COMD News

from Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics

Recent interest in gesture has led to an understanding of the development of gesture and speech in typically developing young children. Research suggests that initially gesture and speech form two independent systems which combine together temporally and semantically before children enter the two-word period of language development. However, little is known about gesture development in children’s disordered speech. This paper presents two case studies of young children with autism. The children are under 3 years of age and attend an intervention programme to facilitate their social and communication development. Early indications suggest that whilst both gesture and speech development is delayed in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the developmental trajectory is the same as for typically developing children.

from the Journal of Child Language

Children with word finding difficulties (CwWFDs) are slower and less accurate at naming monomorphemic words than typically developing children (Dockrell, Messer & George, 2001), but their difficulty in naming morphologically complex words has not yet been investigated. One aim of this paper was to identify whether CwWFDs are similar to typically developing children at producing inflected (morphologically complex) words. A second aim was to investigate whether the dual-mechanism model could account for the use of morphology in a sample of CwWFDs, exemplifying the notion that regular inflections are part of a rule-based system and computed on-line, while irregular inflections are retrieved directly from the associative system (Pinker, 1999). The inflectional knowledge of a group of CwWFDs was compared against a group of language age-matched typically developing peers in three experiments. In Experiment 1 children produced the past tenses of high- and low-frequency regular and irregular English verbs. In Experiment 2 children generalized their knowledge of the past tense system onto nonsense verbs and in Experiment 3 children produced past tenses of verbs used in either a denominal or a verb root context. In each of these three studies, the CwWFDs performed similarly to matched typical children, suggesting that they do not have a selective problem with morphosyntactic features of words. The findings provide mixed support for the dual-mechanism model.

from the Journal of Child Language

Rapid acquisition of linguistic categories or constructions is sometimes regarded as evidence of innate knowledge. In this paper, we examine Polish children’s early understanding of an idiosyncratic, language-specific construction involving the instrumental case – which could not be due to innate knowledge. Thirty Polish-speaking children aged 2 ; 6 and 3 ; 2 participated in a elicited production experiment with novel verbs that were demonstrated as taking nouns in the instrumental case as patients. Children heard the verbs in sentences with either masculine or feminine nouns (which take different endings in the instrumental case), and were tested with new nouns of the same and of the opposite gender. In both age groups, a substantial majority of children succeeded in generalizing from one gendered form of the instrumental case to the other (especially to the masculine), thus indicating that they have some kind of abstract understanding of the instrumental case in this construction. This relatively early abstract knowledge of an idiosyncratic construction casts doubt on the view that early acquisition requires innate linguistic knowledge.

from Child: Care, Health and Development

Background Post-natal depression is common and has been associated with adverse effects on children’s later emotional and behavioural development. The evidence for effects on children’s cognitive development is unclear but this could potentially be a major public health issue. The aim was to examine whether maternal depression and maternal caregiving during the first year of life are associated with children’s subsequent language development.

Methods One thousand two hundred and one women were recruited from antenatal and post-natal baby clinics in two areas in England, and followed up until their babies were 3 years. Mothers and children were assessed by questionnaire, interview and home observation; 999 children’s language was assessed at 36 months, although 55 were excluded principally because they had been exposed to insufficient English.

Results In bivariate analyses maternal depressive symptomatology in the post-natal year but not at 36 months was associated with poorer child language at 36 months; maternal caregiving, was positively associated with language. Structural Equation Modelling revealed that depression was associated with poorer caregiving but was not independently associated with language. Higher quality caregiving at 10 months was associated with better language. When the sample was split by socioeconomic factors the effects of depression on caregiving were stronger in the less advantaged group. In both groups poorer quality early caregiving predicted lower language outcome.

Conclusions Post-natal depression had a negative effect on caregiving, which in turn affected language; post-natal depression did not have an additional direct effect on language. Socioeconomic factors moderated the effects of depression on caregiving. When targeting interventions at mothers with post-natal depression, it may be strategic to focus on lower socioeconomic groups at higher risk.

from EurekAlert.org

Scientists are to use a powerful super computer to mimic the part of the brain that controls speech and language function to better understand what goes wrong after brain damage caused by trauma or stroke.

from the Journal of Communication Disorders

The genetic and environmental etiology of speech and broader language skills was examined in terms of their concurrent relationships in young children; their longitudinal association with reading; and the role they play in defining the ‘heritable phenotype’ for specific language impairment (SLI). The work was based on a large sample of 4 1/2-year-old twins, who were assessed at home on a broad range of speech and language measures as part of the Twins Early Development Study. We found that genetic factors strongly influence variation in young children’s speech in typical development as well as in SLI, and that these genetic factors also account for much of the relationship between early speech and later reading. In contrast, shared environmental factors play a more dominant role for broader language skills, and in relating these skills to later reading; isolated impairments in language as opposed to speech appear to have largely environmental origins.

from the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science

Most researches conducted in the field of postimplant assessment have focused on the restoration of perceptual capabilities and the development of verbal language. In contrast, only very few studies have examined the impact of a cochlear implantation on children’s overall development and, in particular, on their conversational language abilities. However, some previous works on the preverbal development revealed the recurrent difficulties experienced by deaf children in acquiring knowledge of social rules and social skills relative to speech activities. In children with profound bilateral deafness, a conventional hearing aid is not enough to provide sufficiently relevant information for a satisfactory development of oral communication. In such situations, the most suitable way of improving hearing is the use of a cochlear implant. The authors therefore hypothesized that access to oral perception will not only improve implanted children’s social skills, but will also increase their rate of participation and the use of verbal language in their interaction with a familiar adult (mother or father). Their communication skills profile would resemble that of younger normal hearing children. Using conversational samples from a video-filming protocol at specific intervals, the authors monitored the development of communication skills in a group of 20 prelingually, profoundly deaf children (mean age: 3.7 years). Results corroborated our hypothesis. They indicated that children using cochlear implants increased their overall performance in communication skills, quantitatively and qualitatively speaking, even at the first year postimplantation stage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

from the Journal of Educational Psychology

In this 3-year longitudinal study, the authors tested and extended M. Sénéchal and J. Le Fevre’s (2002) model of the relationships between preschool home literacy practices and children’s literacy and language development. Parent-child reading (Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire plus a children’s Title Recognition Test) and parental teaching of letters, words, and name writing were assessed 6 months prior to children’s school entry. The 143 children (55% male participants; mean age = 5.36 years, SD = 0.29) attended Gold Coast, Australia government preschools. Parent-child reading and literacy teaching were only weakly correlated (r = .1 and were related to different outcomes consistent with the original model. Age, gender, memory, and nonverbal ability were controlled. Parental teaching was independently related to R. W. Woodcock’s (1997) preschool Letter-Word Identification scores (R²-sub(change) = 4.58%, p = .008). This relationship then mediated the relationships between parental teaching and Grades 1 and 2 letter-word identification, single-word reading and spelling rates, and phonological awareness (rhyme detection and phonological deletion). Parent-child reading was independently related to Grade 1 vocabulary (R²-sub(change) = 5.6%, p = .005). Thus, both home practices are relevant but to different aspects of literacy and language development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

from the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Purpose: A study was conducted that examined factors that lead children who stutter at around age 8 years to persist in the disorder when they reach age 12 years.

Method: Seventy-six children were verified to be stuttering at initial assessment. When they reached 12 years of age, they were classified as persistent or recovered. A range of measures was taken at the 2 age points, and measures were examined by recovery group.

Results: Although the tendency for more males than females to stutter was confirmed, the reasons for this tendency are not apparent for these speakers. Different patterns in speech were observed: Severity ratings of the recovered speakers dropped by age 12+. The severity ratings for the persistent speakers remained high at 12+, and dysfluency types tended to change from whole words to part words. Persistent and recovered speakers differed on temperamental performance at around age 8 years and performed differently on sensory and motor tasks at age 12+ years.

Conclusions: Stuttering in late childhood affects mainly males. The later a child attends clinic, the longer he or she will stutter. Speech patterns of children who persist diverge from those who recover or who are fluent. As speakers persist, there are temperamental, sensory, and motor changes.

from Language and Cognitive Processes

At the one-word stage children use gesture to supplement their speech (’eat’+point at cookie), and the onset of such supplementary gesture-speech combinations predicts the onset of two-word speech (’eat cookie’). Gesture thus signals a child’s readiness to produce two-word constructions. The question we ask here is what happens when the child begins to flesh out these early skeletal two-word constructions with additional arguments. One possibility is that gesture continues to be a forerunner of linguistic change as children flesh out their skeletal constructions by adding arguments. Alternatively, after serving as an opening wedge into language, gesture could cease its role as a forerunner of linguistic change. Our analysis of 40 children - from 14 to 34 months - showed that children relied on gesture to produce the first instance of a variety of constructions. However, once each construction was established in their repertoire, the children did not use gesture to flesh out the construction. Gesture thus acts as a harbinger of linguistic steps only when those steps involve new constructions, not when the steps merely flesh out existing constructions.

from Medical News Today.com

New research findings from the world’s largest study on language emergence have revealed that one in four late talking toddlers continue to have language problems by age 7.

from Clinical Neurophysiology

Objective
Event-related brain potentials (ERP) may provide tools for examining normal and abnormal language development. To clarify functional significance of auditory ERPs, we examined ERP indices of spectral differences in speech and non-speech sounds.

Methods
Three Spectral Items (BA, DA, GA) were presented as three Stimulus Types: syllables, non-phonetics, and consonant–vowel transitions (CVT). Fourteen 7- to 10-year-old children and 14 adults were presented with equiprobable Spectral Item sequences blocked by Stimulus Type.

Results
Spectral Item effect appeared as P1, P2, N2, and N4 amplitude variations. The P2 was sensitive to all Stimulus Types in both groups. In adults, the P1 was also sensitive to transitions while the N4 was sensitive to syllables. In children, only the 50-ms CVT stimuli elicited N2 and N4 spectral effects. In both groups, non-phonetic stimuli elicited larger N1–P2 amplitudes while speech stimuli elicited larger N2–N4 amplitudes.

Conclusions
Auditory feature processing is reflected by P1–P2 and N2–N4 peaks and matures earlier than supra-sensory integrative mechanisms, reflected by N1–P2 peaks. Auditory P2 appears to pertain to both processing types.

Significance
These results delineate an orderly processing organization whereby direct feature mapping occurs earlier in processing and, in part, serves sound detection whereas relational mapping occurs later in processing and serves sound identification.

from EurekAlert.org

Infants who are exposed to television and video in low socio-economic households tend to have limited verbal interactions with their mothers, according to a new study led by Alan L. Mendelsohn, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Director of Clinical Research for the divisions of General and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at NYU School of Medicine.

from Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics

The purpose of the investigation was to examine the developmental trajectories of bilingual preschoolers’ comprehension of Spanish and English and to determine whether a lengthy summer vacation impacted children’s development during the preschool years. Participants included 83 bilingual children who were followed over a 2-year period during which time children attended a federally funded preschool programme for children from low-income homes living in the US. Children were divided into two groups based on whether their scores on receptive language measures increased or decreased during their first year of Head Start. Results revealed that children whose scores increased experienced positive growth in their language comprehension in Spanish and English over the 2-year period, whereas children whose scores decreased during the first year continued to experience a negative developmental trajectory in their second year. Additionally, it was found that a lengthy summer vacation had a differential effect on children’s development. Summer vacation had a negative effect on the developmental trajectories of children who experienced gains in their comprehension of English and Spanish and a positive impact on children whose scores declined during the school year. Clinical implications suggest that children may require differential support during the school year and summer vacation depending upon their developmental trajectories during the first year in preschool.
Keywords: Bilingual; language development; preschoolers; Latino; Hispanic; summer; Head Start; school calendar

from the Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology

Bilingualism in children with Down syndrome (DS) is an under-studied topic. Some professionals counsel families to restrict input to a single language for children with DS because there are delays present even when only one language is being learned. The purpose of the current study was to provide more information about the ability of children with DS to learn two languages. Such evidence is important for guiding clinical decisions. The morphosyntactic and vocabulary skills in English and French of four bilingual children with DS were analyzed and compared individually to that of a typically developing bilingual child and a monolingual child with DS. The children in each triad were matched on nonverbal mental age and exposure to a second language. While language delays were evidenced in both languages for the bilingual children with DS, no consistent effect of bilingualism was seen. All four bilingual children with DS were developing functional second language skills. Current input accounted for much of the variability in English versus French language skills. These findings provide families and professionals with information that will assist them in making appropriate decisions for children with DS.

from EurekAlert.org

Uncover how the brains of infants distinguish differences in sounds and it may become possible to correct language problems even before children start to speak, sparing them the difficulties that come from struggling with language.

New studies conducted by Professor of Neuroscience April Benasich and her Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University in Newark are revealing new and exciting clues about how infant brains begin to acquire language and paving the way for correcting language difficulties at a time when the brain is most able to change.

from First Language

This study explores how French adults and children aged four and six years talk and gesture about voluntary motion, examining (1) how they encode path and manner in speech, (2) how they encode this information in accompanying gestures; and (3) whether gestures are co-expressive with speech or express other information. When path and manner are equally relevant, children’s and adults’ speech and gestures both focus on path, rather than on manner. Moreover, gestures are predominantly co-expressive with speech at all ages. However, when they are non-redundant, adults tend to gesture about path while talking about manner, whereas children gesture about both path and manner while talking about path. The discussion highlights implications for our understanding of speakers’ representations and their development.

from Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics

Recent interest in gesture has led to an understanding of the development of gesture and speech in typically developing young children. Research suggests that initially gesture and speech form two independent systems which combine together temporally and semantically before children enter the two-word period of language development. However, little is known about gesture development in children’s disordered speech. This paper presents two case studies of young children with autism. The children are under 3 years of age and attend an intervention programme to facilitate their social and communication development. Early indications suggest that whilst both gesture and speech development is delayed in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the developmental trajectory is the same as for typically developing children.

from Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology

Rates of diagnosis of autism have risen since 1980, raising the question of whether some children who previously had other diagnoses are now being diagnosed with autism. We applied contemporary diagnostic criteria for autism to adults with a history of developmental language disorder, to discover whether diagnostic substitution has taken place. A total of 38 adults (aged 15-31y; 31 males, seven females) who had participated in studies of developmental language disorder during childhood were given the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule - Generic. Their parents completed the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised, which relies largely on symptoms present at age 4 to 5 years to diagnose autism. Eight individuals met criteria for autism on both instruments, and a further four met criteria for milder forms of autistic spectrum disorder. Most individuals with autism had been identified with pragmatic impairments in childhood. Some children who would nowadays be diagnosed unambiguously with autistic disorder had been diagnosed with developmental language disorder in the past. This finding has implications for our understanding of the epidemiology of autism.

from the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology

Objective
The effect of early palate closure on speech and language development in children with cleft palate.

Design
Comparative study.

Setting
University Medical Center Groningen, Cleft Palate Team (The Netherlands).

Materials and methods
Forty-three toddlers with cleft palate and thirty-two toddlers without cleft palate were analyzed with standardized tests for language comprehension and language production. Moreover articulation and hyper nasality were examined by trained speech therapists.

Results
For language comprehension, language production and articulation there were no significant differences between the children with and without cleft lip and/or palate. This is despite the high percentage of conductive hearing loss (55%) in children with clefts. Significant difference was found for hyper nasality (mean: 35% vs. 0%, p = 0.001). In both groups articulation problems raise to a higher percentage than language production problems (63–20%; 24–4%).

Conclusions
Early surgical treatment is effective for a part of the communicative development, i.e. language development and articulation. Besides conductive hearing loss hyper nasality remains a serious problem in 30–50% of the children with cleft palate. Therefore, speech therapy and pharyngoplasty also are part of the treatment procedure. Because of the high amount articulation problems in all children, standards for articulation development are perhaps too strict. Future research should be carried out after normal variations in articulation development.

from Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics

This article reviews research on speech and language abilities in people with cri du chat syndrome (CCS). CCS is a rare genetic disorder, with an estimated incidence between 1 in 15,000 and 1 in 50,000 births, resulting from a deletion on the short arm of chromosome 5. In general, individuals have delayed speech and language development, and some never develop spoken language. Their receptive language is better than their expressive language, although both are delayed. Regarding phonetics and phonology, substitutions, omissions, and distortions are frequent; consonant inventories are small; syllable shapes are restricted; and vowels are variable and overlap with each other acoustically. Persons with CCS have been found to inflect words from all major word classes. Little is known about syntactic skills, but some individuals are reported to express themselves in utterances of two or more words. Knowledge about speech and language development in CCS is sparse, and the need for more research is considerable.

from the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Purpose: This study describes written and spoken narrative skills of school-age individuals with Down syndrome (DS).

Method: Twenty-one students with DS (age 6;6 [years;months]–19;10) and 17 reading-matched, typically developing (TD) controls (age 4;9–10;9) were matched using Word Identification subtest raw scores (Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests—Revised; R. W. Woodcock, 1987; age equivalents: 5;0–9;7 for both groups). Matching on reading resulted in significantly higher mental ages and vocabulary comprehension age-equivalent scores for the controls. Narratives were elicited in 3 modes (oral, handwritten, and word-processed) using single-episode picture sequences. Narratives were analyzed for length, linguistic complexity, narrative structure, spelling, punctuation, and handwriting legibility.

Results: Analyses revealed significant group differences only for measures of narrative length (DS > TD) and handwriting legibility (TD > DS). Oral narratives were longer and more complex than written narratives for both groups. Regression analyses revealed that vocabulary comprehension was the best predictor of narrative skills for the group with DS; age was the best predictor of narrative skills for the TD group.

Conclusions: These school-age students with DS exhibited many oral and written narrative abilities that were comparable with those of real-word-reading-matched controls. Several findings suggest a possible increased constraint of fine-motor skill in the DS group.

from UC Berkeley News.edu

Children in impoverished families that received an extra amount of cold, hard cash from a government support program were taller, less likely to be overweight, and scored higher on cognitive, motor and language tests, compared with kids in families that received less money, says a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study, to be reported in the March 8 issue of the journal Lancet, focused on low-income families enrolled in a conditional cash transfer program run by the Mexican government.

from the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology

OBJECTIVES: Early intervention in hearing-impaired children may improve language outcomes and subsequent school and occupational performance. The objective of this study was to retrospectively analyze over 6 years the educational outcome and language development of a first cohort of children, detected by the Flemish universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) program based on automated auditory brainstem response (AABR), with the oldest children being in primary school. METHODS: We studied 229 hearing-impaired children from 1998 till 2003. The following variables were considered: the age during the school year 2005-2006, the degree of hearing loss, additional impairments including presence of intellectual disability, school placement and early intervention. RESULTS: Analysis showed that 85.4% of the children with moderate, severe or profound hearing loss and no additional disability, older than 5.5 years, reach mainstream education. Further detailed description was provided for the outcomes of children with uni- and bilateral cochlear implants. Overall results stress that 46% of all children with a cochlear implant obtain mainstream education. Of all cochlear implant (CI) children above 5.5 years, without additional handicaps, 78.9% of children attend primary mainstream school. Data on language development show that up to 45% of the children with unilateral cochlear implant and no additional disabilities had normal to slight delay on language development. These data are fulfilling the goals stated by the JCIH and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 2000. The role and impact of additional handicaps is discussed. The importance of early hearing loss identification and hearing therapy for appropriate language development is highlighted. Finally our preliminary results on children with bilateral cochlear implants without additional handicaps present an improved language development in comparison to unilateral CI-children. CONCLUSION: A vast majority of the children detected by the UNHS program, with moderate, severe or profound hearing loss and no additional disability, older than 5.5 years, reach mainstream education. Additional disabilities have a major influence.

from NIH News

For children who struggle to learn language, the choice between various interventions may matter less than the intensity and format of the intervention, a new study sponsored by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) suggests. The study, led by Ronald B. Gillam, Ph.D., of Utah State University is online in the February 2008 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. NIDCD is one of the National Institutes of Health.

The study compared four intervention strategies in children who have unusual difficulty understanding and using language, and found that all four methods resulted in significant, long-term improvements in the children’s language abilities. The aim of the study was to assess whether children who used commercially available language software program Fast ForWord-Language had greater improvement in language skills than children using other methods. This program was specifically designed to improve auditory processing deficits which may underlie some language impairments. Children who have auditory processing deficits can jumble the order of sounds that are heard in close sequence. Researchers believe that this deficit can interfere with vocabulary and grammar development.

from NIH News.gov

For children who struggle to learn language, the choice between various interventions may matter less than the intensity and format of the intervention, a new study sponsored by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) suggests. The study, led by Ronald B. Gillam, Ph.D., of Utah State University is online in the February 2008 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. NIDCD is one of the National Institutes of Health.

from the European Journal of Paediatric Neurology

The purpose of this prospective study was to assess whether outcome of speech and language in children 5–10 years after corrective surgery for tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) or ventricular septal defect (VSD) in infancy was influenced by the preoperative condition of hypoxemia or cardiac insufficiency and whether it was associated with perioperative risk factors and neurodevelopmental outcome.

A total of 35 unselected children, 19 with TOF and hypoxemia and 16 with VSD and cardiac insufficiency, operated with combined deep hypothermic circulatory arrest and low-flow cardiopulmonary bypass at mean age 0.7±0.3 (mean±standard deviation) years, underwent, at mean age 7.4±1.6 years, standardized evaluation of speech and language functions. Results were compared between subgroups and related to perioperative factors, sociodemographic and neurodevelopmental status.

Age at testing, socioeconomic status and history of speech and language development were not different between the subgroups. In contrast, total scores on oral and speech motor control functions (TFS) as well as on oral and speech apraxia (Mayo Test) were significantly reduced (p<0.02 to <0.05), and scores on anatomical oral structures tended to be lower (p<0.09) in the TOF group as compared to the VSD group. No differences were found for auditory word recognition and phonological awareness as assessed by the Auditory Closure subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and the test of auditory analysis skills, respectively. In all children, higher age at testing and better socioeconomic status were associated with better results in all domains of assessment (p<0.001 to <0.04). Consistent impairments of all oral and speech motor control functions (TFS and Mayo Test) were present in 29% of all children with a mean age of 6.5 years in contrast to 43% with normal performance and a mean age of 8.3 years. On the receptive speech tasks, only 6% scored below the normal range of their age group. TFS subscores were significantly correlated with age, bypass duration and motor function, but not correlated with socioeconomic status, duration of cardiac arrest, intelligence and academic achievement.

Children with preoperative hypoxemia due to cyanotic cardiac defects in infancy are at higher risk for dysfunction in speech and language than those with cardiac insufficiency due to acyanotic heart defects. Age at testing, socioeconomic status, and duration of cardiopulmonary bypass influenced test results. Long-term outcome in speech and language functions can be considered as a sensitive indicator of overall child development after cardiac surgery.

from Otology & Neurotology

Objective: To determine if exposure to a second language impacts the ability of children with cochlear implants to develop spoken English skills.

Study Design: Matched-pairs comparison of postoperative speech perception and speech/language data of children from monolingual and bilingual homes with cochlear implants.

Setting: Tertiary medical facility.

Subjects: Twelve matched pairs of children with unilateral cochlear implants who reside in monolingual or in bilingual homes. Pairs were matched for age of implantation, cochlear anatomy, educational setting, and device type. All subjects received their implant before the age of 6 years.

Intervention: Subjects participated in routine speech perception and speech and language assessments at various postimplantation time intervals.

Main Outcome Measures: Matched-pairs t tests and mixed-model analyses were used to evaluate and compare scores obtained by the 2 groups on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures, The Oral and Written Language Scales, The Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale, and the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix.

Results: No significant differences were found between the scores of children living in bilingual homes when compared with the scores obtained by children living in monolingual homes at any interval tested.

Conclusion: This study supports the belief that exposure to a second language at home does not impair primary language acquisition for some young children with cochlear implants. The study suggests that some children with cochlear implants can learn multiple spoken languages and that parents of such children do not need to avoid using a minority language with their child who has a cochlear implant.

from Otology & Neurotology

Objective: Clinicians and investigators use multiple outcome measures after early cochlear implantation (CI) to assess auditory skills, speech, and language effects. Are certain outcome measures better associated with optimal childhood development from the perspective of parents? We studied the association between several commonly used outcome instruments and a measure of parental perceptions of development to gain insight into how our clinical tests reflect parental perceptions of a child’s developmental status.

Study Design: Cross-sectional analysis.

Setting: Six academic centers.

Patients: One hundred eighty-eight deaf children (<6 yr) 1 year after CI activation enrolled in the longitudinal Childhood Development after CI study.

Main Outcome Measures: Measures of auditory skills, speech, and language. Parental perceptions of development quantified with a visual analogue scale (visual analogue scale-development).

Methods: Nonparametric and parametric regression methods were used to model the relationship between outcome measures and visual analogue scale-development scores.

Results: All outcome measures were positively associated with parental perceptions of development, but more robust associations were observed with language measures and a parent-report scale of auditory skills than with a selected measure of closed-set speech. For speech and language data, differences were observed in the trajectories of associations among younger (2-3 yr) versus older (4-5 yr) children.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate the importance of measuring multiple outcome measures after early pediatric CI. The degree to which an outcome measure reflects childhood development as perceived by parents may be affected by the child’s age. Measures that are based on parental report and broader outcome measures focused on verbal language offer the potential for a fuller understanding of the true effectiveness of early implantation.

from Otology & Neurotology

Objective: To investigate if babbling complexity in early childhood is related to speech and language outcomes in later childhood in children with cochlear implants (CIs).

Study Design: Retrospective.

Setting: Tertiary care hospital.

Patients: Nineteen infants with CIs participated.

Intervention: Infants received multichannel CIs.

Main Outcome Measures: Infant vocal recordings were taken during pre- and post-CI visits up to 13 months post-CI. Vocalizations were measured using a scoring system that takes into account the phonetic complexity of infant vocalizations. Outcome variables included articulation and language measures collected at 4 years of age. Data were analyzed using correlational and regression analyses.

Results: For infants with at least 6 to 9 months of CI experience, the phonetic complexity of babbling is significantly correlated with receptive vocabulary, articulation abilities, and global language skills at 4 years of age.

Conclusion: The phonetic complexity of prelinguistic vocalizations is related to later speech and language outcomes in children with CIs. This information may be valuable in terms of tracking progress in pediatric CI users.