Receptive Lexicon Research Articles

Neonatal brainstem auditory function associates with early receptive language development in preterm children.

AimTo study whether auditory function measured with brainstem auditory evoked potential and brainstem audiometry recordings in the neonatal period associates with language development 1 year later in preterm infants.MethodsThis retrospective study included 155 preterm infants (birthweight ≤1500 g and/or birth ≤32 gestational weeks) born between 2007 and 2012 at the Turku University Hospital. Auditory function was recorded in neonatal period. Information of language development was gathered at the mean corrected age of 1 year by using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory.ResultsSlower auditory processing (longer interpeak interval, IPI I‐V) in the right ear in the neonatal brainstem auditory evoked potential recording associated with smaller receptive lexicon size at 1 year (P = .043). Infants with longer IPI I‐V were more likely to have a deviant (≤17 words) receptive lexicon size (P = .033). The absence of a contralateral response with right ear stimulation increased the risk for deviant lexicon size (P = .049).ConclusionThe results suggest that impaired auditory function in the neonatal period in preterm infants may lead to a poorer receptive language outcome 1 year later. Auditory pathway function assessment provides information for the identification of preterm children at risk for weak language development.

Early lexicon and language skills at 42 months

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have shown that early lexical development is associated with later language development. It is less clear which language domains early receptive/expressive lexicons are associated with. This study analyses these associations. The study also investigates whether children with slow/typical/fast developing early receptive/expressive lexical skills differed in their language skills at three and a half years (42 months) and the predictive value of early receptive/expressive lexical skills for later language skills.The participants of this longitudinal study were 68 healthy, monolingual Finnish-speaking children whose language development was measured using the Finnish, short-form-version of the Communicative Development Inventories at 12, 15, 18 and 24 months. At 42 months, language skills of the participants were assessed using tests measuring lexical, phonological, morphological and general receptive/expressive language skills.Early receptive lexicon was associated with later morphological skills from 15 months and onwards and with other language domains at 24 months. Early expressive lexicon was associated with later morphological skills at 15 months and onwards but with other language domains from 18 months. A trend was found that children with different early lexical growth rates differed in their language skills at 42 months. The best models for predicting later receptive/expressive language skills included variables from both early receptive and expressive lexicons. These models worked well to explain receptive/expressive language skills at 42 months (63/78% of the variance).This study provides novel information on the specific associations between receptive and expressive lexicon growth and later language skills. For clinicians, measuring both receptive and expressive lexicons provides the most representative information on children’s language development.

Pikkukeskosena syntyneiden lasten ymmärretyn sanaston kehitys vuoden iässä ja sen yhteys kognitiiviseen kehitykseen kaksivuotiaana

Pikkukeskosena (syntymäpaino < 1500 g ja/tai syntynyt < 32 raskausviikolla) syntyneiden lasten varhaisen ymmärretyn sanaston kehitystä on tutkittu vähän, ja ymmärretyn sanaston ja myöhemmän kognitiivisen kehityksen välistä mahdollista yhteyttä ei tietääksemme ollenkaan. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli saada lisää tietoa pikkukeskosena syntyneiden lasten varhaisen ymmärretyn sanaston koosta ja koostumuksesta sekä tutkia varhaisen ymmärretyn sanaston ja myöhemmän kognitiivisen kehityksen välistä yhteyttä. Tähän rekisteritutkimukseen otettiin mukaan ne vuosina 2007–2009 Turun yliopistollisessa keskussairaalassa pikkukeskosena syntyneet lapset (N=57), joilta oli saatavilla Varhaisen kommunikaation ja kielen kehityksenarviointimenetelmän avulla kerätty tieto ymmärretyn sanaston kehityksestä yksivuotiaana sekä Bayley III -testin avulla arvoitu tieto lapsen kognitiivisesta kehityksestä kaksivuotiaana. Pikkukeskosten ymmärretyn sanaston koko oli pienempi kuin tutkimuksessa käytetyn arviointimenetelmän normiaineiston. Ymmärretyn sanaston koostumuksen kehitys oli edennyt suhteessa sanaston määrälliseen kehitykseen vastaten aiemmin raportoituja tuloksia. Varhaisen ymmärretyn sanaston (koko, koostumus) ja myöhemmän kognitiivisen kehityksen välillä todettiin merkitsevä positiivinen yhteys. Tulokset puoltavat varhaisen ymmärretyn sanaston kehityksen tutkimista osana pikkukeskosten kehitysseurantaa.

T82. Neonatal brainstem audiometry is associated with language development

Preterm birth increases the risk for abnormal neurodevelopment including delayed language development. Function of the auditory pathway in neonatal period may correlate with language outcome in childhood. Our objective was to study if neonatal brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP) and brainstem audiometry (BA) results in preterm babies are associated with receptive lexicon at one year corrected age. In this retrospective study, we included 155 preterm babies (birth weight ⩽1500 g and/or birth ⩽32 gestational weeks) born 2007–2012 in Turku University Hospital providing the following information: BAEP and BA recording results at the mean corrected age of 1.1 months (0.28 SD) and information on early receptive and expressive lexicon growth at the mean corrected age of 12.1 months (0.55 SD) gathered using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). CDI is a structured rating instrument where parents denote the words that their child understands but does not say (receptive lexicon) and the words they say (expressive lexicon). In this study, we used only the receptive lexicon. This was done because the expressive lexicon is very small at one year of the age. All children were from Finnish speaking families. In addition, we gathered information about possible covarying factors: gestational age at birth, birth weight, small for gestational age, gender, hearing loss, age at the time of BAEP recording and CDI completion. Infants with small receptive lexicon at one year corrected age had longer latency of component V (r = −0.17, p = 0.036), interpeak latencies (IPL) I-V (r = −0.21, p = 0.0087) and IPL III-V (r = −0.17, p = 0.040) in BAEP recording with right ear stimulation at one month corrected age. Other BAEP variables on either side did not show similar associations with CDI. BA thresholds did not show associations with CDI. The possible covarying factors in the analyses did not affect the receptive lexicon. Our study suggests that in preterm infants prolonged conduction in the auditory pathway from the dominant right ear is associated with small receptive lexicon size at the corrected age of one year. Several studies show right-ear advantage (REA) in processing speech stimuli already in neonatal period. According to our results, delayed auditory maturation in the right ear seems to have greater influence on language development compared to the left ear, supporting REA. In the future, this information might help us to improve the recognition of preterm babies at risk for delayed language development already at term age which might lead to better results in language rehabilitation.

Do the early development of gestures and receptive and expressive language predict language skills at 5;0 in prematurely born very-low-birth-weight children?

It is unclear what the predictive value of very early development of gestures and language is on later language ability in prematurely born very-low-birth-weight (VLBW; birth weight ≤1500g) children. The aim of the present study was to analyse the predictive value of early gestures and a receptive lexicon measured between the ages of 0;9 and 1;3, as well as the predictive value of receptive and expressive language ability at 2;0 for language skills at 5;0 in VLBW children. The subjects were 29 VLBW children and 28 full-term children whose language development has been followed intensively between the ages of 0;9 and 2;0 using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Developmental Inventory and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (RDLS III). At 5;0, five selected verbal subtests of the Nepsy II test and the Boston Naming Test (BNT) were used to assess children‘s language skills. For the first time in VLBW children, the development of gestures measured between the ages of 0;9 and 1;3 was shown to correlate significantly and positively with language skills at 5;0. In addition, both receptive and expressive language ability measured at 2;0 correlated significantly and positively with later language skills in both groups. Moreover, according to the hierarchical regression analysis, the receptive language score of the RDLS III at 2;0 was a clear and significant predictor for language skills at 5;0 in both groups. The findings particularly underline the role of early receptive language as a significant predictor for later language ability in VLBW children. The results provide evidence for a continuity between early language development and later language skills.Learning outcomes: After reading this article, readers will understand the associations between the very early (≤2 years of age) development of gestures and language (i.e. early receptive lexicon, expressive lexicon at 2;0, receptive and expressive language ability at 2;0) and the language skills at 5;0 in prematurely born very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. In addition, readers will understand the heterogeneity of the group of VLBW children. The information presented in this article is informative for those who work in a clinical context and who want to be able to identify those VLBW children who need support for their language development at an early age.

The development and predictive value of gestures in very-low-birth-weight children: A longitudinal study

The present study analysed the development of gestures between 0;9–1;3 years, and the predictive value of this development for language skills at 2;0 in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. Participants were 32 VLBW children and their 35 controls. The data on gestures was gathered using the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory (FinCDI). At 2;0, the language skills of the children were assessed using the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (RDLS III) and the FinCDI. The number of acquired gestures was lower in the VLBW children than in the controls. The development of gestures correlated significantly with later expressive language in both groups, but significant correlations between the development of gestures and later receptive language development were detected only in the VLBW group. When the predictive value of gestures and early expressive and receptive lexicon with regard to later language skills were analysed, the development of gestures at 1;3 had good predictive value for poor language performance at 2;0. In addition, a small receptive lexicon size at 1;0 and at 1;3 was also a good predictor for later language performance. The development of gestures and receptive lexicon thus jointly provide clinically valuable information on the emerging language skills of VLBW children.

(Non)words, (non)words, (non)words: evidence for a protolexicon during the first year of life

Previous research with artificial language learning paradigms has shown that infants are sensitive to statistical cues to word boundaries (Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996) and that they can use these cues to extract word-like units (Saffran, 2001). However, it is unknown whether infants use statistical information to construct a receptive lexicon when acquiring their native language. In order to investigate this issue, we rely on the fact that besides real words a statistical algorithm extracts sound sequences that are highly frequent in infant-directed speech but constitute nonwords. In three experiments, we use a preferential listening paradigm to test French-learning 11-month-old infants' recognition of highly frequent disyllabic sequences from their native language. In Experiments 1 and 2, we use nonword stimuli and find that infants listen longer to high-frequency than to low-frequency sequences. In Experiment 3, we compare high-frequency nonwords to real words in the same frequency range, and find that infants show no preference. Thus, at 11 months, French-learning infants recognize highly frequent sound sequences from their native language and fail to differentiate between words and nonwords among these sequences. These results are evidence that they have used statistical information to extract word candidates from their input and stored them in a 'protolexicon', containing both words and nonwords.

Learning Phonemes With a Proto‐Lexicon

Before the end of the first year of life, infants begin to lose the ability to perceive distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in their native language. It is typically assumed that this developmental change reflects the construction of language-specific phoneme categories, but how these categories are learned largely remains a mystery. Peperkamp, Le Calvez, Nadal, and Dupoux (2006) present an algorithm that can discover phonemes using the distributions of allophones as well as the phonetic properties of the allophones and their contexts. We show that a third type of information source, the occurrence of pairs of minimally differing word forms in speech heard by the infant, is also useful for learning phonemic categories and is in fact more reliable than purely distributional information in data containing a large number of allophones. In our model, learners build an approximation of the lexicon consisting of the high-frequency n-grams present in their speech input, allowing them to take advantage of top-down lexical information without needing to learn words. This may explain how infants have already begun to exhibit sensitivity to phonemic categories before they have a large receptive lexicon.

Preterm Birth: Neuropsychological Profiles and Atypical Developmental Pathways

Preterm birth is characterized by multiple interacting atypical constraints affecting different aspects of neuropsychological development. In the first years of life, perceptual, motor, and communicative-linguistic abilities, as well as attention, processing speed, and memory are affected by preterm birth resulting in cascading effects on later development. From school age to adolescence, a catch-up of simpler competencies (i.e., receptive lexicon) along with a more selective effect on more complex competencies (i.e., complex linguistic functions, math, motor, and executive functions) are observed, as well as a relevant incidence of behavioral outcomes. A wide heterogeneity in preterm children's neuropsychological profiles is described depending on the interaction among the degree of neonatal immaturity, medical complications, neurological damages/alterations, environmental and social factors. Severe neuromotor and sensory damages are not frequent, while low severity impairments are common among preterm children. It is argued that developmental pathways of preterm children are atypical, and not merely delayed, and are characterized by different developmental patterns and relationships among competencies.

Patterns in diversity: Lexical learning in Samoan-English bilingual children

This study examined the lexical development of nine Samoan-English bilingual children during their first year in English speaking preschools in Australia. Receptive and expressive lexicon in Samoan and English was assessed when the children had completed their first term of school (approximately 10 weeks) and then 6 months later. The bilingual children's scores in each language and composite scores were examined over time. Performance was also compared with typically developing, age-matched (4–5-year-old) monolingual English-speaking peers. Results indicated that the group made significant gains in both languages over time. The bilingual children's receptive composite scores were comparable to monolingual English scores, with clear changes in lexical composition (singlets and translation equivalents) over time. Expressive composite scores of bilingual children were lower than scores of monolingual peers. Results appeared to be highly influenced by the language environment and patterns of language use in this group. The potential use of composite score methodology as a clinical assessment tool in bilingual children is discussed.

Russian language proficiency test for multilingual children = Sprachstandstest Russisch für mehrsprachige Kinder

The 'Russian language proficiency test for multilingual children' is a linguistically and psycholinguistically-grounded test for L1-Russian bilingual children of pre-school and elementary school age. It allows the evaluation of language proficiency in Russian for scientific, therapeutic, and pedagogical purposes. The test is based on preliminary norms: data of 167 German-Russian bilingual children between the ages of 3 years and 6 years 11 months were evaluated.
 
 Bilingual children's proficiency is examined in the following language domains:
 
 - productive and receptive lexicon for verbs and nouns
 
 - production of morphological marking on verbs (first and second-person singular present verbal inflection) and nouns (accusative and dative case singular)
 
 - comprehension of grammatical constructions on the sentence level
 
 The test should be administered by a competent – ideally native – speaker of Russian, and takes approximately 60 minutes to administer.
 
 In addition to the test itself, the 'Russian language proficiency test for multilingual children' contains a questionnaire for gathering detailed information on the input situation as well as the child's previous linguistic and extra-linguistic development. The questionnaire is written in English and Russian and is intended to be filled out by the parents.

Language development before and after temporal surgery in children with intractable epilepsy

To obtain systematic knowledge of language development before and after epilepsy surgery in regions that, if damaged, are known to entail language impairment in adults. Twenty-four children (mean age 11 years; range 5.8-15.7 years) with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy participated prior to (the majority) anterior temporal lobectomy and 6, 12, and 24 months thereafter. Reception and production of lexicon (vocabulary) and syntax (sentence structure including grammar) were examined using developmental language tests that provide normative data. Prior to surgery the mean language delay varied from 1.7 years (productive syntax) to 3.5 years (productive lexicon). For lexicon, language delay was larger, the older the children; for syntax it was smaller in children with mothers with higher education. Over the 2 years following surgery, the children developed in all four language components. Development was, however, slower than normal, that is, language delay increased, in three of the four components: in productive lexicon it continued to increase, and in receptive lexicon and productive syntax it appeared to stabilize during the second year. Receptive syntax developed at a normal pace. The development of productive lexicon was remarkably slow when surgery and language mediation were both in the left hemisphere. Pharmacologically intractable epilepsy of the temporal lobe, or the underlying condition, is a significant risk factor for delayed language development. Temporal epilepsy surgery does not result in acceleration of language development. If language is still mediated in the operated left hemisphere, development of particular language components may slow down after surgery.

The early lexical development and its predictive value to language skills at 2 years in very-low-birth-weight children

The aim of this longitudinal study was to obtain information on the early lexical development and its predictive value to language skills in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory was used to collect data of the early receptive and expressive lexicon of the 32 VLBW children. This information was compared to the data of 35 full-term controls. The children's language skills were tested using Reynell Developmental Language Scales at 2 years. The growth of the receptive lexicon was slower, and the language skills poorer in VLBW children. The early receptive lexicon growth was strongly associated with the performance in Reynell's test in VLBW children. The findings indicate that the small receptive lexicon size is an early predictor of delayed language development in VLBW children. The results also emphasise the need to assess the language development of the VLBW children in detail at an early age. Learning outcomes: The reader becomes aware of the receptive and expressive lexical development of the VLBW children, and learns about the predictive value of early vocabulary growth to the language skills at 2 years of corrected age in this group of children.

Early lexical development of Finnish children: A longitudinal study

The growth rate and the development of the composition of the receptive and expressive lexicon were studied in a longitudinal sample of 35 Finnish children. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory was used to gather data of the receptive lexicon at 0;9, 1;0 and 1;3, and the expressive lexicon at 0;9, 1;0, 1;3, 1;6 and 2;0. The receptive lexicon was acquired earlier, at a faster rate and with higher individual variation than the expressive lexicon. A gender difference was found in expressive vocabulary, but not in receptive vocabulary. The growth trajectories of semantic lexical categories detected in both lexicons resembled each other. Verbs were acquired more readily in receptive lexicons. Results support a universal sequence in the development of the composition of the lexicon.

A developmental analysis of similarity neighborhoods in European Portuguese

We present a developmental analysis of the structural organization of young children's and adults’ lexicons for European Portuguese. The production lexicons of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, a receptive lexicon for 12- to 19-month-olds, and an adult lexicon were compared using the similarity neighborhood paradigm (e.g., Charles-Luce & Luce, 1990). For each lexicon, similarity neighborhoods were computed for words with 3 to 8 phonemes, and phonological neighborhood sizes were compared. A phonological neighbor was defined as any word in one of the lexicons that differed from a given target by one phoneme substitution, deletion, or addition. Results showed structural differences between shorter (3-, 4- and 5-phoneme) and longer (6- to 8-phoneme) words. There was no age effect for longer words, of which ca. 92% had no neighbors. Shorter words, in contrast, had more neighbors: in the children's lexicons, ca. 58% of shorter words had one to four neighbors, and 8% had five to seven neighbors; only ca. 36% had no neighbors. An age effect was found, whereby similarity neighborhoods become increasingly dense over the course of childhood. The results are discussed in light of previous findings for English-speaking children and adults, and their implications for the development of spoken word recognition by Portuguese listeners are considered.

The format of representation of recognized words in infants' early receptive lexicon

Eleven-month-olds can recognize a few auditorily presented familiar words in experimental situations where no hints are given by the intonation, the situation, or the presence of possible visual referents. That is, infants of this age (and possibly somewhat younger) can recognize words based on sound patterns alone. The issue addressed in this article is what is the type of mental representations infants use to code words they recognize. The results of a series of experiments with French-learning infants indicate that word representations in 11-month-olds are segmentally underspecified and suggest that they are all the more underspecified when infants engage in recognizing words rather than merely attending to meaningless speech sounds. But underspecification has limits, which were explored here with respect to word-initial consonants. The last two experiments show the way to investigating further these limits for word-initial consonants as well as for segments in other word positions. In French, infants' word representations are flexible enough to allow for structural changes in the voicing or even in the manner of articulation of word-initial consonants. Word-initial consonants must be present, however, for words to be recognized. In conclusion, a parallel is proposed between the emerging capacities to ignore variations that are irrelevant for word recognition in a “lexical mode” and to ignore variations that are phonemically irrelevant in a “neutral mode” of listening to native speech.

Emergence of an early receptive lexicon: Infants' recognition of words

This experiment examines whether 11-month-old and 12-month-old infants are able to recognize familiar words in a situation yielding no extralinguistic cues. Two experiments were run to compare infants' interest for familiar words, chosen in the early productive vocabulary of young infants, against rare words infrequent in French usage. Both experiments used a preference paradigm in which preference was indexed by attention span. Lists of familiar words were auditorily presented to each child in the absence of any possible referent object. A preference for familiar words was found to be very consistent in 12-month-olds and just emerging in 11-month-olds. These results were interpreted as revealing the existence of a developing receptive lexicon by 11 months of age.