Stages Of Language Development Research Articles

Do children with Down syndrome have difficulty with argument structure?

The language transcripts of seven children with Down syndrome (DS) and seven typically developing children with comparable mean length of utterance (MLU) levels were examined for their use of verb argument structure. The children’s production of subject arguments, direct object arguments, and inappropriate use of arguments (anomalies) were compared for each group. When compared across verb category, the results of this study revealed no significant group differences for the omission of subject arguments. However, when arguments for transitive verb productions were compared, the children with DS were more likely to omit subject arguments in comparison to direct object arguments. In addition, the normal control group was more likely to use anomalous argument patterns than the children with DS. These findings suggest that syntactic difficulties that are characteristic of children with DS may delay them in overcoming the optional subject (OS) phenomena (Ingham, 1992). A greater number of anomalous arguments used by the normal children suggests an inadequate knowledge of argument structure at this stage of language development. Learning outcomes As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to describe the relationship between syntax and semantics as it applies to the knowledge of verbs in children with Down syndrome.

Early cognitive and communication development in children with focal brain lesions.

Early cognitive and language development of children with congenital focal brain lesions, documented by magnetic resonance imaging, was studied in 18 cases, 9 with left-hemisphere damage and 9 with right-hemisphere damage, at about 2 (Time 1) and 4 years of age (Time 2). All of the children showed normal cognitive development, but their global Griffiths Developmental Scales scores were lower at Time 2, and developmental profiles across individual subscales revealed side-specific effects, resembling the adult left/right cerebral hemisphere lesion model. Expressive lexicon and grammar were delayed, more often in left-hemisphere-damaged than in right-hemisphere-damaged children, at Time 1 and Time 2. Functional findings were not related to the size and location of the brain lesion, whereas the presence of epilepsy was a highly significant predictor of cognitive and language outcome, irrespective of the side of the lesion. The stable disadvantage in the verbal domain shown by left-hemisphere-damaged children within the age range of this study might suggest that the left hemisphere has some initial bias for language learning. The effects of right-hemisphere damage were more variable and emerged at a later stage of language development.

Gesture and word production in children with down syndrome

In this descriptive, longitudinal study, the role of gestures in the emergent language of three children with Down syndrome who were at the protoimperative and protodeclarative stages of language development was investigated. Specifically, the gestures produced by these children before and during the emergence of word production and the functions they served were explored. The children's gestures were sampled during structured activities and mother-child interactions over a period of 5 months. The results indicated that different types of gestures serving various communicative functions were produced during structured and mother-child interactions. The most frequent gesture types were conventional, deictic, and enactive naming. The most frequent functions were comments, acknowledgments, and requests. The findings of the present study were congruent with previous research with both nondisabled populations and children with Down syndrome in demonstrating how gestural production may signal the emergence of language in both groups.

Plasticity and Reorganization During Language Development in Children with Early Brain Injury

Although some studies have reported subtle language deficits following early focal brain lesions (EFBL), most studies find no evidence for differential language outcomes as a function of lesion side or lesion type in children with congenital injuries to one side of the brain. However, recent prospective studies of the first stages of language development in English-speaking children with EFBL have reported greater delays in expressive vocabulary in children with left-hemisphere damage, particularly if the lesion involves left temporal cortex. In the present study, first stages in the development of word production were studied in 43 Italian children with congenital EFBL, between 13 and 46 months of age. As a group, the EFBL children were markedly delayed in expressive vocabulary. Among children who were in the first stage of language learning, delays were significantly greater with left-hemisphere injury. However, this left-right difference was not evident in children who had moved on to the next stage of language development, producing at least some sentences. Discussion centers on the role of developmental plasticity in determining the outcomes of early focal brain injury, suggesting that recovery from initial delays may take place in the early stages of language development, at least for some children.

Testing Predictive Validity of the Communication Composite of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales

This study tested the predictive validity of the Communication Composite of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales as a predictor of expressive vocabulary. The Communication Composite consists of six clusters that measure specific aspects of communicative behavior. Participants were 58 children, 17 to 34 months of age, who were functioning at the prelinguistic stage of language development. All children had mild to moderate developmental delays but no sensory impairments. The Communication Composite was used to measure prelinguistic communication skills at the beginning of the study, and an unstructured play session was used to measure expressive vocabulary 1 year later. Results indicated that the Communication Composite was a significant predictor of later expressive language. In addition, all tested clusters were significant predictors of later expressive language.

Speech and language skills in children who required neonatal intensive care: evaluation at 6.5 y of age based on interviews with parents

Speech and language skills at 6.5 y of age were studied in a follow‐up of a cohort of children who had required neonatal intensive care (NIC) at Uppsala University Children's Hospital. An interview with the parents indicated that preterm and full‐term NIC children were older than control children when they reached certain stages in language development (short sentences, intelligible speech). Absence of babbling was more common in NIC children born at 23—27 wk than in other preterm NIC children, and occurrence of stuttering was more commonly noticed in preterm NIC children born at 23—27 wk than in those born at ≥32 wk and controls. □Babbling, infants, language, neonatal intensive care, preterm, stuttering

Language Development in Children with Simple-Partial Left-Hemisphere Epilepsy

The nature of cerebral involvement in the acquisition of language was addressed in this longitudinal study of children with an early diagnosis of epilepsy with simple-partial seizures (SPE) and with epileptogenic foci localized in the left frontal (LF) lobe. Yearly evaluations of six SPE-LF children on tests of linguistic comprehension (pointing, understanding of narrative, and understanding of prepositions) and production (repetition, lexical diversity, and grammatical production) were carried out between the ages of 3 and 8 years and compared to those of large samples of control children on the same tasks and at each age level. Linguistic production of all children were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using the Child Language Data Exchange System (MacWhinney & Snow, 1991). Individual evolution trajectories revealed that SPE-LF children showed a clear dissociation in linguistic performance between comprehension and production. Linguistic comprehension gradually improved to reach normal performance levels by age 7 while linguistic production, even at later stages, remained quite poor. This dissociation in the development of linguistic performance in SPE-LF children suggests a complex interplay between brain maturation dynamics and dysfunction modulating the succession of stages in language development. The observed persistent deficits in specific aspects of linguistic performance argue for an early involvement of the anterior areas of the left cerebral hemisphere in the production of language.

Identification and diagnostic evaluation of hearing impairments in early childhood in German-speaking infants.

The present study was devised to gather epidemiological information to aid in understanding the etiology, identification, and management of children with permanent hearing losses in Lower Saxony as a defined geographical area of Germany. All infants and preschool children were identified in the Department of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology during a 1-year period (October 1994 until October 1995). Forty-four hearing-impaired children were identified, of whom 41 (93%) had sensorineural losses and 3 had pure conductive losses. Thirty-two children (73%) had bilateral hearing impairments. The causes of hearing loss were unknown in 17 children (39%). The median age of identification for the study group was 32 months, with a median age of 35.5 months when fitting hearing aids. Severity of hearing loss was inversely associated with age of identification. Prelingually deaf children had the worst comprehension levels of all children tested psychologically. Results were tabulated and special references to other studies were discussed. Our findings show again that the successful out-come of speech and language development depends on early identification and management of the hearing loss, and on continued assessment of the progress of habilitation. These require a basic assessment of the stage of language development (in perception and expression) as relevant rehabilitation measures. The next step is the treatment of existing linguistic deficits followed by retests at regular intervals.

From first words to grammar in children with focal brain injury

The effects of focal brain injury were investigated in the first stages of language development, during the passage from first words to grammar. Parent report, free‐speech data, or both are reported for 53 infants and preschool children between 10 and 44 months of age. All children had suffered a single, unilateral brain injury to the left or right hemisphere, incurred before 6 months of age (usually in the pre‐ or perinatal period). This is the period in which one would expect to see maximal plasticity, but it is also the period in which the initial specializations of particular cortical regions ought to be most evident. In direct contradiction of hypotheses based on the adult aphasia literature, results from 10 to 17 months suggest that children with right‐hemisphere injuries are at greater risk for delays in word comprehension and in the gestures that normally precede and accompany language onset. Although there were no differences between left‐ and right‐hemisphere injury per se on expressive language, children whose lesions included the left‐temporal lobe showed significantly greater delays in expressive vocabulary and grammar throughout the period from 10 to 44 month s. No specific deficits were associated with left‐frontal damage, but there was a significant effect of frontal lobe injury to either hemisphere in the period from 16 to 31 months, when normal children usually show a burst in vocabulary and grammar. This bilateral effect of frontal damage is independent of motor impairment. Hence, there are specific effects of lesion site in early language development, but they are consistent neither with the lesion‐syndrome correlations observed in adults with homologous injuries nor with the literature on acquired lesions in older children. Results are used to argue against innate localization of linguistic representations, and in favor of an alternative view in which innate regional biases in style of information processing lead to familiar patterns of brain organization for language under normal conditions and permit alternative patterns to emerge in children with focal brain injury.

The development of communicative competence of securely and insecurely attached children in interactions with their mothers.

Coordinated interpersonal timing in preverbal mother-child interactions is assumed to be one fundamental feature of interpersonal relatedness and the basis for parent-child bonding. The ubiquity of and early evidence for this phenomenon in ontogeny hint at its biological "prewiredness" and relevance for development. The quality of interpersonal timing in early preverbal parent-child interactions was hypothesized (and partially shown) to predict quality of attachment, level of cognitive functioning, and patterns of language acquisition. The aim of this study was to investigate the assumption of a facilitating effect of adequate interpersonal coordination (measured by quality of attachment) on the development of verbal communicative competence in children during the first stages of language development. On the basis of longitudinal data for 25 mother-child dyads, videotaped when the children were 17, 23, 30, and 36 months old in a free play and a short separation situation, it was investigated whether securely and insecurely attached children differ with respect to the amount of verbal contributions, their realization as alternating or simultaneous utterances, and the duration of intra-turn and inter-turn pauses. The results show that attachment was related to children's use of communicative competence especially in stressful situations, its development being paced by the age or maturation of the child.

Changes in the Generativity and Use of Semantic Relationships Concurrent With Milieu Language Intervention

Changes associated with a milieu language intervention implemented to teach productive semantic relationships (e.g., action-object combinations) were investigated. Subjects were 11 young children with borderline to moderate levels of mental retardation, all in the early stages of language development. Following a baseline period, each subject received three to four training sessions per week in a small group interactive play situation. Measures of generativity were analyzed via pre/post group comparisons. Concurrent with the intervention subjects showed substantial gains in their ability to generatively produce semantic relationships in the intervention context and across settings, adults, and interaction styles. Subjects also correctly responded to an increasing proportion of target probe questions in both the intervention and generalization settings. The results suggest that, for most of the subjects, milieu teaching was associated with enhanced generativity and use of semantic relationships.

Environmental correlates of child copula verb growth

A recurring result from studies which relate the frequency of input variables to rate of language development, is the link between auxiliary verb growth and yes-no questions addressed to children. Explanations for this relationship usually concentrate on the advantages of hearing stressed and non-contracted auxiliary forms in sentence-initial position over hearing unstressed, contracted forms in medial position in declaratives. If such accounts are correct, then it can be predicted that yes-no questions which place forms of COPULA be in initial position will also increase the rate of growth of children's COPULA verb development. This prediction was tested using a sample of 33 children, carefully matched for stage of language development at 1;9 and 2;0 years; rate of copula verb growth was then measured over the succeeding nine months. Analyses include an examination of the contribution of sub-categories of yes-no question, tag questions, and utterances containing sentence-final copulas to the growth of contracted and full copulas. Results confirm that the frequency of inverted copulas in yes-no questions predicts children's copula development. Nevertheless, caution is urged before interpreting the relationship in terms of a direct causal model.

The language of economic and industrial understanding for young children

This paper has three aims. One is to establish a parallel between Economic and Industrial Understanding (EIU) and language. The second is to consider where EIU as a field of study for children might mesh with their stage of language development; and the third, which forms Part II of the paper, is to report on a small‐scale pilot study investigating language factors in the area.

Comparing how mothers and teachers talk to children: is it different and does it matter?

A number of studies have shown that maternal linguistic input to young mentally handicapped (MH) children and to developmentally normal (DN) children, differs. Whereas mothers of DN children may be the prime providers of the linguistic input, the situation differs for MH children. Many are still at a primitive stage of language development when they start school, and thus teachers as well as mothers are potential language teachers. Despite the suggestion that certain modes of adult input may enhance MH children's language growth, there has been no systematic comparison of mother and teacher input. In this paper, results are given from a study in which maternal and pedagogic input to three pre-school MH children is compared. The children, who were all at the one-word stage, were recorded with their mothers at home and their teachers at school. The adult utterances were examined using (1 ) an analysis based on a descriptive surface grammar and (2) a functional analysis. Results reveal that while there were many similarities between the groups, both group and individual differences exist. The implica tions for professional working with MH children and their parents are discussed.

DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE IN SIX HEMISPHERECTOMIZED PATIENTS

The development of language skills in the isolated right hemisphere was investigated by comparing the performance of 3 left hemispherectomized with that of the 3 right hemispherectomized patients and three groups of control subjects on baseline clinical measures of language and on production and judgement of morphological markers. The initial brain insult in the hemispherectomy patients of each group had occurred either during early, middle or late childhood. The left hemispherectomy patients were severely impaired in language processing across all three stages of language development. The consequences of a right hemisphere insult on language development were more restricted, with deleterious effects being apparent only in the case in which the lesion was acquired during early childhood.

A Grammer without Functional Categories: A Syntactic Study of Early Swedish Child Language

In this paper I give empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there are no functional categories in early Swedish child language (up to approximately 3 years of age). claiming that utterances with at least a subject and a verb at this early stage of language development can be described within the limits of VP. Several properties of early Swedish are shown to follow from this hypothesis, including the lack of subordinate clauses in early Swedish and the fact that early Swedish is not a verb second language.

Type/Token Ratios: what do they really tell us?

ABSTRACTType/Token Ratios have been extensively used in child language research as an index of lexical diversity. This paper shows that the measure has frequently failed to discriminate between children at widely different stages of language development, and that the ratio may in fact fall as children get older. It is suggested here that such effects are caused by a negative, though non-linear, relationship between sample size (i.e. number of tokens) and Type/Token Ratio. Effects of open and closed class items are considered and an alternative Verbal Diversity measure is examined. Standardization of the number of tokens before computing Type/Token Ratios is recommended.

Facilitation of semantic comprehension at the one-word stage of language development.

Early in the development of language, children must learn to relate the language they hear to objects and events in their immediate perceptual environment. Gilmore (1977) found that infants at the two-word stage of language production and, under certain conditions, some infants at the one-word stage as well, seemed to map a simple sentence (e.g. The bunny hugs the kitty) onto a visual event (which, for example, showed a puppet rabbit hugging a puppet cat). In Gilmore's experiment, a habituation series of trials, presenting either appropriate pairings of a variety of sentences with visual events (as in the above example), or inappropriate pairings (e.g. The kitty hugs the bunny, when, in fact, the reverse was true) were presented repeatedly until subjects habituated. A test series of trials followed with an inappropriate/appropriate pairing, whichever was not used during habituation. Two-word subjects seemed to discriminate between the test and habituation pairings in either case. One-word subjects seemed to discrimi- nate only when they received the appropriate pairing during habituation and the inappropriate during the test.

Acquisition of ASL and Spoken English by a Hearing Child of a Deaf Mother and a Hearing Father: Phase II, Early Combinatorial Patterns

In this second phase of a longitudinal study of the simultaneous linguistic development in ASL and spoken English by a hearing girl whose mother is profoundly deaf and father hearing, the focus is on the “transitional” stage of language development between the one-word stage and the combinatorial stage. The results demonstrate (1) the existence of early combinations of manual and oral babbling strings; (2) the ability to convey communicative intent by combining oral and manual signifiers; (3) a preliminary code-switching ability across modalities; and (4) the development of two separate lexical systems but one syntactic system incorporating rules from both languages.

Perceptual constancy for phonemic categories: a developmental study with normal and language impaired children

ABSTRACTSix synthesized consonant-vowel syllables, three containing the phoneme /b/ in different vowel contexts and three the phoneme /d/, were presented randomly to developmental dysphasics and normal children. The ability to recognize that these six acoustically different stimuli shared two common phonemic categories (perceptual constancy) was investigated using nonverbal operantly conditioned response techniques. Results showed that although several children in both groups had difficulty with the task, the dysphasic group's performance was significantly poorer than the controls. Whereas the normal children improved significantly with age, the dysphasics did not. The results of this study suggest that speech perception, rather than being fully developed in infancy, changes throughout language development. By using procedures which have proven suitable for testing infants, with young children at various stages of language development, more might be learned about how the acoustic signal is encoded into speech and language and how this encoding changes throughout development or is disturbed in language disorders.