The notion that young children form and test hypotheses about early print is well established in relation to children from different cultures who use different languages. This study demonstrates that this also obtains for young deaf children still in the early stages of developing spoken language. Data collected from the homes of 13 deaf children (aged from 3 years 3 months to 4 years 4 months at the start of the study) over a two-year period showed hypothesising and experimenting around writing. Spontaneous drawing and writing samples were collected and a method of eliciting data was devised that did not rely on the children knowing vocabulary related to print (e.g. word or sentence). The data revealed that these children had internalised print concepts but this knowledge could easily be overlooked. Implications for educational settings are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Posts Tagged ‘language development’
Early print concepts: insights from work with young deaf children
Posted by Callier Library on November 19, 2009
Posted in Research | Tagged: deaf children, language development, print concepts | Leave a Comment »
Semantic meaning and pragmatic interpretation in 5-year-olds: Evidence from real-time spoken language comprehension.
Posted by Callier Library on November 16, 2009
Recent research on children’s inferencing has found that although adults typically adopt the pragmatic interpretation of some (implying not all), 5- to 9-year-olds often prefer the semantic interpretation of the quantifier (meaning possibly all). Do these failures reflect a breakdown of pragmatic competence or the metalinguistic demands of prior tasks? In 3 experiments, the authors used the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to elicit an implicit measure of adults’ and children’s abilities to generate scalar implicatures. Although adults’ eye-movements indicated that adults had interpreted some with the pragmatic inference, children’s looks suggested that children persistently interpreted some as compatible with all (Experiment 1). Nevertheless, both adults and children were able to quickly reject competitors that were inconsistent with the semantics of some; this confirmed the sensitivity of the paradigm (Experiment 2). Finally, adults, but not children, successfully distinguished between situations that violated the scalar implicature and those that did not (Experiment 3). These data demonstrate that children interpret quantifiers on the basis of their semantic content and fail to generate scalar implicatures during online language comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Posted in Research | Tagged: Inference, language development, pragmatics, quantifiers, scalar implicature, semantics, spoken language comprehension | 1 Comment »
Word learning in children with autism spectrum disorders.
Posted by Callier Library on November 16, 2009
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been gaining attention, partly as an example of unusual developmental trajectories related to early neurobiological differences. The present investigation addressed the process of learning new words to explore mechanisms of language delay and impairment. The sample included 21 typically developing toddlers matched on expressive vocabulary with 21 young children with ASD. Two tasks were administered to teach children a new word and were supplemented by cognitive and diagnostic measures. In most analyses, there were no group differences in performance. Children with ASD did not consistently make mapping errors, even in word learning situations that required the use of social information. These findings indicate that some children with ASD, in developmentally appropriate tasks, are able to use information from social interactions to guide word–object mappings. This result has important implications for understanding of how children with ASD learn language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Posted in Research | Tagged: language development, word learning, Autism Spectrum Disorder | Leave a Comment »
Assessing speech perception in young children and relationships with language skills
Posted by Callier Library on October 3, 2009
Few materials are available to assess speech perceptual skills in young children without hearing impairments. However, children with a range of developmental conditions are at risk of speech discrimination deficits. Tasks that reliably assess speech perception skills are thus necessary for research and clinical practice. The development and application of two speech perception tests are described. Data were collected from 105 children, aged 4-5 years, attending mainstream schools, on two tasks, mispronunciation detection and non-word XAB, in quiet and in a background of multi-talker babble. Children’s receptive language skills were also measured. Performance on mispronunciation detection was significantly better than on the XAB non-word task, and significantly better in quiet than in babble. Performance significantly improved with age, and speech discrimination was significantly related to receptive language abilities. Scores obtained in quiet and in babble were highly correlated and findings suggest there may be no advantage to testing in noise, except to avoid ceiling effects on performance. These tasks prove useful in the assessment of young children who may have speech discrimination deficits.
from the International Journal of Audiology
Posted in Research | Tagged: assessment, children, language development, Speech discrimination | Leave a Comment »
Procedural and declarative memory in children with and without specific language impairment
Posted by Callier Library on July 31, 2009
Conclusions & Implications: The results were interpreted to suggest an uneven profile of memory functioning in specific language impairment. On measures of declarative memory, specific language impairment appears to be associated with difficulties learning verbal information. At the same time, procedural memory is also appears to be impaired. Collectively, this study indicates multiple memory impairments in specific language impairment.
from the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders
Posted in Research | Tagged: cognition, language development, memory, specific language impairment (SLI) | Leave a Comment »
How well do poor language scores at ages 3 and 4 predict poor language scores at age 6?
Posted by Callier Library on July 21, 2009
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to describe findings and associations at the group level, and predictive accuracy at the individual level, for three measures of language obtained from a single prospective cohort of US children assessed at three ages during another investigation. Participants comprised all children (n = 414) who had a score at each of three ages (3, 4, and 6 years) on three language measures: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT); mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU); and total percentage of phonemes correct (TOTPPC) in a nonword repetition task. At the group level, mean differences and correlations over ages were calculated. At the individual level, the extent to which low scores (1.5 SDs or more below the sample mean) at an earlier age increased the relative risk (R’) of low scores at a later age was calculated. At the group level, scores on all measures increased significantly with age. Earlier and later scores on each measure were significantly correlated; r2 values were generally modest (12-59%). A low score at age 3 did not increase the risk of a low score age 4 or age 6 for any of the measures; a low PPVT score at age 4 significantly increased the risk (R’ = 5.0) of a low PPVT score at age 6. For these generally healthy children and these language measures, predictive accuracy at the individual level was generally poor between the ages of 3, 4, and 6 years. Large, longitudinal studies are needed to identify and validate measures for use in identifying preschool children at risk for later language deficits.
Posted in Research | Tagged: evidence-based practice (EBP), language development, language impairment | Leave a Comment »
The link between prosody and language skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or dyslexia
Posted by Callier Library on July 21, 2009
Methods & Procedures: Six subtests of the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems — Child version (PEPS-C) were used to investigate discrimination/comprehension and imitation/production of prosodic forms that were either independent of language or that had one of two linguistic functions: chunking (prosodic boundaries) and focus (contrastive stress). The performance of three groups of 10-14-year-old children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI, and dyslexia were compared with an age-matched control group and two younger control groups matched for various aspects of language and reading.
Outcomes & Results: The majority of children with SLI and/or dyslexia performed well on the tasks that tested auditory discrimination and imitation of prosodic forms. However, their ability to use prosody to disambiguate certain linguistic structures was impaired relative to age-matched controls, although these differences disappeared in comparison with language-matched controls. No, or only very weak, links were found between prosody and language and literacy skills in children with SLI and/or dyslexia.
Conclusions & Implications: Children with SLI and/or dyslexia aged 10-14 years show an impaired ability to disambiguate linguistic structures for which prosody is required. However, they are able on the whole to discriminate and imitate the actual prosodic structures themselves, without reference to linguistic meaning. While the interaction between prosody and other components of language such as syntax and pragmatics is problematic for children with SLI and/or dyslexia, prosody itself does not appear to be a core impairment.
Posted in Research | Tagged: dyslexia, language development, PEPS-C, prosody, specific language impairment | Leave a Comment »
Trajectories of Receptive Language Development From 3 to 12 Years of Age for Very Preterm Children
Posted by Callier Library on July 14, 2009
RESULTS: From 3 to 12 years, preterm children displayed catch-up gains on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Preterm children started with an average standardized score of 84.1 at 3 years and gained 1.2 points per year across the age period studied. Growth-curve analyses of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised raw scores revealed an indomethacin-gender effect on initial scores at 3 years, with preterm boys assigned randomly to receive indomethacin scoring, on average, 4.2 points higher than placebo-treated boys. However, the velocity of receptive vocabulary development from 3 to 12 years did not differ for the treatment groups. Children with severe brain injury demonstrated slower gains in skills over time, compared with those who did not suffer severe brain injury. Significant differences in language trajectories were predicted by maternal education and minority status.
from Pediatrics
Posted in Research | Tagged: indomethacin, intraventricular hemorrhage, Key Words: very low birth weight, language development, middle childhood development, preschool outcome, preterm birth | Leave a Comment »
Procedural and declarative memory in children with and without specific language impairment
Posted by Callier Library on June 13, 2009
Outcomes & Results: The results from the SRT Task showed the children with specific language impairment did not learn the sequence at levels comparable with the non-impaired children. On the measures of declarative memory, differences between the groups were observed on the verbal but not the visual task. The differences on the verbal declarative memory task were found after statistically controlling for differences in vocabulary and phonological short-term memory.
Conclusions & Implications: The results were interpreted to suggest an uneven profile of memory functioning in specific language impairment. On measures of declarative memory, specific language impairment appears to be associated with difficulties learning verbal information. At the same time, procedural memory is also appears to be impaired. Collectively, this study indicates multiple memory impairments in specific language impairment.
from the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders
Posted in Research | Tagged: cognition, Keywords: specific language impairment (SLI), language development, memory | Leave a Comment »
Temperamental profiles and linguistic development: Differences in the quality of linguistic production in relation to temperament in children of 28 months
Posted by Callier Library on June 2, 2009
The temperamental constellations that can be found in the infant population may influence the development trajectories of single domains of knowledge, such as that relative to language. The main objective of this study is to identify temperamental profiles to which one associates different levels of linguistic competence and to identify the profile associated with the highest risk for language acquisition. The temperamental characteristics of a sample of 106 children of 28 months attending day-care centres were surveyed and three temperamental profiles were highlighted: a profile typical of the Italian population which grouped most of the children; another made up of easily distractible and not very persistent children, who show a poor capacity to modulate motor activity and finally, the third with children inhibited in new situations. A comparison of the three groups on the basis of the level of linguistic competence revealed important differences regarding certain indices such as the vocabulary size and composition: in particular, the group of “inattentive” children has a more “immature” vocabulary composition, characterised by the presence of more primitive components of the lexical repertory.
Posted in Research | Tagged: Individual Differences, Keywords: Temperament, language development, toddlers, Vocabulary composition | Leave a Comment »
A preliminary study on the relationship between characteristics of TV content and delayed speech development in young children
Posted by Callier Library on June 1, 2009
Our previous population survey of 18-month-old children suggested an association between delayed language development and heavy TV viewing. We therefore collected all 85 videos described as children’s favorites in that questionnaire to examine relationships between the characteristics of habitually viewed videos and language development. In the language delayed group, compared to the non-delayed group, the types of videos preferred more were “realistic animations” and “baby education” and the characteristics of videos were contained few close-ups of characters facing viewers, continued uninterruptedly between stories, had constant movement or transformation of characters, had a high frame rate of animation, and that adults readily kept on watching the videos even with the sound off. These characteristics were seen more in videos the above two types. These findings imply that habitual television/video viewing with characteristics that are not apt to elicit parent–child communication for long hours may affect delayed language development in young children.
Posted in Research | Tagged: infant, language development, Passive viewing, television viewing | Leave a Comment »
Temperamental profiles and linguistic development: Differences in the quality of linguistic production in relation to temperament in children of 28 months
Posted by Callier Library on May 28, 2009
The temperamental constellations that can be found in the infant population may influence the development trajectories of single domains of knowledge, such as that relative to language. The main objective of this study is to identify temperamental profiles to which one associates different levels of linguistic competence and to identify the profile associated with the highest risk for language acquisition. The temperamental characteristics of a sample of 106 children of 28 months attending day-care centres were surveyed and three temperamental profiles were highlighted: a profile typical of the Italian population which grouped most of the children; another made up of easily distractible and not very persistent children, who show a poor capacity to modulate motor activity and finally, the third with children inhibited in new situations. A comparison of the three groups on the basis of the level of linguistic competence revealed important differences regarding certain indices such as the vocabulary size and composition: in particular, the group of “inattentive” children has a more “immature” vocabulary composition, characterised by the presence of more primitive components of the lexical repertory.
Posted in Research | Tagged: Individual Differences, language development, Temperament, toddlers, Vocabulary composition | Leave a Comment »
Communicative and linguistic development in preterm children: a longitudinal study from 12 to 24 months
Posted by Callier Library on May 11, 2009
Conclusions & Implications: Findings suggest that despite the significant biological risk engendered by premature birth, early communicative and linguistic development appears to proceed in a relatively robust fashion among preterm children, with tight relations across communicative domains as in full-term children. Employing both chronological and corrected gestational age criteria in the evaluation of preterm children’s abilities may provide important information about their progress in language acquisition. This may be especially important during the initial stages of communicative and linguistic development, inasmuch as comparisons of the two sets of scores may provide clinicians with a way to distinguish children who may be at risk for language problems from those who may be expected to progress normally.
from the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders
Posted in Research | Tagged: gesture, language development, preterm, vocabulary | Leave a Comment »
