longitudinal studies were systematically explored to seek evidence- based information to confirm the lasting effect of SLI in later language development. RESULTS: Natural history data indicated that approximately 50% of children with specific expressive language delay spontaneously remitted or outgrew it at age 5-8. However, long-term follow-up studies showed their language problems emerged later at age 15. The rest of the children's (50%), language impairment persisted and had a high risk for SLI later. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that active intervention should be performed as soon as possible for children with persisting SLI.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Preschool language disorders and subsequent language and academic difficulties.

Sixty-three language-disordered children first evaluated in their preschool years were followed four to five years after initial diagnosis. At follow-up approximately 40% of these children continued to present speech and language problems and approximately 40% presented other learning problems. Preschool levels of language comprehension, formulation, semantics, syntax, phonology, and speech production were found to be moderately correlated to subsequent class placement in the elementary grades. Duration of preschool therapy was not related to either the severity of preschool language disorder or to any subsequent speech, language, or academic abilities. Duration of school therapy was related to severity of phonologic deficit as rated during the preschool years and to all follow-up ratings for speech, language, and academic abilities.

Achievement↗

PubMed1989

Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language.

Lenneberg (1967) hypothesized that language could be acquired only within a critical period, extending from early infancy until puberty. In its basic form, the critical period hypothesis need only have consequences for first language acquisition. Nevertheless, it is essential to our understanding of the nature of the hypothesized critical period to determine whether or not it extends as well to second language acquisition. If so, it should be the case that young children are better second language learners than adults and should consequently reach higher levels of final proficiency in the second language. This prediction was tested by comparing the English proficiency attained by 46 native Korean or Chinese speakers who had arrived in the United States between the ages of 3 and 39, and who had lived in the United States between 3 and 26 years by the time of testing. These subjects were tested on a wide variety of structures of English grammar, using a grammaticality judgment task. Both correlational and t-test analyses demonstrated a clear and strong advantage for earlier arrivals over the later arrivals. Test performance was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty; after puberty, performance was low but highly variable and unrelated to age of arrival. This age effect was shown not to be an inadvertent result of differences in amount of experience with English, motivation, self-consciousness, or American identification. The effect also appeared on every grammatical structure tested, although the structures varied markedly in the degree to which they were well mastered by later learners. The results support the conclusion that a critical period for language acquisition extends its effects to second language acquisition.

Adolescent↗

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↗

PubMed2003

The specialized structure of human language cortex: pyramidal cell size asymmetries within auditory and language-associated regions of the temporal lobes.

Functional lateralization of language within the cerebral cortex has long driven the search for structural asymmetries that might underlie language asymmetries. Most examinations of structural asymmetry have focused upon the gross size and shape of cortical regions in and around language areas. In the last 20 years several labs have begun to document microanatomical asymmetries in the structure of language-associated cortical regions. Such microanatomic results provide useful constraints and clues to our understanding of the biological bases of language specialization in the cortex. In a previous study we documented asymmetries in the size of a specific class of pyramidal cells in the superficial cortical layers. The present work uses a nonspecific stain for cell bodies to demonstrate the presence of an asymmetry in layer III pyramidal cell sizes within auditory, secondary auditory and language-associated regions of the temporal lobes. Specifically, the left hemisphere contains a greater number of the largest pyramidal cells, those that are thought to be the origin of long-range cortico-cortical connections. These results are discussed in the context of cortical columns and how such an asymmetry might alter cortical processing. These findings, in conjunction with other asymmetries in cortical organization that have been documented within several labs, clearly demonstrate that the columnar and connective structure of auditory and language cortex in the left hemisphere is distinct from homotopic regions in the contralateral hemisphere.

Aged↗

PubMed1999

A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of listening comprehension of languages in human at 3 tesla-comprehension level and activation of the language areas.

Passive listening comprehension of native and non-native language was investigated using high resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at a static magnetic field strength of 3 tesla. Wernicke's area was activated by comprehensive and non-comprehensive languages indicating that this area is associated with common phonological processing of language. The task with comprehensive but non-native language activated Broca's area and angular gyrus most frequently. The activations in these areas may be related to demand in semantic and syntactic processing in listening comprehension. Supplementary motor area and pre-motor area were activated by comprehensive languages but not by non-comprehensive language. These motor controlling areas may be involved in semantic processing. Listening to comprehensive but non-native language seems to demand more networked co-processing.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Narrative discourse in Grammatical specific language impaired children: a modular language deficit?

This paper provides a further investigation into the linguistic abilities of a subgroup of 12 Grammatical specific language impaired (SLI) children (aged 10;2 to 13;11). The study investigates the use of referential expressions (e.g. pronouns) in a narrative discourse, and provides insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI, thereby contributing to the modularity debate. Previous investigations indicate that Grammatical SLI children have a deficit with dependent structural relationships, i.e. a Representational Deficit for Dependent Relationships (RDDR). Grammatical SLI children's RDDR appears to be a modular language deficit. To test this claim, linguistic representations of dependent structural relationships which are not part of the modular language system are investigated using a narrative discourse based on the picture book Frog where are you? The SLI children's pattern of referential expressions was compared with 36 language ability controls (aged 6;4 to 9;8). The findings indicated that the Grammatical SLI children have relatively mature linguistic development in the use of referential expressions to produce a cohesive, structured narrative discourse. The view of the organisation of the mind in which a modular language system can be differentially impaired from aspects of language which rely on the central system can most easily account for the data. Thus, the data support the hypothesized modular nature of Grammatical SLI children's underlying linguistic deficit. The implications of the findings for language acquisition are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Brain imaging of language plasticity in adopted adults: can a second language replace the first?

Do the neural circuits that subserve language acquisition lose plasticity as they become tuned to the maternal language? We tested adult subjects born in Korea and adopted by French families in childhood; they have become fluent in their second language and report no conscious recollection of their native language. In behavioral tests assessing their memory for Korean, we found that they do not perform better than a control group of native French subjects who have never been exposed to Korean. We also used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor cortical activations while the Korean adoptees and native French listened to sentences spoken in Korean, French and other, unknown, foreign languages. The adopted subjects did not show any specific activations to Korean stimuli relative to unknown languages. The areas activated more by French stimuli than by foreign stimuli were similar in the Korean adoptees and in the French native subjects, but with relatively larger extents of activation in the latter group. We discuss these data in light of the critical period hypothesis for language acquisition.

Adoption↗

PubMed2005

Developmental language disorders--a follow-up in later adult life. Cognitive, language and psychosocial outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Little is known on the adult outcome and longitudinal trajectory of childhood developmental language disorders (DLD) and on the prognostic predictors. METHOD: Seventeen men with a severe receptive DLD in childhood, reassessed in middle childhood and early adult life, were studied again in their mid-thirties with tests of intelligence (IQ), language, literacy, theory of mind and memory together with assessments of psychosocial outcome. They were compared with the non language disordered siblings of the DLD cohort to control for shared family background, adults matched to the DLD cohort on age and performance IQ (IQM group) and a cohort from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) matched to the DLD cohort on childhood IQ and social class. RESULTS: The DLD men had normal intelligence with higher performance IQ than verbal IQ, a severe and persisting language disorder, severe literacy impairments and significant deficits in theory of mind and phonological processing. Within the DLD cohort higher childhood intelligence and language were associated with superior cognitive and language ability at final adult outcome. In their mid-thirties, the DLD cohort had significantly worse social adaptation (with prolonged unemployment and a paucity of close friendships and love relationships) compared with both their siblings and NCDS controls. Self-reports showed a higher rate of schizotypal features but not affective disorder. Four DLD adults had serious mental health problems (two had developed schizophrenia). CONCLUSION: A receptive developmental language disorder involves significant deficits in theory of mind, verbal short-term memory and phonological processing, together with substantial social adaptation difficulties and increased risk of psychiatric disorder in adult life. The theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed1987

Specific language impairment as a maturational lag: evidence from longitudinal data on language and motor development.

Longitudinal language-test data on 87 language-impaired children assessed at the ages of four, 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 years were converted to age-equivalent scores to compare the rates of development of children who recover from early language delay with those who have more persisting problems. On most measures, over the 18-month period all the children progressed by about 18 months. Thus although children with good and poor outcomes were distinguished in terms of initial level of performance, they did not differ in rate of progress. Speed on a peg-moving task was closely related to language performance. Children who had a good outcome after early language delay had significantly impaired scores at four years, but subsequently were indistinguishable from a control group. Quantitative but not qualitative differences in peg-moving performance were found for children with good and poor outcomes. No association was found between presumptive aetiological factors and language or pegboard performance. These findings are interpreted in terms of a theory which attributes specific language impairment to a maturational lag in neurological development.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1996

Quantitative comparison of language deficits produced by extraoperative electrical stimulation of Broca's, Wernicke's, and basal temporal language areas.

Subdural electrodes were implanted over the language-dominant left lateral convexity in 45 patients undergoing evaluation for epilepsy surgery. In 29 patients, additional electrodes were placed over the left basal temporal cortex. We identified language areas by using intermittent electrical stimuli applied while patients read aloud. Aphasia was classified as expressive or receptive based on additional testing performed when electrical stimulation elicited reading arrest in the absence of direct excitatory or inhibitory motor effects. Using correlated logistic regression, we noted no statistically significant differences among Broca's, and Wernicke's areas and the basal temporal language area (BTLA) regarding the frequency with which electrical stimulation interfered with language. Speech production deficits, however, occurred significantly more frequently in Broca's than in Wernicke's area (p = 0.012). In contrast, language comprehension deficits occurred with equal frequency when Broca's and Wernicke's areas were stimulated. These results suggest that both Broca's and Wernicke's areas play important roles in language comprehension and that the primarily expressive aphasia of patients with lesions of Broca's area results mainly from the predominant participation of Broca's area in language production.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1990

Lexical processing in a non-native language: effects of language proficiency and learning strategy.

In three experiments, native Chinese speakers were asked to use their native and non-native languages to read and translate Chinese words and to name pictures. In Experiment 1, four groups of subjects with various degrees of proficiency in their second language, English, participated. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects were first asked to learn a list of words in a new language, French, using either Chinese words or pictures as media; then they performed the reading, naming, and translation tasks. All subjects performed better in reading words than in naming pictures, when responding in Chinese. When the response was in the non-native language (English or French), high-learning subjects were equally efficient in translation and picture-naming tasks. Low-learning subjects, however, performed better in either the translation or the picture-naming task, depending on their learning strategies. These results are consistent with the idea that both proficiency in a non-native language and the strategy for acquiring the language are main determinants for the pattern of lexical processing in that language.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

"We have our own special language." Language, sexuality and HIV/AIDS: a case study of youth in an urban township in South Africa.

BACKGROUND: Despite the fact that most South African youth know about HIV/AIDS and how it can be prevented, there is a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS amongst youth in South Africa. Generally youth do not practice safe sex, and youth sexuality is characterised by multiple sexual partners, not using condoms and transactional sex. OBJECTIVES: To minimize the risk of HIV infection, it is necessary to understand youth sexuality. In this paper I explore youth sexuality with a specific focus on how language influences sexuality. METHODS: I use discourse analysis and qualitative research techniques. Purposive sampling, a form of non-probability sampling was used. I interviewed seventy youth individually or in groups and used in-depth semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: The use of language influences youth sexuality. Youth have developed a specialised language to talk about sex and sexuality and this language has become part of the daily discourse, so that unsafe sexual practices become norms and are justified. CONCLUSIONS: The realm of language can be a creative way for peer and HIV/AIDS educators to work with youth towards creating a healthier sexuality. However, as language always occurs in a material context, it is also necessary to work towards changing the material environment, such as poverty. This environment not only facilitates the development of a particular language but it also encourages unsafe sexual practices such as transactional sex.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Children's grammatical categories of verb and noun: a comparative look at children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL).

The study investigated the development of grammatical categories (noun and verb) in young language learners. Twenty-eight children with specific language impairment (SLI) with a mean language age of 35 months and 28 children with normal language (NL) with a mean language age of 34 months were exposed to four novel verbs and four novel nouns during 10 experimental child-directed play sessions. The lexical items were modelled with four experimentally controlled argument structures. Both groups of children showed little productivity with syntactic marking of arguments in the novel verb conditions. Thus, both groups of children mostly followed the surface structure of the model presented to them, regardless of the argument they were trying to express. Therefore, there was little evidence of verb-general processes. In contrast, both groups used nouns in semantic roles that had not been modelled for them. Importantly, however, children with SLI still appeared to be more input dependent than NL children. This suggests that children with NL were working with a robust noun schema, whereas children with SLI were not. Taken together, the findings suggest that neither group of children had a grammatical category of verb, but demonstrated a general knowledge of the grammatical category of noun. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of normal and impaired language development.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2000

A common language network for comprehension and production: a contribution to the definition of language epicenters with PET.

In this paper, we report on a PET activation study designed to assess whether functional neuroimaging would help to uncover essential language areas in normal volunteers and to provide a more accurate definition of their localization. Regional cerebral blood flow was repeatedly monitored in eight right-handed male volunteers, while performing a language comprehension task (listening to factual stories) and a language production task (covert generation of verbs semantically related to heard nouns), using silent resting as a control condition. The conjunction analysis, conducted with SPM, was used to uncover the network of activations common to both task that included three left hemisphere areas, namely (1) the pars opercularis and triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, (2) the posterior part of the superior temporal cortex centered around the superior temporal sulcus, extending to the planum temporale posterior part but sparing the supramarginalis and angular gyri, and (3) the most anterior part of the left inferior temporal gyrus at the junction with the anterior fusiform gyrus. The inferior and lateral parts of the right cerebellar cortex were also included in the conjunction network. Each of the three cortical areas, when they are site of lesion or electrical stimulation, elicit impairment in both language comprehension and production and can thus be considered as essential to language. Accordingly, the present results provide conservative anatomofunctional definitions of the Broca, Wernicke, and basal language areas. Interestingly, contralateral homologues of Broca's and Wernicke's areas also lighted up in the conjunction analysis that could be related to the interindividual variability of hemispheric language dominance.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Using language intensity to increase the success of a family intervention to protect children from ultraviolet radiation: predictions from language expectancy theory.

BACKGROUND: Even though people are informed about skin cancer prevention, they do not always comply with prevention advice. From Language Expectancy Theory, it was predicted that messages with high language intensity would improve compliance with sun safety recommendations and that this effect would be enhanced with deductive argument style. METHODS: Parents (N = 841) from a pediatric clinic and elementary schools received sun safety messages (newsletters, brochures, tip cards) by mail that varied in language intensity and logical style. Effects on attitudes and behavior were tested in a pretest-posttest factorial design. RESULTS: As hypothesized, parents receiving messages with high- as opposed to low-intensity language complied more with sun safety advice. Messages with highly intense language were more persuasive when the arguments were formatted in a deductive style; low language intensity was more persuasive in inductively styled messages. CONCLUSIONS: By carefully adjusting messages features, health professionals can obtain further compliance beyond that produced by educating people about health risks and creating favorable attitudes and self-efficacy expectations. Highly intense language may be a good general strategy in prevention messages and works better when conclusions and recommendations are offered explicitly to recipients, especially when advice is aimed at reducing their personal risk.

Assertiveness↗

PubMed2003

The Profile of Multiple Language Proficiencies: A Measure for Evaluating Language Samples of Deaf Children.

This article reports the process of creating a developmental measure that assesses the multilingual capabilities of deaf children and the problems that were encountered. Because deaf children may be using more than one method of communication (e.g., sign language skills and spoken language skills), it is important to evaluate their skills as completely as possible. In a pilot study, we used a nominal scale that assessed language skills based on a single continuum, with good English and good American Sign Language (ASL) skills as its two extremes and approximately equal skills in both as the midpoint. In the main study, a more complete measure was created, the Profile of Multiple Language Proficiencies (PMLP). The PMLP uses a single scale that represents the different stages of language development that can be observed in both English and ASL. The PMLP showed reasonable initial reliability and has good promise as an easy-to-use measure of developing language skills in children who use multiple modalities of communication. Using the PMLP as a prototype, we discuss some of the issues that influence the reliability and validity in evaluating such a scale and how these can be overcome or avoided.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

The Language Proficiency Profile-2: Assessment of the Global Communication Skills of Deaf Children Across Languages and Modalities of Expression.

Data are presented from two studies that investigate the developmental trends and concurrent validity of a measure of language and communication skills for deaf children, the Language Proficiency Profile-2 (LPP-2), developed by Bebko and McKinnon (1993). The LPP-2 was designed to evaluate the overall linguistic/communicative skills of deaf children, independent of any specific language or modality of expression. It focuses on the totality of the children's communication skills. Experiment 1 investigated developmental trends of the LPP-2 for both deaf and hearing children, studying a combined sample of deaf and hearing children from the United States and Canada. Experiment 2 investigated the relationship between the LPP-2 and two commonly used measures to assess deaf children on language development (Preschool Language Scale-3) and early reading skills (Test of Early Reading Ability-Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing). Results from the two studies indicate that the LPP-2 has good utility not only as a measure of overall language development but also as a predictor of achievement for English language and early reading skills.

Journal Article↗