Specific Language Impairment In Children Research Articles

Impact of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in 6-Year-Old Children

This study focuses on the discipline of psycholinguistics regarding language disordersin children, to be precise of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This article analyzestwo 6-year-old children who show the characteristics of having SLI in languagedisorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to carry out this study, theresearcher used a qualitative descriptive research method. The method aims to describein a systematic, actual, and accurate way. This research is an analytical study of officialdocuments such as books, articles, journals, and the internet. The accuracy of the data isobtained from the observations of the researcher herself. This study reports that childrenwith SLI often stay until school age and can lead to a lack of academic ability and causevarious psychosocial problems. Some of the causes of SLI in children include genetic,environmental, and social factors, pre and perinatal, gender, prematurity, weight, socio-economic status, maternal mental status, mother's education, and vocabulary, and history of speech-language difficulties.

One-dimensional convolutional neural network and hybrid deep-learning paradigm for classification of specific language impaired children using their speech

Background and objectiveScreening children for communicational disorders such as specific language impairment (SLI) is always challenging as it requires clinicians to follow a series of steps to evaluate the subjects. Artificial intelligence and computer-aided diagnosis have supported health professionals in making swift and error-free decisions about the neurodevelopmental state of children vis-à-vis language comprehension and production. Past studies have claimed that typical developing (TD) and SLI children show distinct vocal characteristics that can serve as discriminating facets between them. The objective of this study is to group children in SLI or TD categories by processing their raw speech signals using two proposed approaches: a customized convolutional neural network (CNN) model and a hybrid deep-learning framework where CNN is combined with long-short-term-memory (LSTM). MethodWe considered a publicly available speech database of SLI and typical children of Czech accents for this study. The convolution filters in both the proposed CNN and hybrid models (CNN-LSTM) estimated fuzzy-automated features from the speech utterance. We performed the experiments in five separate sessions. Data augmentations were performed in each of those sessions to enhance the training strength. ResultsOur hybrid model exhibited a perfect 100% accuracy and F-measure for almost all the session-trials compared to CNN alone which achieved an average accuracy close to 90% and F-measure ≥ 92%. The models have further illustrated their robust classification essences by securing values of reliability indexes over 90%. ConclusionThe results confirm the effectiveness of proposed approaches for the detection of SLI in children using their raw speech signals. Both the models do not require any dedicated feature extraction unit for their operations. The models may also be suitable for screening SLI and other neurodevelopmental disorders in children of different linguistic accents.

Written Language of Children with Specific Language Impairment

Writing is an important academically and socially related language skill. However, few researchers have analyzed the written language samples of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). It is unknown if children with SLI produce different types of written language errors than children with typical language (TL). The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of the writing patterns of children with Specific Language Impairment. Specifically, this study analyzed the morphosyntactic and syntactic errors that children with SLI make and if they differ from the errors made by children with TL. Writing samples of children ages 7 to 10 were collected. The SLI group was determined by norm-referenced language assessments such as the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Fourth Edition. These samples were coded for errors based on a coding manual created by the authors of this study. Results revealed that children with SLI make more overall errors in complex sentences than children with TL. The errors made by children with SLI were syntactic word level errors, such as the addition or omission of one word. However, there was not a significant difference between the morphological errors made in writing samples of children with SLI and children with TL. The large age range of children within our SLI group may have impacted our conclusion that morphosyntax may not be a critical marker of SLI in children.

Detection of Specific Language Impairment in Children Using Glottal Source Features

Developmental dysphasia, also known as specific language impairment (SLI), is a language disorder in children that involves difficulty in speaking and understanding spoken words. Detecting SLI at an early stage is very important for successful speech therapy in children. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on glottal source features for detecting children with SLI using the speech signal. The proposed method utilizes time- and frequency-domain glottal parameters, which are extracted from the voice source signal obtained using glottal inverse filtering (GIF). In addition, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) and openSMILE based acoustic features are also extracted from speech utterances. Two machine learning algorithms, namely, support vector machine (SVM) and feed-forward neural network (FFNN), are trained separately for the MFCC, openSMILE and glottal features. A leave-fourteen-speakers-out cross-validation strategy is used for evaluating the classifiers. The experiments are conducted using the SLI speech corpus launched by the LANNA research group. Experimental results show that the glottal parameters contain significant discriminative information required for identifying children with SLI. Furthermore, the complementary nature of glottal parameters is investigated by independently combining these features with the MFCC and openSMILE acoustic features. The overall results indicate that the glottal features when used in combination with MFCC feature set provides the best performance with the FFNN classifier in the speaker-independent scenario.

Behind the Scenes of Developmental Language Disorder: Time to Call Neuropsychology Back on Stage.

Although the Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), also known as Specific Language Impairment in children has been the focus of unceasing scientific attention for decades, the nature and mechanisms of this disorder remain unclear. Most importantly, we still cannot reliably identify children requiring urgent intervention among other ‘late talkers’ at an early age and understand the high prevalence of comorbidity with psychiatric phenomena such as Autism Spectrum Disorder. One of the main reasons for this is the traditional ‘diagnosis-by-exclusion,’ resulting in heterogeneity of the DLD population. This paper proposes an alternative approach to the diagnosis, treatment and research of DLD, claiming that it is these children’s multiple deficits in neuropsychological development, which impede the spontaneous acquisition of their first language. Specifically, this review of the state-of-the-art in DLD research demonstrates deep and systematic interconnections between the speech and other higher cognitive functions developing in early childhood, including perception, attention and executive functions. In the proposed framework, speech is, therefore, considered as one of neuropsychological abilities, and the delay in its development is explained by other neuropsychological deficits, resulting in highly individual clinical profiles. By considering DLD as a complex neuropsychological syndrome, whose successful treatment depends on a holistic approach to diagnosis and intervention, we may significantly increase the efficacy of speech therapy, and also better understand the flexibility of the developing brain, its compensatory mechanisms and hence the comorbidity of DLD with psychiatric symptoms. Implications for using this paradigm in future scientific research are discussed.

Consequences of specific language impairment in children

To assess cognitive and emotional disorders in children of primary school age who have a history of specific language impairment (SLI). Eighty-six children, aged 7-9 years, who were previously studied at age of 3-6 years with a diagnosis of SLI with a predominant disorder of expressive speech, were examined. Common neurological examination, psychological and psychometric testing were performed. Clinical manifestations of the developmental disorder of expressive speech of moderate degree remained in 19.8% of children. In 53.4% of cases, the state of children could be regarded as an organic asthenic disorder. Clinical manifestations of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were observed in 24.4% of children. Disorders of the formation of school skills were revealed in 32.5% of children. Thus, the SLI play an important role in the formation of cognitive, emotional and regulatory disorders and can serve as predictors of the development of other neuropsychiatric diseases.

Deficit in holistic processing as a risk factor for specific language impairment in children

Deficit in holistic processing as a risk factor for specific language impairment in children

Heather van der Lely and developmental language disorders: Introduction to the special issue

This special issue honours the work and memory of Heather van der Lely, who died of cancer on 17 February 2014, at the too-young age of 58. Heather pioneered the study of children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment using a range of innovative behavioural and neuroimaging methods, and became one of the best-known researchers in the field of developmental language disorders. When Heather left school at 16 with few qualifications, her severe dyslexia was still unrecognised. She was apparently told that she was only capable of working at a children’s day nursery near her home village in Herefordshire, UK. However, she had a genuine interest in children and their development, and within two years she was running the nursery. She then applied to train as a nursery nurse, which meant first going to night school to get A-levels. By the time she passed her A-levels, she had decided to become a speech and language therapist, which, of course, required a degree. She graduated from Birmingham City University three years later, with First Class honours. She worked as a speech and language therapist for two years before being accepted by the Department of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, to study for a PhD. Her topic was sentence comprehension in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In 1990, as she was completing her PhD, she was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. Given only months to live, she gave up work to enjoy what little time she had left. Thankfully, the tumour was misdiagnosed. A year later she was back at Birkbeck, in receipt of a post-doctoral fellowship from the British Academy which enabled her to continue studying the underlying nature and cause of SLI in children. A career-development fellowship from the Wellcome Trust followed. In 2001, she was offered the new

Specific Language Impairment, Nonverbal IQ, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cochlear Implants, Bilingualism, and Dialectal Variants: Defining the Boundaries, Clarifying Clinical Conditions, and Sorting Out Causes.

The purpose of this research forum article is to provide an overview of a collection of invited articles on the topic "specific language impairment (SLI) in children with concomitant health conditions or nonmainstream language backgrounds." Topics include SLI, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, cochlear implants, bilingualism, and dialectal language learning contexts. The topic is timely due to current debates about the diagnosis of SLI. An overarching comparative conceptual framework is provided for comparisons of SLI with other clinical conditions. Comparisons of SLI in children with low-normal or normal nonverbal IQ illustrate the unexpected outcomes of 2 × 2 comparison designs. Comparative studies reveal unexpected relationships among speech, language, cognitive, and social dimensions of children's development as well as precise ways to identify children with SLI who are bilingual or dialect speakers. The diagnosis of SLI is essential for elucidating possible causal pathways of language impairments, risks for language impairments, assessments for identification of language impairments, linguistic dimensions of language impairments, and long-term outcomes. Although children's language acquisition is robust under high levels of risk, unexplained individual variations in language acquisition lead to persistent language impairments.

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).

Deficient language acquisition in children with single suture craniosynostosis and deformational posterior plagiocephaly

This study examined early language acquisition in children with single suture craniosynostosis (SSC) and in children with deformational posterior plagiocephaly. Our purpose was to determine whether infants with SSC have normal language acquisition at the age of 3 years, and whether infants with deformational posterior plagiocephaly demonstrate parallel development when compared with children with SSC. The study population includes 61 infants. Twenty of them had synostosis of the sagittal suture, 12 synostosis of other suture and 29 deformational posterior plagiocephaly. Forty-nine of them were operated on a mean age of 10.6 months, and 12 were non-operated children with deformational posterior plagiocephaly. Language skills of participants were prospectively evaluated at the mean age of 3 years 4 months. About one half of the subjects (49%) had normal linguistic development, 30% had slight developmental problems and 21% had severe disorders in speech-language-related skills. These figures showed the prevalence of severe language disorders to be three times higher in our study population when compared with the general population. Children with sagittal synostosis managed better in all language skills compared with other types of SSC. Defective language development was found in deformational posterior plagiocephaly, both operated and non-operated. We found a noticeable developmental risk for specific language impairment in children with nonsyndromic SSC, and that the deviant language development is observable already in early infancy. Contrary to previous beliefs, the developmental risk for defective language development in deformational posterior plagiocephaly was found in both operated and non-operated subjects.

Identification of Clinical Markers of Specific Language Impairment in Adults

To investigate the usefulness of 3 tasks known to be effective diagnostic clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI) in children: (a) nonword repetition, (b) sentence repetition, and (c) grammaticality judgments of finiteness marking. Two groups of young adults, 13 with SLI and 18 with typical language, completed 3 experimental tasks: (a) nonword repetition, (b) sentence repetition, and (c) grammaticality judgments of sentences that were either correct or contained an omitted finiteness marker, an overt agreement error, or an omitted progressive -ing. Analyses included receiver operating characteristic curve analyses and computation of likelihood ratios associated with the use of each task as a clinical marker for SLI, as well as development of a logistic regression model that used multiple tasks as predictors. Each marker task significantly contributed to classification of adults as affected or unaffected by SLI, with moderate positive and negative likelihood ratios. A combination of the 3 marker tasks was the best predictor of affectedness status with moderate to large likelihood ratios. The results suggest that SLI persists into adulthood and that effective clinical markers of this disorder are similar to those used to identify SLI in children. Refinement of these tasks to increase their likelihood ratios will improve their usefulness in diagnosing SLI in adults.

Associations Between Key Language-Related Measures in Typically Developing School-Age Children

Associations Between Key Language-Related Measures in Typically Developing School-Age Children

International Research in Child Language Disorders

International Research in Child Language Disorders

What Causes Specific Language Impairment in Children?

Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child's language development is deficient for no obvious reason. For many years, there was a tendency to assume that SLI was caused by factors such as poor parenting, subtle brain damage around the time of birth, or transient hearing loss. Subsequently it became clear that these factors were far less important than genes in determining risk for SLI. A quest to find “the gene for SLI” was undertaken, but it soon became apparent that no single cause could account for all cases. Furthermore, although fascinating cases of SLI caused by a single mutation have been discovered, in most children the disorder has a more complex basis, with several genetic and environmental risk factors interacting. The clearest evidence for genetic effects has come from studies that diagnosed SLI using theoretically motivated measures of underlying cognitive deficits rather than conventional clinical criteria.

Specific Language Impairment in Children: A Comparison of English and Swedish

We report a cross-linguistic investigation of English- and Swedish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) in an attempt to determine whether Wexler's (1998; 2003) (Extended) Unique Checking Constraint (EUCC) can account for the grammatical profiles of these groups of children. In Study 1, a group of Swedish-speaking preschoolers with SLI showed greater use of finite verb inflections and copula forms than a group of English-speaking preschoolers with SLI, even though the two groups were carefully matched according to both age and severity of language impairment. In Study 2, the same Swedish-speaking children with SLI showed high levels of appropriate verb-second use with finite verbs. However, they were less proficient in this regard than a group of younger typically developing Swedish children with similar mean lengths of utterance. The findings from both studies are generally compatible with predictions based on the EUCC. Issues in need of future investigation are discussed.

Specific Language Impairment in Children: A Comparison of English and Swedish

Specific Language Impairment in Children: A Comparison of English and Swedish

Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children

Specific language impairment (SLI) is the term used to refer to unexplained difficulties in language acquisition in children. Over the last decade, there has been rapid growth of evidence indicating that genes play an important part in the aetiology of SLI. However, further progress in elucidating the role of genes in causing SLI is limited by our lack of understanding of the phenotype. Studies to date have been hampered by the fact that we do not know whether SLI should be treated as a discrete disorder or a continuous variable, let alone which measures should be used to identify cases, or how many subtypes there are. Recent research suggests that theoretically motivated measures of underlying processes may be better than conventional clinical diagnoses for identifying aetiologically distinct types of language impairment. There has been a tendency for researchers to embrace parsimony and look for a single cause of SLI, or at any event, to identify different subtypes, each with a different single cause. Research is reviewed which suggests that this may not be a fruitful approach to SLI, and that an approach in terms of multiple risk and protective factors, which is widely adopted in medicine, is more realistic.

Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children

Specific language impairment (SLI) is the term used to refer to unexplained difficulties in language acquisition in children. Over the last decade, there has been rapid growth of evidence indicating that genes play an important part in the aetiology of SLI. However, further progress in elucidating the role of genes in causing SLI is limited by our lack of understanding of the phenotype. Studies to date have been hampered by the fact that we do not know whether SLI should be treated as a discrete disorder or a continuous variable, let alone which measures should be used to identify cases, or how many subtypes there are. Recent research suggests that theoretically motivated measures of underlying processes may be better than conventional clinical diagnoses for identifying aetiologically distinct types of language impairment. There has been a tendency for researchers to embrace parsimony and look for a single cause of SLI, or at any event, to identify different subtypes, each with a different single cause. Research is reviewed that suggests that it may not be a fruitful approach to SLI, and that an approach in terms of multiple risk and protective factors, which is widely adopted in medicine, is more realistic.

Motor immaturity and specific speech and language impairment: evidence for a common genetic basis.

Previous studies have found an association between motor immaturity and specific language impairment in children. Data from two twin studies were used to address the question of whether these linked deficits have a common etiology. Study 1 involved 57 MZ and 22 DZ pairs where one or both twins had specific speech/language impairment. A control group of 173 single-born children was also tested. Motor skill was assessed using a tapping task, which was carried out with left and right hands. Tapping scores were converted to scaled scores adjusted for age and sex. Unaffected twins and single-born controls did not differ in motor skill, but twins with speech and/or language impairments obtained significantly poorer tapping scores than controls. Bivariate DeFries-Fulker analysis pointed to shared genetic influence on tapping speed and a measure of speech production accuracy. In study 2, 37 twin pairs from study 1 were retested 2-3 years later and combined with 100 twin pairs from a general population sample. A timed peg-moving task was used to assess motor skill. Children with combined speech and language impairments obtained poorer peg-moving scores than unaffected children. Bivariate DeFries-Fulker analysis found significant shared genetic variance for impairments on peg-moving and on a test of nonword repetition. It is concluded that genes that put the child at risk for communicative problems also affect motor development, with the association being most evident when speech production is affected.