Language-normal Children Research Articles

The Relationship among Receptive Vocabulary, Non-word Repetition, and Quick Incidental Learning in Preschoolers with and without Delay in Vocabulary Development

Objectives: The present study investigated whether children with normal language (NL) and children with delay in vocabulary development (VD) show difference in performance on non-word repetition and quick incidental learning (QUIL), whether these factors correlate with one another, and whether these factors could predict children’s receptive vocabulary. Methods: The study included children between 2 to 6 years of age, 19 NL and 19 VD. The experiments consisted of two tasks: non-word repetition to measure phonological memory, and QUIL to measure vocabulary learning ability. We compared group performances on each task. We also investigated correlations among factors and predictors. Results: The results were as followed. There were significant differences between two groups on all two tasks showing that children with VD performed significantly lower than children with NL. In the VD group, receptive vocabulary correlated only with the non-word repetition task, whereas receptive vocabulary correlated with both non-word repetition and QUIL tasks in the NL group. The strongest factor which predicted children’s receptive vocabulary was QUIL in NL group, whereas non-word repetition predicted VD group’s receptive vocabulary the most. Conclusion: The results show that implicit learning ability could be the important factor only in young NL group when they learn receptive vocabularies. On the other hand, phonological short-term memory promotes receptive vocabulary learning in VD group. It indicates that children with VD inefficiently learn vocabularies compared to NL children, and if children with VD could facilitate implicit learning ability, it could result in effective vocabulary learning.

Electroencephalographic abnormalities during sleep in children with developmental speech‐language disorders: a case–control study

Earlier research has suggested a link between epileptiform activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and developmental speech-language disorder (DSLD). This study investigated the strength of this association by comparing the frequency of EEG abnormalities in 45 language-normal children (29 males, 16 females; mean age 6y 11mo, SD 1y 10mo, range 4y-9y 10mo) and 54 community-ascertained children (35 males, 19 females; mean age 5y 7mo, SD 1y 6mo, range 4y-9y 11mo) with a diagnosis of severe DSLD, defined as a score at least 2 SD below the mean on at least one speech-language measure, and a performance IQ of at least 80 points. All participants underwent sleep EEGs after sedation. Children with DSLD also had detailed speech-language, hearing, and psychological assessments. Results failed to support the previously identified strong association between abnormal EEG and DSLD. There was a weak, non-significant relationship between DSLD and epileptiform EEG. Epileptiform EEG was significantly associated with low performance IQ (p=0.04). This study draws into question previously reported associations between epileptiform activity and DSLD probably because it examined a purer cohort of children with more severe language difficulties who did not have seizures.

Language status in children with normal language development and children suffering from specific language impairment

Language status in children with normal language development and children suffering from specific language impairment

Maternal speech to children with Down Syndrome: An update.

Abstract Recent research on maternal speech to children with Down Syndrome (DS) generally corroborates studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Specifically, the characteristics of language used by parents when speaking to children with mental retardation closely matches the characteristics of language addressed to typical children with the same language age. The question remains, however, why the language of children with DS develops more slowly and sometimes never reaches adult levels. This question is examined in reference to nativistic and learning theory frameworks. Keywords: language development, Down Syndrome, child-addressed speech, maternal speech, language environment, nativism, learning theory. Early Studies of Child-Addressed Speech Early studies of child-addressed speech examined the nature of maternal language input to typically developing (TD) language-normal children (Broen, 1972; Snow, 1972). Additionally, researchers analysed the verbal relationships between cognitively-normal adults and institutionalized adults with mental retardation (MR) (Siegel, 1963a,b,c, 1967; Siegel & Harkins, 1963; Spradlin & Rosenberg, 1964). In combination, these studies led researchers to question whether the language input to children with MR could be considered appropriate for their level of language development. Buium, Rynders, and Turnure (1974) assessed this question by comparing mother-child verbal interactions in a sample of TD children versus children with DS matched to the TD children for chronological age (CA=2 years). Data were collected in the laboratory while individual child-parent dyads engaged in collaborative play and in an instructional task. Results included statistically significant differences between the two samples of mothers regarding numerous aspects of the speech addressed to the children, and all differences suggested that the language addressed to TD children was more sophisticated than the language addressed to children with DS. The mothers of children with DS were observed to direct higher proportions of imperatives to their children than did the mothers of TD children. Buium et al. interpreted these results as demonstrating that the linguistic environment of languagelearning children with DS is different from that of TD children and therefore worthy of careful consideration in any attempt to understand the language delays of the former. Buium et al.'s interpretation was supported by independent research (e.g., Kogan, Wimberger, & Bobbitt, 1969; Marshall, Hegrenes, & Goldstein, 1973) showing that mothers of DS children are more directive and less likely to invite their child to take the lead in dyadic interaction than are the mothers of the CA-matched TD children. There was a shared belief in the specialized literature of the early- and mid-seventies that the differences in the language environment of TD children and children with MR had a negative influence on the language development of children with MR (e.g., Seitz, 1975; Mahoney, 1975; Mahoney & Seely, 1976; Mitchell, 1976; Levi & Zollinger, 1981). Such a belief was sometimes echoed without nuance as, for example, in Dolley (1974) who characterized adult and maternal speech to children with MR with respect to the restricted linguistic codes defined in Bernstein's early work on lower-social classes (Bernstein, 1961, 1964). The observation that mothers of children with MR tend to be more directive than mothers of CAmatched TD children (particularly in teaching situations) may not at all be due to a teaching style that is specific to mothers of children with MR. Instead, Rondal (1978a) argued that it may reflect the perceived necessity of these mothers to participate more actively in prompting the learning of their children with developmental delays. A major methodological problem in the early studies relates to the strategy of matching control group children by chronological age (CA). …

The word length effect in children with language impairment

Two types of serial word recall tasks (full verbal recall and probed recall) were administered to 11 children with language impairment and 22 language-normal children matched for productive language or chronological age. The methods were designed to take into account age-related differences in the use of subvocal rehearsal, as measured by the word length effect. The word length effect was significant for all three groups in full recall, but not in probed recall, supporting the hypothesis that children with language impairment demonstrate limited capacity for processing verbal output. Discussion focuses on the importance of considering developmental factors in measuring short-term memory effects in children with language impairment. Learning outcomes As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to describe the phonological loop hypothesis and discuss the interactions between working memory and language performance in children with language disorders.

Exploratief Corpusonderzoek naar Partikel-Werkwoorden en Finietheid in Eerste-taal Verwerving

In the early stage of Dutch first-language acquisition, conjugation is thought to be applied to particle verbs indicating movement (e.g., hij gaat weg/he goes away) rather than to causative particle verbs (e.g. Jas openmaken/coat open-make) (Jordens, 2000). Here, we validate this hypothesized relation between semantics and morphology using spontaneous speech-data from two different groups of children: children with a normal language development and children with a Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Utterances from both groups were compared for finiteness (i.e., conjugation) of particle verbs of the two semantic classes 'movement' and 'causation'. The results indicate that finiteness of particle verbs is indeed determined by the semantics of the verbs. Furthermore, we conclude that young SLI-children prefer to use the less complex structure of particle verbs of movement to causative particle verbs.

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.

Comprehension of inferential meaning in language‐impaired and language normal children

Three groups of language-normal (LN) 6, 8 and 16/17 year olds, and a group of language-impaired (LI) children were given a task answering questions about pictures that involved inferential meaning. A developmental progression in the types of responses given is seen, with the LI children performing like the youngest LN children. A similar progression is seen in the ability to justify the answers given to inferential questions with the young adult group giving the fewest justifications that were problematical in some way. Larger numbers of problematical justifications in the LI group can be related to some extent to non-pragmatic aspects of their impairment, but overall this group also gave more pragmatically irrelevant responses when asked to justify answers given. It was not possible to identify any major differences between subgroups of children within the LI group, identified as pragmatically impaired (PI) and non pragmatically impaired (NPI), in terms of either answers given to inferential questions or in terms of problematical justifications for these answers. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Use of cognitive state predicates by language‐impaired children

AbstractTwo studies of the use of cognitive state predicates by children with specific language impairment (SLI) were conducted. Study I analysed longitudinal language samples collected from 26 children with SLI and 25 children with normal language (NL) development, aged 4;4 and 2;11, respectively, at Time I. Study II analysed samples from SLI children with more severe delays at an earlier language stage. There were 10 SLI children and 10 NL children, aged 4;11 and 2;8, respectively, matched by MLU. All cognitive state predicates were identified using both broad and narrow definitions. In Study I, the SLI children used cognitive state predicates less frequently than their mental age peers, and with no greater frequency or variety than their younger, language peers. In Study II, children with SLI used more predicates referring to communication events, but there were no further group differences. These findings are discussed as they relate to two current psycholinguistic issues: the possible dissociation of grammar and the lexicon, and the role of language in the development of children's theory of mind.

Comprehension of inferential meaning in language-impaired and language normal children

Three groups of language-normal (LN) 6, 8 and 16/17 year olds, and a group of language-impaired (LI) children were given a task answering questions about pictures that involved inferential meaning. A developmental progression in the types of responses given is seen, with the LI children performing like the youngest LN children. A similar progression is seen in the ability to justify the answers given to inferential questions with the young adult group giving the fewest justifications that were problematical in some way. Larger numbers of problematical justifications in the LI group can be related to some extent to non-pragmatic aspects of their impairment, but overall this group also gave more pragmatically irrelevant responses when asked to justify answers given. It was not possible to identify any major differences between subgroups of children within the LI group, identified as pragmatically impaired (PI) and non pragmatically impaired (NPI), in terms of either answers given to inferential questions or in terms of problematical justifications for these answers. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Use of cognitive state predicates by language-impaired children.

Two studies of the use of cognitive state predicates by children with specific language impairment (SLI) were conducted. Study I analysed longitudinal language samples collected from 26 children with SLI and 25 children with normal language (NL) development, aged 4;4 and 2;11, respectively, at Time I. Study II analysed samples from SLI children with more severe delays at an earlier language stage. There were 10 SLI children and 10 NL children, aged 4;11 and 2;8, respectively, matched by MLU. All cognitive state predicates were identified using both broad and narrow definitions. In Study 1, the SLI children used cognitive state predicates less frequently than their mental age peers, and with no greater frequency or variety than their younger, language peers. In Study II, children with SLI used more predicates referring to communication events, but there were no further group differences. These findings are discussed as they relate to two current psycholinguistic issues: the possible dissociation of grammar and the lexicon, and the role of language in the development of children's theory of mind.

Assessing the comprehension and production of language in young children: an account of the Reynell Developmental Language Scales III

The Reynell Developmental Language Scales III have been designed to test the language abilities of children from 18 months to 7 years. They have been standardized on a large, representative sample of children in the United Kingdom and thereby provide a robust measure of language achievement. These Scales provide clinicians with the means of comparing the performance of children who have been referred for therapy, or who are in therapy, with the performance of a large group of normally developing children. The Scales reflect the developmental progression of normal child language in the early years, focusing on key features of child language acquisition at different stages as well as on features which are known to distinguish language impaired-children from language-normal children. While not claiming that the tests are fully comprehensive, the authors maintain that they afford the clinician with a means of looking at components of language while also gaining some insights into the child's ability to integrate vocabulary and grammar. It is recognized that no test can fully assess every aspect of language; essentially a test must be practical in terms of design and, for screening purposes, sufficiently comprehensive to be used with a large section of children referred. In addition to fulfilling these criteria, the Scales have been designed to provide some diagnostic indicators of areas of difficulty. The aims of the original Scales were to provide a measure of verbal ability that could be compared with mental age, and to provide separate scores for production and comprehension. These aims have also been realized in the new version. Additionally a test has been provided that is consonant with information gained from the intensive research in the field of child language that has taken place since the original Scales were devised. The Scales can reveal information about a child's language abilities not readily available from observation and serve a useful function in both identifying disorder and evaluating therapy. Clinicians are increasingly being asked to demonstrate effectiveness of therapy but are hampered by inappropriate outcome measures (Law 1997). It is hoped that the RDLS III provides a test that is valid and reliable and one that can contribute to both the characterization of speech and language disorders and the measurement of treatment efficacy.

Comparisons of children with delayed and normal language at 24 months of age on measures of behavioral difficulties, social and cognitive development

This investigation compared a group of expressive language-delayed children with language-normal children of the same age (M = 25.7 months; SD = 0.8 months) on various measures of development and behavioral difficulties. Data were obtained through language sampling, direct developmental assessment, and maternal reports of children's development and behavior. Scores on measures of social and cognitive development for children with language delay were found to be significantly lower than normals. Further, maternal reports indicated that these children displayed significantly more behavioral difficulties overall than did the language-normal children. Specifically, the language-delayed children exhibited more symptoms of anxiety and depression, withdrawal, sleep problems, and other behavioral disturbances. In addition, children evaluated as expressive language delayed scored significantly lower on measures of receptive language, maternal ratings of communicative competency, and other indices of language proficiency. The results point to the centrality of expressive and receptive language development in relation to early-appearing behavior problems and other developmental milestones. With these findings in mind, early language intervention may not only promote language development, but also prevent the development or exacerbation of socioemotional problems. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health

Follow-up Study of a Right- and a Left-Hemispherectomized Child: Implications for Localization and Impairment of Language in Children

Two hemispherectomized girls, one operated on the right, the other on the left, were followed from time of surgery until 9 and 10 years of age and compared with respect to course of language acquisition following surgery. At conclusion of follow-up, receptive and expressive language, phoneme perception and production, and sentence processing of the two hemispherectomized children were compared with those of two control groups of similar age, one developing language normally, the other language-impaired. The left-hemispherectomized child's abilities were similar to those of the language-impaired children; the right-hemispherectomized child's abilities resembled those of the language-normal children. Implications for localization of developmental anomalies in language-impaired children are discussed.

Maternal sensitivity to vocabulary development in specific language-impaired and language-normal preschoolers

ABSTRACTThis study examined mothers' accuracy in predicting the responses their children gave and the scores they achieved on two standardized vocabulary tests. Three groups of 16 mothers and their preschool children (specific language-impaired; age-matched, language-normal; and younger, language-matched, language-normal) completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Mothers overestimated their children's standardized receptive and expressive scores, with the exception that the mothers' estimates of the receptive vocabulary scores for language-impaired children did not differ from the actual test scores. Mothers of age-matched normals were best able to predict the labels their children used to name various pictured items. However, the overall estimates by mothers of language-impaired children were more accurate than those by mothers of language-normal children.

Prosodic abilities in children with specific language impairment

The purpose of this study was to compare the receptive and expressive prosodic abilities of specifically language-impaired children to those of a matched group of control normal-language children. Each subject group consisted of ten 4-year-olds, ten 5-year-olds and ten 6-year-olds. Subjects were administered two instruments which were designed for this purpose: the prosody imitation task and the emotion identification task. In the prosody imitation task subjects were required to imitate ten sentences with different linguistic and affective intonation contours. The emotion identification task required subjects to identify recordings of emotionally intoned sentences. Language-impaired children performed significantly less accurately on the imitation task but did not differ from normal-language children on the emotion identification task. Age was found to be a highly significant factor. On both tasks children performed better with increasing age. Results are discussed in reference to the developmental relationship between the child's learning of language and prosodic cues.

Lexical learning by children with specific language impairment: effects of linguistic input presented at varying speaking rates.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of speaking rate variations in the linguistic input provided to children during a novel word learning task. Thirty-two school-age children participated in this investigation, including 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 normal language (NL) controls matched on mental age (MA). The younger half of the NL group also served as a vocabulary level comparison for the older half of the children with SLI. No significant rate effects were found for comprehension of novel words, with all children performing at relatively high levels of accuracy. The group with SLI demonstrated the same recognition accuracy pattern as MA matched controls for target labels versus phonetically similar/dissimilar foils only for words trained at slow rate. Rate effects were most pronounced for items with the highest difficulty level, namely production of novel words. Children with SLI produced significantly fewer words that had been presented at fast rate during training than NL children matched on mental age or vocabulary level. Individual differences and production error patterns on fast rate items were examined. The finding that variations in speaking rate had a disproportionate impact upon word learning for children with SLI was interpreted within a framework of limited processing capacity.

Sentence processing in language-impaired children under conditions of filtering and time compression

ABSTRACTNineteen language-impaired (LI) and 20 language-normal (LN) children participated in an on-line word-monitoring task. Words were presented in lists and in sentences readily comprehended by younger children. The sentences were unaltered, tow-pass filtered, and time- compressed. Both groups had shorter mean response times (MRTs), but lower accuracy, for words in sentences than words in lists. The LI children had significantly longer MRTs under sentence conditions and lower accuracy overall than the LN children. Filtering had an adverse effect upon accuracy and MRT for both subject groups. Time compression did not, suggesting that the reduction in high-frequency information and the rate of presentation exert different effects. Subject differences in attention, as well as in linguistic competence and motor control, may have influenced word-monitoring performance.

Learning and Generalization Components of Morphological Acquisition by Children With Specific Language Impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular difficulty acquiring bound morphemes. To determine whether these morphological deficits spring from impairments of rule-induction or memory (storage/access) skills, 25 preschool-age children with normal language (NL) and 25 age-matched children with SLI were presented with a novel vocabulary and novel bound-morpheme learning task. A chi square analysis revealed that the children with SLI had significantly lower vocabulary learning levels than NL children. In addition, there was tentative evidence that a dependency relationship existed in some children between success in vocabulary learning and proficiency in generalizing a trained bound morpheme to untrained vocabulary stems. These findings are predicted by the storage/access but not the rule-induction theory of specific language impairment. They suggest that intervention targeting bound-morpheme skills acquisition in children with SLI might include attention to vocabulary development.

Relations among verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills in normal language and specifically language-impaired children

This study tested the hypothesis that specifically language-impaired (SLI) children have a qualitatively different cognitive system from that of normal language (NL) children. Twenty NL and 20 SLI children between the ages of 4:2 (years: months) and 5:11 were presented with experimental language-learning measures, experimental nonverbal measures, and verbal and nonverbal norm-referenced tests. A confirmatory analysis of the covariance matrix structures of the two subject groups indicated that relations among cognitive skills differed between NL and SLI children. In addition, a planned comparison indicated that the relation between nonverbal rule-induction and novel bound-morpheme learning differed significantly between groups. The findings indicate that a “qualitative-differences” model of specific language impairment better accounts for the co-occurrence of poor verbal and poor nonverbal cognitive skills in SLI children than a “low-normal” model.