Language-impaired Children Research Articles

단어연상과제를 통한 단순언어장애아동과 일반아동의 의미구조 특성 비교

단어연상과제를 통한 단순언어장애아동과 일반아동의 의미구조 특성 비교

Picture naming in typically developing and language-impaired children: the role of sustained attention.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have problems not only with language performance but also with sustained attention, which is the ability to maintain alertness over an extended period of time. Although there is consensus that this ability is impaired with respect to processing stimuli in the auditory perceptual modality, conflicting evidence exists concerning the visual modality. To address the outstanding issue whether the impairment in sustained attention is limited to the auditory domain, or if it is domain-general. Furthermore, to test whether children's sustained attention ability relates to their word-production skills. Groups of 7-9 year olds with SLI (N = 28) and typically developing (TD) children (N = 22) performed a picture-naming task and two sustained attention tasks, namely auditory and visual continuous performance tasks (CPTs). Children with SLI performed worse than TD children on picture naming and on both the auditory and visual CPTs. Moreover, performance on both the CPTs correlated with picture-naming latencies across developmental groups. These results provide evidence for a deficit in both auditory and visual sustained attention in children with SLI. Moreover, the study indicates there is a relationship between domain-general sustained attention and picture-naming performance in both TD and language-impaired children. Future studies should establish whether this relationship is causal. If attention influences language, training of sustained attention may improve language production in children from both developmental groups.

Service utilisation and costs of language impairment in children: The early language in Victoria Australian population-based study

Purpose: To examine (1) the patterns of service use and costs associated with language impairment in a community cohort of children from ages 4–9 years and (2) the relationship between language impairment and health service utilisation.Method: Participants were children and caregivers of six local government areas in Melbourne participating in the community-based Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS). Health service use was reported by parents. Costs were valued in Australian dollars in 2014, from the government and family perspectives. Depending on age, the Australian adapted Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Pre-school, 2nd Edition (CELF-P2) or the CELF, 4th Edition (CELF4) was used to assess expressive and receptive language.Result: At 5, 7 and 9 years respectively 21%, 11% and 8% of families reported using services for speech and/or language concerns. The annual costs associated with using services averaged A$612 (A$255 to government, A$357 to family) at 5 years and A$992 (A$317 to government, A$675 to family) at 7 years. Children with persistent language impairment had significantly higher service costs than those with typical language.Conclusion: Language impairment in 4–9-year-old children is associated with higher use of services and costs to both families and government compared to typical language.

CATALISE: A Multinational and Multidisciplinary Delphi Consensus Study. Identifying Language Impairments in Children.

Delayed or impaired language development is a common developmental concern, yet there is little agreement about the criteria used to identify and classify language impairments in children. Children's language difficulties are at the interface between education, medicine and the allied professions, who may all adopt different approaches to conceptualising them. Our goal in this study was to use an online Delphi technique to see whether it was possible to achieve consensus among professionals on appropriate criteria for identifying children who might benefit from specialist services. We recruited a panel of 59 experts representing ten disciplines (including education, psychology, speech-language therapy/pathology, paediatrics and child psychiatry) from English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and USA). The starting point for round 1 was a set of 46 statements based on articles and commentaries in a special issue of a journal focusing on this topic. Panel members rated each statement for both relevance and validity on a seven-point scale, and added free text comments. These responses were synthesised by the first two authors, who then removed, combined or modified items with a view to improving consensus. The resulting set of statements was returned to the panel for a second evaluation (round 2). Consensus (percentage reporting 'agree' or 'strongly agree') was at least 80 percent for 24 of 27 round 2 statements, though many respondents qualified their response with written comments. These were again synthesised by the first two authors. The resulting consensus statement is reported here, with additional summary of relevant evidence, and a concluding commentary on residual disagreements and gaps in the evidence base.

Pragmatic language impairment in children with Noonan syndrome

ABSTRACTNoonan syndrome (NS) is a disorder causing symptoms like short stature, characteristic facial features, congenital heart disease, possible mental retardation, and pragmatic difficulties. This study describes the pragmatic skills in NS and discusses the linguistic profile of 17 informants aged 6–15 years, by comparing the participants’ scores on the Children’s Communication Checklist, 2nd edition (CCC-2) (Bishop, 2011), with a group of typically developing children of matching age and gender. Language impairments were common in the NS group. The results show that children and adolescents with NS do not have one coherent pragmatic profile. However, 76.5% of the participants displayed communication impairments, and pragmatic skills were significantly lower than in the control group.

Health, employment and relationships: Correlates of personal wellbeing in young adults with and without a history of childhood language impairment

ObjectiveWe examine the potential associations between self-rated health, employment situation, relationship status and personal wellbeing in young adults with and without a history of language impairment (LI). MethodsIn total, 172 24-year-olds from the UK participated, with approximately half (N = 84) having a history of LI. Personal wellbeing was measured using ratings from three questions from the Office for National Statistics regarding life satisfaction, happiness and life being worthwhile. ResultsThere were similarities between individuals with a history of LI and their age-matched peers in self-rated personal wellbeing. However, regression analyses revealed self-rated health was the most consistent predictor of personal wellbeing for individuals with a history of LI in relation to life satisfaction (21% of variance), happiness (11%) and perceptions that things one does in life are worthwhile (32%). None of the regression analyses were significant for their peers. ConclusionsSimilarities on ratings of wellbeing by young adults with and without a history of LI can mask heterogeneity and important differences. Young adults with a history of LI are more vulnerable to the effects of health, employment and relationship status on their wellbeing than their peers.

The relationship between spoken language and speech and nonspeech processing in children with autism: a magnetic event-related field study.

It has been proposed that language impairments in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) stem from atypical neural processing of speech and/or nonspeech sounds. However, the strength of this proposal is compromised by the unreliable outcomes of previous studies of speech and nonspeech processing in ASD. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was an association between poor spoken language and atypical event-related field (ERF) responses to speech and nonspeech sounds in children with ASD (n=14) and controls (n=18). Data from this developmental population (ages 6-14) were analysed using a novel combination of methods to maximize the reliability of our findings while taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the ASD population. The results showed that poor spoken language scores were associated with atypical left hemisphere brain responses (200 to 400ms) to both speech and nonspeech in the ASD group. These data support the idea that some children with ASD may have an immature auditory cortex that affects their ability to process both speech and nonspeech sounds. Their poor speech processing may impair their ability to process the speech of other people, and hence reduce their ability to learn the phonology, syntax, and semantics of their native language.

Assessing Measurement Invariance for Spanish Sentence Repetition and Morphology Elicitation Tasks

The purpose of this study was to evaluate evidence supporting the construct validity of two grammatical tasks (sentence repetition, morphology elicitation) included in the Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (Restrepo, Gorin, & Gray, 2013). We evaluated if the tasks measured the targeted grammatical skills in the same way across predominantly Spanish-speaking children with typical language development and those with primary language impairment. A multiple-group, confirmatory factor analytic approach was applied to examine factorial invariance in a sample of 307 predominantly Spanish-speaking children (177 with typical language development; 130 with primary language impairment). The 2 newly developed grammatical tasks were modeled as measures in a unidimensional confirmatory factor analytic model along with 3 well-established grammatical measures from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, Spanish (Wiig, Semel, & Secord, 2006). Results suggest that both new tasks measured the construct of grammatical skills for both language-ability groups in an equivalent manner. There was no evidence of bias related to children's language status for the Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children Sentence Repetition or Morphology Elicitation tasks. Results provide support for the validity of the new tasks as measures of grammatical skills.

Changing How Speech-Language Pathologists Think and Talk about Dialect Variation.

In this article, we argue for a change in how professionals in speech-language pathology think and talk about dialect diversity in the US and elsewhere. Our recommendation is evidence-based and reflects a change we have made to better serve children and advocate for the field of communication disorders. The change involves replacing the phrase dialect vs. disorder with disorder within dialect. While this change in wording may seem superficial, it generates dramatically different types of conversations a professional can have with others about childhood language impairment across different dialects of English.

Aspects Concerning “Play” for the Promotion of Preschool Children with Severe Speech- and Language Impairment

Speech and language abilities are of great importance for later participation in economical and social life. In Lower Saxony/Germany, severely speech-/language (SL) impaired children may obtain special treatment during preschool in a so-called “Sprachheilkindergarten” (STK), a kindergarten focusing on early SL therapy. Purpose: This work analyzes the role of play during SL-therapy at the STK and monitors the long-term development and success of SL-impaired children. Methods: Long-term development (up to 19 years) of 71 children, who were dismissed from a STK during 1993 and 2006, was investigated. Playing habits were observed in 21 children (male: n = 14, female: n = 7), who were treated at STK in the years 2011/2013. The study was designed as a register study. Results: Approximately 75% of the children attend a regular school or complete a standard professional training after being treated at the STK. Upon admittance, 100% of the children had severe SL impairment, in addition 75% of the children exhibit deranged, not age-appropriate playing behavior. Additionally, children often show indication of social-emotional problems. At dismissal from the STK, the children show measurable improvement of SL and playing abilities due to SL therapy and educational measures. But according to the present study there were no close statistical relations between play- and SL development. Conclusion: Due to active promotion and therapy, many children achieve to improve their SL and playing abilities. The apparent independent improvement of these skills allows them to catch up with other children in their age group. Potentially, this is the crucial aspect for a child’s long-term development as it profits from its peer group.

Connective processing by bilingual children and monolinguals with specific language impairment: distinct profiles.

Production studies show that both Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and bilingual children for whom Russian is a non-dominant language have difficulty distinguishing between the near-synonymous connectives i 'and' and a 'and/but'. I is a preferred connective when reference is maintained, whereas a is normally used for reference shift. We report an eye-tracking experiment comparing connective processing by Russian-speaking monolinguals with typical language development (TLD) with that of Russian-Dutch bilinguals and Russian-speaking monolinguals with SLI (age 5-6). The results demonstrate that the processing profiles of monolinguals with TLD and bilinguals are similar: both groups use connective semantics immediately for predicting further discourse. In contrast, children with SLI do not show sensitivity to these semantic differences. Despite similar production profiles, bilinguals and monolinguals with SLI are clearly different in connective processing. We discuss the implications of these results for the possible causes of the errors in the two populations.

Language Impairment in the Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Context.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a ubiquitous designation that affects the identification, assessment, treatment, and study of pediatric language impairments (LIs). Current literature is reviewed in 4 areas: (a) the capacity of psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, and socioemotional behavioral indices to differentiate cases of LI from ADHD; (b) the impact of co-occurring ADHD on children's LI; (c) cross-etiology comparisons of the nonlinguistic abilities of children with ADHD and specific LI (SLI); and (d) the extent to which ADHD contributes to educational and health disparities among individuals with LI. Evidence is presented demonstrating the value of using adjusted parent ratings of ADHD symptoms and targeted assessments of children's tense marking, nonword repetition, and sentence recall for differential diagnosis and the identification of comorbidity. Reports suggest that the presence of ADHD does not aggravate children's LI. The potential value of cross-etiology comparisons testing the necessity and sufficiency of proposed nonlinguistic contributors to the etiology of SLI is demonstrated through key studies. Reports suggest that children with comorbid ADHD+LI receive speech-language services at a higher rate than children with SLI. The ADHD context is multifaceted and provides the management and study of LI with both opportunities and obstacles.

Grammatical Class Effects Across Impaired Child and Adult Populations.

The aims of this study are to compare quantitative and qualitative differences for noun/verb retrieval across language-impaired groups, examine naming errors with reference to psycholinguistic models of word processing, and shed light on the nature of the naming deficit as well as determine relevant group commonalities and differences. This includes an attempt to establish whether error types differentiate language-impaired children from adults, to determine effects of psycholinguistic variables on naming accuracies, and to link the results to genetic mechanisms and/or neural circuitry in the brain. A total of 89 (language-)impaired participants took part in this report: 24 adults with acquired aphasia, 20 adults with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, 31 adults with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, and 14 children with specific language impairment. The results of simultaneous multiple regression analyses for the errors in verb naming compared to the psycholinguistic variables for all language-impaired groups are reported and discussed in relation to models of lexical processing.This discussion will lead to considerations of genetic and/or neurobiological underpinnings: Presence of the noun–verb dissociation in focal and non-focal brain impairment make localization theories redundant, but support for wider neural network involvement.The patterns reported cannot be reduced to any one level of language processing, suggesting multiple interactions at different levels (e.g., receptive vs. expressive language abilities).Semantic-conceptual properties constrain syntactic properties with implications for phonological word form retrieval.Competition needs to be resolved at both conceptual and phonological levels of representation.Moreover, this study may provide a cross-pathological baseline that can be probed further with respect to recent suggestions concerning a reconsideration of open- vs. closed-class items, according to which verbs may actually fall into the latter rather than the standardly received former class.

Assessment of language impairment in bilingual children using semantic tasks: two languages classify better than one.

Significant progress has been made in the identification of language impairment in children are bilingual. Bilingual children's vocabulary knowledge may be distributed across languages. Thus, when testing bilingual children it is difficult to know how to weigh each language for diagnostic purposes. Even when conceptual scoring is used in vocabulary testing, bilingual children may score below that of their typical monolingual peers. The primary aim was to evaluate the classification accuracy of two approaches (total semantics score and two-dimensional bilingual coordinate score) that combined lexical-semantic knowledge across two languages. We investigated the classification accuracy of the English and Spanish semantics subtest using the experimental version of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA) with bilingual children with and without language impairment. A total of 78 bilinguals with balanced exposure to English and Spanish (15 with language impairment, 63 with typical development) participated. Children were between 4;0 and 6;11 years old. Discriminant function analysis explored the extent to which these children were accurately classified when combining Spanish and English subtests. Discriminant analysis yielded above 85% correct classification for balanced bilingual children for both approaches. For the most accurate assessment and diagnostic decision-making for bilinguals, approaches that consider both languages together are recommended.

Maternal Work Absence: A Longitudinal Study of Language Impairment and Behavior Problems in Preschool Children.

Combining work and family responsibilities is challenging when children have special needs, and mothers commonly make employment-related adjustments. In this study, the authors examined associations between maternal work absence and child language impairment and behavior problems in preschool children. Questionnaire data at child age 3 years from 33,778 mothers participating in the prospective population-based Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were linked to national register data on employment and long-term physician-certified sick leave at child age 3-5 years. Mothers who reported having a child with language impairment had a consistently higher risk of not being employed and were at increased risk of taking long-term sick leave at child age 5 years. Co-occurring problems were associated with excess risk. Language impairments in preschool children, in particular when they are co-occurring with behavior problems, are likely to have a range of negative short- and long-term consequences for the financial and overall health and well-being of mothers and their families.

Memory in language-impaired children with and without autism.

BackgroundA subgroup of young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have significant language impairments (phonology, grammar, vocabulary), although such impairments are not considered to be core symptoms of and are not unique to ASD. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) display similar impairments in language. Given evidence for phenotypic and possibly etiologic overlap between SLI and ASD, it has been suggested that language-impaired children with ASD (ASD + language impairment, ALI) may be characterized as having both ASD and SLI. However, the extent to which the language phenotypes in SLI and ALI can be viewed as similar or different depends in part upon the age of the individuals studied. The purpose of the current study is to examine differences in memory abilities, specifically those that are key “markers” of heritable SLI, among young school-age children with SLI, ALI, and ALN (ASD + language normal).MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, three groups of children between ages 5 and 8 years participated: SLI (n = 18), ALI (n = 22), and ALN (n = 20). A battery of cognitive, language, and ASD assessments was administered as well as a nonword repetition (NWR) test and measures of verbal memory, visual memory, and processing speed.ResultsNWR difficulties were more severe in SLI than in ALI, with the largest effect sizes in response to nonwords with the shortest syllable lengths. Among children with ASD, NWR difficulties were not associated with the presence of impairments in multiple ASD domains, as reported previously. Verbal memory difficulties were present in both SLI and ALI groups relative to children with ALN. Performance on measures related to verbal but not visual memory or processing speed were significantly associated with the relative degree of language impairment in children with ASD, supporting the role of verbal memory difficulties in language impairments among early school-age children with ASD.ConclusionsThe primary difference between children with SLI and ALI was in NWR performance, particularly in repeating two- and three-syllable nonwords, suggesting that shared difficulties in early language learning found in previous studies do not necessarily reflect the same underlying mechanisms.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11689-015-9111-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Consequences of co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder on children's language impairments.

Co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and communication disorders represent a frequently encountered challenge for school-based practitioners. The purpose of the present study was to examine in more detail the clinical phenomenology of co-occurring ADHD and language impairments (LIs). Measures of nonword repetition, sentence recall, and tense marking were collected from 57 seven- to nine-year-old children. The performances of children with ADHD+LI status were compared with those of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD). ADHD status had no independent detrimental impact on the affected children's LIs (SLI = ADHD+LI < TD). A modest positive correlation was found between the severity of children's ADHD symptoms and their sentence recall performance, suggesting a tendency for affected children who had higher levels of ADHD symptoms to perform better than those children with lower levels. These outcomes are difficult to reconcile with attention-deficit/information-processing accounts of the core deficits associated with SLI. Potential protective mechanisms associated with ADHD status are discussed.

Feeding-swallowing difficulties in children later diagnosed with language impairment.

The aim of this retrospective study was to assess the relationship between feeding-swallowing difficulties (FSDs) and later language impairments in children. Retrospective analyses were carried out using the clinical files of 82 children with language impairments from a large urban rehabilitation center. Two subgroups of these children were established: children with motor impairments, referred to as the language impairment with motor impairment ('LI+MI') subgroup (n=23, mean age 4y 6mo, SD 8.7mo), and children without motor impairments, referred to as the language impairment without motor impairment ('LI-MI') subgroup (n=59, mean age 5y, SD 8mo). The prevalence of food selectivity, difficulties in sucking, salivary control issues, and food transition difficulties was extracted. Data were compared with a general population estimate of FSDs. FSDs were documented in 62% of the clinical files; 87% of these files were from the LI+MI subgroup and 53% were from the LI-MI subgroup. Among each subgroup of children with language impairments, the prevalence of FSDs was significantly higher than the general population estimate of 20% (LI+MI:χ(2) =55.965, df=1, p<0.001; LI-MI: χ(2) =32.807, df=1, p<0.001). Furthermore, the prevalence of FSDs was significantly higher in children with language impairments and motor impairments than in those with language impairments but without motor impairments (χ(2) =6.936, df=1, p<0.01). Both food transition difficulties (χ(2) =14.99, df=1, p<0.001) and salivary control issues (χ(2) =5.02, df=1, p=0.02) were more frequent in the LI+MI subgroup than in the LI-MI subgroup. Combinations of two or more FSDs were also more frequent in the LI+MI subgroup than in the LI-MI subgroup (χ(2) =4.19, df=1, p=0.04). These findings suggest that early FSDs may be used as a potential marker for language impairment. However, larger prospective studies are needed to confirm this.

Can connective use differentiate between children with and without specific language impairment?

The ability of language-impaired children to maintain coherence by using discourse connectives has so far been assessed by quantitative measures. This study is a first attempt to scrutinize the quality of connective use in specific language impairment (SLI). The authors investigate whether Russian-speaking children reveal sensitivity to the subtle discourse-organizational distinctions between the quasi-synonymous connectives i ‘and’ and a ‘and/but’ in a narrative task. Study 1 compared connective use by 7-year-olds with and without SLI. The results demonstrate that connective frequencies do not differentiate between the two groups, but language-impaired children more often use connectives in a way that violates causal relations in the story. Study 2 assessed connective production by the same SLI participants 16 months later and also tested understanding of causal chains in a follow-up interview. The error rates remained high. These errors were not due to poor understanding of the story, since the language-impaired children answered the causal questions in the follow-up interview as well as their unimpaired peers did.

Clinical and electroencephalographic characteristics of specific language impairment in children and an evaluation of the efficacy of cerebrolysin

To study different forms of specific language impairment in children and to evaluate the efficacy of cerebrolysin in clinical and electroencephalographic aspects. Authors examined 60 children, aged 5-7 years, with a specific language impairment (SLI). The study showed the significantly higher severity of speech disorders, a higher degree of asthenia and dyspraxia/dysgnosia in a group of children with a disorder of receptive language (SLI-R) compared to children with a disorder of expressive speech (SLI-E). A comparative analysis of the EEG power spectra showed large values of slow theta-band EEG in children with SLI compared with healthy children. Children with SLI-R were characterized by the increase in theta rhythm power in the occipital region compared with children with SLI-E. The high efficacy of cerebrolysin in the treatment of this disease (an improvement was obtained in 73.3% of cases) was demonstrated, with the best effect in children with SLI-E (80.0% of cases).