Atypical Language Development Research Articles

Precursors to infant sensorimotor synchronization to speech and non-speech rhythms: A longitudinal study.

Impaired sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) to acoustic rhythm may be a marker of atypical language development. Here, Motion Capture was used to assess gross motor rhythmic movement at six time points between 5- and 11 months of age. Infants were recorded drumming to acoustic stimuli of varying linguistic and temporal complexity: drumbeats, repeated syllables and nursery rhymes. Here we show, for the first time, developmental change in infants' movement timing in response to auditory stimuli over the first year of life. Longitudinal analyses revealed that whilst infants could not yet reliably synchronize their movement to auditory rhythms, infant spontaneous motor tempo became faster with age, and by 11 months, a subset of infants decelerate from their spontaneous motor tempo, which better accords with the incoming tempo. Further, infants became more regular drummers with age, with marked decreases in the variability of spontaneous motor tempo and variability in response to drumbeats. This latter effect was subdued in response to linguistic stimuli. The current work lays the foundation for using individual differences in precursors of SMS in infancy to predict later language outcomes. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: We present the first longitudinal investigation of infant rhythmic movement over the first year of life Whilst infants generally move more quickly and with higher regularity over their first year, by 11 months infants begin to counter this pattern when hearing slower infant-directed song Infant movement is more variable to speech than non-speech stimuli In the context of the larger Cambridge UK BabyRhythm Project, we lay the foundation for rhythmic movement in infancy to predict later language outcomes.

The role of the input frequency in L1 Spanish phonological acquisition. A corpus-based study

This study presents the phonological system exhibited by children (n=59) aged 3;0 to 6;0 and focuses on the role of input frequency. Using a spontaneous child speech corpus of Spanish (CHIEDE) as a data source, as well as computational processing techniques -including an automatic phonological transcriber-, data relating to the phonological level was retrieved. This resulted in a phonological inventory of Spanish-speaking children, ordered by frequency of use, which may serve as a model for research on typical and atypical child language development. Additionally, a study was carried out on the stability of the participants’ phonological systems by calculating the variability that the different age groups displayed, and outcomes were compared with other similar corpora. Results obtained from the comparison of the phonological inventory of children and adults show that there is a relationship between frequency of use in adult speech and the order of acquisition of phonemes.

Bilingual children acquiring Russian and German in Vienna: nonword repetition correlates with stronger but not with weaker language.

Nonword repetition tests (NWRT) can be useful tools together with other assessment procedures for diagnosing a developmental learning disorder in bilingual children. Concerning typically developing children, however, the link between NWRT performance and language development is still unclear. The present study contributes to this discussion by investigating the link between language-dependent NWRT performance, language development, and language exposure. A total of 20 simultaneously bilingual Russian-German children, aged 4-6 years, were tested with "The Russian language proficiency test for multilingual children (SRUK)" and "Patholinguistische Diagnostik bei Sprachentwicklungsstörungen (PDSS)" as well as language-specific nonwords for Russian and German. Most children scored within the mean range in SRUK. In PDSS they scored two standard deviations below the mean range in most of the subtests. NWRT in Russian significantly correlated with the NWRT in German and also positively correlated with both comprehension and production in Russian. In contrast, the German NWRT did not correlate with comprehension or with production in German. Moreover, the correlation between the German NWRT and the comprehension of grammatical structures in Russian was significant, and the correlations between the German NWRT and the two other Russian language development tests just failed to reach significance. High scores in both the Russian and the German NWRT offer evidence that the ability to repeat language-specific nonwords does not differ depending on language exposure. The aim to distinguish between typical and atypical language development based on NWRT can be reached only when NWRT and all possible influencing factors in typically developed children are analyzed.

Using Motor Tempi to Understand Rhythm and Grammatical Skills in Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Language Development.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show relative weaknesses on rhythm tasks beyond their characteristic linguistic impairments. The current study compares preferred tempo and the width of an entrainment region for 5- to 7-year-old typically developing (TD) children and children with DLD and considers the associations with rhythm aptitude and expressive grammar skills in the two populations. Preferred tempo was measured with a spontaneous motor tempo task (tapping tempo at a comfortable speed), and the width (range) of an entrainment region was measured by the difference between the upper (slow) and lower (fast) limits of tapping a rhythm normalized by an individual's spontaneous motor tempo. Data from N = 16 children with DLD and N = 114 TD children showed that whereas entrainment-region width did not differ across the two groups, slowest motor tempo, the determinant of the upper (slow) limit of the entrainment region, was at a faster tempo in children with DLD vs. TD. In other words, the DLD group could not pace their slow tapping as slowly as the TD group. Entrainment-region width was positively associated with rhythm aptitude and receptive grammar even after taking into account potential confounding factors, whereas expressive grammar did not show an association with any of the tapping measures. Preferred tempo was not associated with any study variables after including covariates in the analyses. These results motivate future neuroscientific studies of low-frequency neural oscillatory mechanisms as the potential neural correlates of entrainment-region width and their associations with musical rhythm and spoken language processing in children with typical and atypical language development.

The Effect of Somatosensory Input on Word Recognition in Typical Children and Those With Speech Sound Disorder.

Recent work suggests that speech perception is influenced by the somatosensory system and that oral sensorimotor disruption has specific effects on the perception of speech both in infants who have not yet begun to talk and in older children and adults with ample speech production experience; however, we do not know how such disruptions affect children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Response to disruption of would-be articulators during speech perception could reveal how sensorimotor linkages work for both typical and atypical speech and language development. Such linkages are crucial to advancing our knowledge on how both typically developing and atypically developing children produce and perceive speech. Using a looking-while-listening task, we explored the impact of a sensorimotor restrictor on the recognition of words whose onsets involve late-developing sounds (s, ʃ) for both children with typical development (TD) and their peers with SSD. Children with SSD showed a decrement in performance when they held a restrictor in their mouths during the task, but this was not the case for children with TD. This effect on performance was only observed for the specific speech sounds blocked by the would-be articulators. We argue that these findings provide evidence for altered perceptual motor pathways in children with SSD. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21809442.

Mentalizációs képességek fejlődése és összefüggése a nyelvi fejlődés zavaraival

Development of mentalization skills and their relation to language development disordersEnikő GyörkőResearch of Theory of Mind (ToM) suggests that mentalizing ability correlates with the development of language skills. This study aimed to examine the relationships of the atypical development of language skills with ToM in school-age children. In the article we collected 3-year-old preschool child with atypical and normal language development. The atypical development oflanguage was measured by the KOFA-3 test, while ToM was measured by Sally and Anne test. Research has shown that children with delayed speech development have been significantly unsuccessful in resolving their mentalization situation compared to a group of children who typically develop. However, no correlation was found between KOFA-3 repository values andunsuccessful cognitive situations. The article argues that language development has an effect on the development of mentalizing ability. In other words, in the understanding of others, the state of thought is mutually supported by linguistic and cognitive theory.

On the production of restrictive pied-piping relative clauses in Italian: evidence from populations with typical and atypical language development

Restrictive relative clauses are among the most frequently studied structures in language development across different languages and different populations. While much literature is devoted to the acquisition and use of subject and object relatives introduced by that, pied-piping (prepositional and genitive) relatives have been less studied. This paper offers an overview of some recent studies in which these structures were investigated in Italian typically developing (TD) individuals and in individuals with learning difficulties (LD) using the same procedures, namely repetition and/or elicited production. Early studies found that pied-piping relatives are acquired not earlier than 10 years of age. Much subsequent research on Italian found that the rate of production of these structures increases with age increase, but it never reaches ceiling effects. Although percentages increase for both populations, the level of accuracy for individuals with LD is lower than for TD individuals. This is expected, since pied-piping relatives are typical of a formal, written register, to which people with LD have difficult access. However, low frequency in speech cannot be the only explanation for the low rate of production. Syntactic complexity, agreement phenomena, and number of arguments that receive thematic role explains the difficulties with these structures.

LINGUISTIC AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE PRODUCTION IN 4-6-YEAR-OLD GEORGIAN-SPEAKING CHILDREN WITH TYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIFIC LANGUAGE DISORDER

The present study aimed at conducting the neuropsychological and linguistic analysis of expressive lan- guage disorder in the population of Georgian-speaking children. 4-6-year-old children with expressive  language disorder and typical language development participated in the study (40 participants in total).   The child’s speech was assessed through formal testing and free play in informal situations.  The comparison of the two groups showed that the children with typical language development signifi- cantly differ from the group with language disorder by articulation (t (38) = - 4,65, p<0,001), phono- logical (t (38) = - 2,48, p<0,05), and syntactic errors (t (38) = - 3,67), length of utterance (t (38) = 3,62,  p=0,001), and the total number of errors (t (38) =- 5,36, p<0,001). The above data lead to the following  conclusion: Georgian-speaking children with expressive language disorder mostly make phonological,  syntactic and articulation errors. They also find difficult to construct complex sentences. The comparison  of the two groups did not reveal qualitative differences.  Both groups made the same type of mistakes.  The only difference was the total number of errors.  Regression analysis showed that the length of utterance and the total production can only predict the type  of errors in average population.The interpretation of  the  research results  leads to four  general conclusions: 1. Expressive language  disorder  is not  atypical  language  development  disorder and only implies prolonged  language acqui- sition; 2. The deficiency profile manifested in the case of expressive language disorder depends on a  concrete language  and the requirements imposed on the child by this language; 3. Phonetic,  articulation,  syntactic errors and short sentences are mostly typical of Georgian-speaking children with expressive  language disorder; 4.  According to Levelt’s  cognitive model, the stage of grammatical and phonological  encoding and the stage of articulation of phonetic plan are the deficient links in the population of Geor- gian-speaking children.

Profiling Bilingual Children: Using Monolingual Assessment to Inform Diagnosis.

Diagnostic tools developed for monolinguals are frequently used for bilingual linguistic assessment. The absence of evaluation criteria for using monolingual norms for bilinguals contributes to inconsistent diagnostic procedures, impacting research and clinical practice. This study considers the reliance on monolingual tools to assess the heritage language to identify bilingual atypical language development (ALD) even when bilingual norms are available for the societal language. One hundred thirty-one English-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;6-5;11 (years;months) were assessed using diagnostic tools. Bilingual standards are available for the societal language but not for the heritage language. Fifteen English-Hebrew bilingual children were suspected of ALD. They were individually compared with 116 typically developing bilingual peers. The Core Language Score and seven subtest standardized scores of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool-Second Edition were analyzed in the heritage language, English. Results revealed that a composite score used for differential diagnosis in monolingual children cannot be relied upon for bilingual children. Measurements vary in their diagnostic accuracy, with Concepts and Following Directions (comprehension of instructions), Receptive and Expressive Word Classes (lexicon), and Sentence Repetition (syntax) being the most promising for identifying ALD in bilingual children. Lastly, bilingual children's age of onset of bilingualism must be considered in the analysis of linguistic outcomes. Findings elucidate that monolingual assessments for heritage speakers must consider bilingual models of development to ensure a reliable and informative diagnosis. Interacting factors, such as reliance on language-specific knowledge and the recruitment of other nonlinguistic processing skills, may influence a measurement's sensitivity. The findings are pertinent to the practice of speech-language pathologists, informing evidence-based assessment procedures for bilingual children. A group study to determine whether the suggested bilingual standards can identify ALD with acceptable specificity and sensitivity is now recommended.

The Vocabulary of Infants with an Elevated Likelihood and Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Infant Language Studies Using the CDI and MSEL.

Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are typically accompanied by atypical language development, which can be noticeable even before diagnosis. The siblings of children diagnosed with ASD are at elevated likelihood for ASD diagnosis and have been shown to have higher prevalence rates than the general population. In this paper, we systematically reviewed studies looking at the vocabulary size and development of infants with autism. One inclusion criterion was that infants were grouped either pre-diagnostically as elevated or typical likelihood or post-diagnostically as ASD or without ASD. This review focused on studies that tested infants up to 24 months of age and that assessed vocabulary either via the parent-completed MacArthur–Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI) or the clinician-administered Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). Our systematic search yielded 76 studies. A meta-analysis was performed on these studies that compared the vocabulary scores of EL and TL infants pre-diagnostically and the scores of ASD and non-ASD infants post-diagnostically. Both pre- and post-diagnostically, it was found that the EL and ASD infants had smaller vocabularies than their TL and non-ASD peers, respectively. The effect sizes across studies were heterogenous, prompting additional moderator analyses of age and sub-group analyses of the language measure used (CDI or MSEL) as potential moderators of the effect size. Age was found to be a moderator both in the pre- and post-diagnostical groups, however, language measure was not a moderator in either diagnostic group. Interpretations and future research directions are discussed based on these findings.

Objects Shape Activation during Spoken Word Recognition in Preschoolers with Typical and Atypical Language Development: An Eye-tracking Study

ABSTRACT Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children.

Infants’ vocalizations at 6 months predict their productive vocabulary at one year

Long before their first words, children communicate by using speech-like vocalizations. These protophones might be indicative of infants’ later language development. We here examined infants’ (n = 56) early vocalizations at 6 months (vocal reactivity scale of the IBQ-R) as a predictor of their expressive and receptive language at 12 months (German version of the CDI). Regression analyses revealed vocalizations to significantly predict expressive, but not receptive language. Our findings in German-learning 6-month-olds extend previous predictive evidence of early vocalizations reported for older infants. Together these findings are informative in light of early assessments monitoring typical and atypical language development.

Executive Functions and Morphosyntax: Distinguishing DLD From ADHD in French-Speaking Children.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is commonly associated with deficits in executive functions executive functions (EF), but children with this disorder frequently demonstrate co-occurring morphosyntactic impairment when assessed using standardized tests. On the other hand, children with developmental language disorder (DLD), a population defined by impaired linguistic functioning, are often diagnosed with comorbid EF deficits. We investigated EF and morphosyntax in 60 French-speaking children aged six to 12: 20 with typical development (TD), 20 with ADHD, and 20 with DLD. To obtain an EF profile for the different cognitive groups, we used standardized tests to assess lower-order EF skills, (i) selective attention and (ii) short-term memory capacity, and higher-order EF skills, (i) working memory capacity and (ii) attention shifting. To test morphosyntax, we used (i) a standardized omnibus test that elicited a variety of complex structures and (ii) a more fine-grained probe test that assessed the production of third person object clitic pronouns, a clinical marker of DLD in French. Children with ADHD and DLD were associated with different EF and morphosyntactic profiles: children in the ADHD group demonstrated higher-order EF weakness and difficulty on the omnibus morphosyntax task, whereas children with DLD showed both lower- and higher-order limitations and struggled with both morphosyntax tasks. Our findings indicate that deficits in morphosyntax are not characteristic of ADHD but that the performance of children with ADHD can mimic morphosyntactic impairment when all-encompassing omnibus tests evaluating various and unpredictable structures are used. If morphosyntax is tested using reliable markers of atypical language development and external cognitive-load factors are optimally reduced, there are significant discrepancies in the observed ADHD-DLD outcomes. Clinical implications that include perspectives for the differential diagnosis of ADHD and DLD are discussed.

The Emergence of Inner Speech and Its Measurement in Atypically Developing Children.

Inner speech (IS), or the act of silently talking to yourself, occurs in humans regardless of their cultural and linguistic background, suggesting its key role in human cognition. The absence of overt articulation leads to methodological challenges to studying IS and its effects on cognitive processing. Investigating IS in children is particularly problematic due to cognitive demands of the behavioral tasks and age restrictions for collecting neurophysiological data [e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electromyography (EMG)]; thus, the developmental aspects of IS remain poorly understood despite the long history of adult research. Studying developmental aspects of IS could shed light on the variability in types and amount of IS in adults. In addition, problems in mastering IS might account for neuropsychological deficits observed in children with neurodevelopmental conditions. For example, deviance in IS development might influence these children’s general cognitive processing, including social cognition, executive functioning, and related social–emotional functioning. The aim of the present paper is to look at IS from a developmental perspective, exploring its theory and identifying experimental paradigms appropriate for preschool and early school-aged children in Anglophone and Russian literature. We choose these two languages because the original work carried out by Vygotsky on IS was published in Russian, and Russian scientists have continued to publish on this topic since his death. Since the 1960s, much of the experimental work in this area has been published in Anglophone journals. We discuss different measurements of IS phenomena, their informativeness about subtypes of IS, and their potential for studying atypical language development. Implications for assessing and stimulating IS in clinical populations are discussed.

Atypical language development matters: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

This commentary critiques Ambridge’s radical exemplar model of language acquisition using research from the Longitudinal Study of Early Language, which has tracked the language development of 30+ children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) since 2002. This research has demonstrated that the children’s capacity for abstraction at the grammatical level is not reducible to their lexical or pragmatic abilities. Moreover, the children’s capacity for generalization at the lexical semantic level is more impaired than their grammatical abstractions. These findings cannot be accounted for by Ambridge’s model of stored exemplars and domain-general analogizing.

Description of the linguistic and neurological findings of twins born preterm at twoyears of age

Introduction: Prematurity, low birth weight and multiple births are risk factors for structural changes in the brain, as well as deviations in motor, cognitive, social and language development.
 Objective: To describe language findings and investigate the presence of neurological changes in preterm twins born at two years of age.
 Method: This is a cross-sectional study based on data analysis of the medical records of six pairs of low birth weight preterm twins, of both sexes, at two years of age, attended to at the State Center for the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Persons withDisabilities - CEPRED, in Salvador-Bahia-Brazil. To this end, information regarding birth was collected; the clinical history; the imaging exams; and the speech, neurological and interdisciplinary assessments.
 Results: preterm twins had atypical language development and neurological changes that may compromise oral language development. From the neurological point of view, abnormalities common to the premature newborn, such as peri-intraventricular hemorrhage, were observed.
 Conclusion: Multiple births associated with prematurity and low birth weight may pose risks to the childs language acquisition.

Grammatical Gender in Atypical Language Development

We use code-switched structures to investigate how gender is represented in the mind of an adult English-Spanish bilingual (Spanish is the Heritage language) who has Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), a genetic disorder that presents both behavioral disturbances and intellectual and linguistic disabilities. The latter remains entirely unexplored in the case of bilingual speakers. Previous research (Liceras et al., 2016) using an Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) and a Sentence Completion Task (SCT) has shown that typically-developing (TD) Spanish-dominant English-Spanish bilinguals (but not English-dominant bilinguals) prefer gender-matching switched Determiner+Noun (concord) and Subject+Adjectival Predicate (agreement) structures, as La[theF] house[casaF] or The house[la casaF] es roja[is redF] over non-matching ones, as El[theM] house[casaF] or The house[la casaF] es rojo[is redM], which means that these bilinguals abide by the so- called ‘analogical criterion’ (AC): they assign English Nouns the gender of their translation equivalent in Spanish. These same two tasks were administered to a 34 year-old male English-Spanish bilingual (English dominant) with PWS. The results show that in the AJT, he rates both matching and non-matching concord and agreement structures high but has a stronger preference for all structures that abide by the AC. In the SCT, he unambiguously abides by the AC with both types of structures as TD Spanish-dominant bilinguals do. These results constitute a first step towards investigating which linguistic abilities may be compromised in the case of the PWS population and provide evidence that bilingualism does not seem to have a negative effect on the activation of formal features in their grammars.

Within-task variability on standardized language tests predicts autism spectrum disorder: a pilot study of the Response Dispersion Index

BackgroundQualitatively atypical language development characterized by non-sequential skill acquisition within a developmental domain, which has been called developmental deviance or difference, is a common characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We developed the Response Dispersion Index (RDI), a measure of this phenomenon based on intra-subtest scatter of item responses on standardized psychometric assessments, to assess the within-task variability among individuals with language impairment (LI) and/or ASD.MethodsStandard clinical assessments of language were administered to 502 individuals from the New Jersey Language and Autism Genetics Study (NJLAGS) cohort. Participants were divided into four diagnostic groups: unaffected, ASD-only, LI-only, and ASD + LI. For each language measure, RDI was defined as the product of the total number of test items and the sum of the weight (based on item difficulty) of test items missed. Group differences in RDI were assessed, and the relationship between RDI and ASD diagnosis among individuals with LI was investigated for each language assessment.ResultsAlthough standard scores were unable to distinguish the LI-only and ASD/ASD + LI groups, the ASD/ASD + LI groups had higher RDI scores compared to LI-only group across all measures of expressive, pragmatic, and metalinguistic language. RDI was positively correlated with quantitative ASD traits across all subgroups and was an effective predictor of ASD diagnosis among individuals with LI.ConclusionsThe RDI is an effective quantitative metric of developmental deviance/difference that correlates with ASD traits, supporting previous associations between ASD and non-sequential skill acquisition. The RDI can be adapted to other clinical measures to investigate the degree of difference that is not captured by standard performance summary scores.

Uneven Linguistic Outcome in Extremely Preterm Children.

One primary problem in extremely preterm children is the occurrence of atypical language development. The aim of this study was to explore the components of language (articulatory phonetics, lexicon and syntax) in comprehension and production in extremely preterm children between the 4th and 5th year of age. The language section of the Preschool Neuropsychological Test was administered to 20 extremely preterm monolingual Italian children (GA < 28weeks) and to a control sample of 40 full term children (GA > 37weeks), matched for age and non-verbal IQ. Language comprehension was fully efficient in all of the components that we assessed. In the tasks of language production the clinical sample fared much worse than their age and IQ matched controls and the differences were highly significant (p < .001). Language acquisition in extremely preterm children may follow uneven developmental trajectories: language comprehension can be spared in the face of a selective impairment of language production at the level of articulatory phonetics and syntax.

Towards a More Family Oriented and Interdisciplinary Screening of Language Development in Young Children: Perceptions, Opinions and Desires of Caregivers of Children with and without Atypical Language Development

Only a small number of children with atypical language development who can benefit from early intervention are actually identified before reaching school age. Our aim was to explore perceptions of caregivers of monolingual and multilingual children with and without atypical language development in order to provide relevant themes for improving language screening and referral in Well Child Care (WCC). We interviewed 38 Dutch caregivers of monolingual and multilingual children with and without atypical language development. They were recruited via kindergarten, nurseries, and speech and language pathologists. First, we analyzed the interviews of caregivers of monolingual children with atypical language development and caregivers of multilingual children. Second, we adopted data source triangulation with the interviews of caregivers of monolingual children without atypical language development for further exploration of the results of the first round. Third, we categorized emerging codes across identified subthemes and themes. We identified six subthemes: (1) Perception WCC; (2) Perception consult at the WCC; (3) Opinion of the consult at the WCC; (4) Desires regarding WCC; (5) Parent factors, and (6) Child factors (first and second round). Target themes, relating to the themes and subthemes, that can be used to enhance structural language screening in WCC are: a more family oriented consult, better interprofessional collaboration, and more specific knowledge about language development and different referral routes for children with atypical language development.