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Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal May 2021Infants usually say their first word at the age of 12 months; subsequently, within the next 6-12 months, they develop a vocabulary of approximately 50 words, along with... (Review)
Review
Infants usually say their first word at the age of 12 months; subsequently, within the next 6-12 months, they develop a vocabulary of approximately 50 words, along with the ability to make two-word combinations. However, late talkers (LTs) demonstrate delayed speech in the absence of hearing impairments, cognitive developmental issues or relevant birth history. The prevalence of late language emergence (LLE) in toddlers is reported to be 10-15%. Studies of LTs are both theoretically and clinically significant. Early diagnosis and clinical intervention may result in relatively stable speech capabilities by the early school years. The present article aimed to review both theoretical and empirical studies regarding LLE within the process of first language acquisition, as well as methods for the early diagnosis of delayed speech in children and the authors' own clinical and theoretical recommendations.
Topics: Child, Preschool; Humans; Infant; Language; Language Development; Language Development Disorders; Speech; Speech-Language Pathology; Vocabulary
PubMed: 34221464
DOI: 10.18295/squmj.2021.21.02.005 -
International Journal of Language &... Mar 2023Although there is a growing body of literature on cognitive and language processing in bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD), there is a major... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Although there is a growing body of literature on cognitive and language processing in bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD), there is a major gap in the evidence for language intervention. Critically, speech-language therapists are often required to make clinical decisions for language intervention on specific domains, such as phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax and literacy.
AIMS
To examine evidence for language intervention and cross-language transfer effects in bilingual children with DLD. Specifically, the study aimed to review intervention evidence targeting non-linguistic cognitive skills and six areas of language: phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, pragmatics, narrative skills and literacy.
METHODS & PROCEDURES
We carried out searches in five electronic databases: CINAHL, Scopus, Psychinfo, Proquest and Sciencedirect. Data from selected papers were extracted and organized into the three following categories: study information, participant information and intervention information. Critical appraisal for selected papers was conducted using a quality assessment tool (QAT).
OUTCOMES & RESULTS
We included 14 papers in the review. The majority indicated evidence for vocabulary intervention. There was limited evidence for intervention targeting phonology or morphosyntax. Cross-language generalization effects were evident for vocabulary, but in some instances also reported for morphosyntax and literacy.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS
The present review indicates that there is a significant gap in the literature regarding language intervention for several key language areas such as morphosyntax, narrative skills and literacy. There are only limited data for the effects of cross-language generalization indicating that more research is needed in this area specifically for skills beyond vocabulary.
WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS
What is already known on the subject Previous studies have examined the effects of bi- and monolingual intervention in bilingual children with DLD. Although the results indicated superior effects for bilingual compared with monolingual intervention, language intervention evidence in specific language domains (e.g., vocabulary, literacy) has not been investigated. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study will add intervention evidence specific to language domains such as phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, pragmatics, narrative skills and literacy. Additionally, we have synthesized intervention evidence on non-linguistic cognition given that these skills are often impaired in bilingual children with DLD. The review has also demonstrated evidence for the effects of cross-language transfer beyond vocabulary skills, especially when the intervention was provided in the home language. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Although there was a lack of intervention evidence in language domains such as pragmatics, the results indicated some evidence for intervention targeting vocabulary. However, positive effects of cross-language generalization were not constrained to vocabulary but were also reported for intervention targeting mean length of utterance and literacy in the home language. This result indicates an interactive nature of the two languages, as well as provides further evidence for supporting home language(s) in intervention. Finally, intervention targeting non-linguistic cognition may yield additional cross-domain generalization to language skills specifically for bilingual children with DLD.
Topics: Humans; Child; Multilingualism; Language Development Disorders; Child Language; Language; Vocabulary
PubMed: 36428270
DOI: 10.1111/1460-6984.12803 -
Journal of Biomedical Semantics Jun 2023The Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) Principles explicitly require the use of FAIR vocabularies, but what precisely constitutes a FAIR vocabulary...
BACKGROUND
The Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) Principles explicitly require the use of FAIR vocabularies, but what precisely constitutes a FAIR vocabulary remains unclear. Being able to define FAIR vocabularies, identify features of FAIR vocabularies, and provide assessment approaches against the features can guide the development of vocabularies.
RESULTS
We differentiate data, data resources and vocabularies used for FAIR, examine the application of the FAIR Principles to vocabularies, align their requirements with the Open Biomedical Ontologies principles, and propose FAIR Vocabulary Features. We also design assessment approaches for FAIR vocabularies by mapping the FVFs with existing FAIR assessment indicators. Finally, we demonstrate how they can be used for evaluating and improving vocabularies using exemplary biomedical vocabularies.
CONCLUSIONS
Our work proposes features of FAIR vocabularies and corresponding indicators for assessing the FAIR levels of different types of vocabularies, identifies use cases for vocabulary engineers, and guides the evolution of vocabularies.
Topics: Vocabulary, Controlled; Vocabulary; Biological Ontologies
PubMed: 37264430
DOI: 10.1186/s13326-023-00286-8 -
The British Journal of Sociology Mar 2021This paper examines the relationship between parents' and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom-the...
This paper examines the relationship between parents' and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom-the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We investigate both socioeconomic and ethnic differentials in children's vocabulary scores and the role of differences in parents' vocabulary scores in accounting for these. We find large vocabulary gaps between highly educated and less educated parents, and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and ethnic gaps in vocabulary scores are far wider among the parents than among their children. Parental vocabulary is a powerful mediator of inequalities in offspring's vocabulary scores at age 14, and also a powerful driver of change in language skills between the ages of five and 14. Once we account for parental vocabulary, no ethnic minority group of young people has a negative "vocabulary gap" compared to whites.
Topics: Adolescent; Cohort Studies; Humans; Language; Parent-Child Relations; Parents; Vocabulary
PubMed: 33595850
DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12780 -
PloS One 2021There are increasing applications of natural language processing techniques for information retrieval, indexing, topic modelling and text classification in engineering...
There are increasing applications of natural language processing techniques for information retrieval, indexing, topic modelling and text classification in engineering contexts. A standard component of such tasks is the removal of stopwords, which are uninformative components of the data. While researchers use readily available stopwords lists that are derived from non-technical resources, the technical jargon of engineering fields contains their own highly frequent and uninformative words and there exists no standard stopwords list for technical language processing applications. Here we address this gap by rigorously identifying generic, insignificant, uninformative stopwords in engineering texts beyond the stopwords in general texts, based on the synthesis of alternative statistical measures such as term frequency, inverse document frequency, and entropy, and curating a stopwords dataset ready for technical language processing applications.
Topics: Humans; Natural Language Processing; Semantics; Task Performance and Analysis; Vocabulary
PubMed: 34351911
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254937 -
American Journal of Speech-language... Jan 2023The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness. (Review)
Review
PURPOSE
The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness.
METHOD
This article begins with a narrative review of the theoretical interpretation of speech error variability. The post hoc exploratory analysis of the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness included 40 children: 20 with typical speech and language and 20 with speech sound disorder and typical language. Groups were matched on gender, age, maternal education, receptive and expressive vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and expressive morphosyntax. Multiple regression was used to identify the best fit model for the relationship between vocabulary, speech errors, and phonological awareness.
RESULTS
Segmental variability was associated with poor phonological awareness in preschool-aged children.
CONCLUSION
Children with high levels of segmental variability have poor phonological awareness, likely due to unstable phonological representations.
Topics: Child; Child, Preschool; Humans; Speech; Phonetics; Speech Disorders; Speech Production Measurement; Speech Sound Disorder; Vocabulary; Awareness
PubMed: 36580542
DOI: 10.1044/2022_AJSLP-22-00031 -
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Aug 2019The field of cognitive aging has seen considerable advances in describing the linguistic and semantic changes that happen during the adult life span to uncover the... (Review)
Review
The field of cognitive aging has seen considerable advances in describing the linguistic and semantic changes that happen during the adult life span to uncover the structure of the mental lexicon (i.e., the mental repository of lexical and conceptual representations). Nevertheless, there is still debate concerning the sources of these changes, including the role of environmental exposure and several cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, representation, and retrieval of information. We review the current status of research in this field and outline a framework that promises to assess the contribution of both ecological and psychological aspects to the aging lexicon.
Topics: Aging; Brain; Cognition; Humans; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Vocabulary
PubMed: 31288976
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.003 -
International Journal of Audiology Mar 2023The purpose of this study was to 1) characterise word recognition in a speech masker for preschoolers tested using closed-set, forced-choice procedures and 2) better...
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to 1) characterise word recognition in a speech masker for preschoolers tested using closed-set, forced-choice procedures and 2) better understand the stimulus and listener factors affecting performance.
DESIGN
Speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) in a two-talker masker were evaluated using a picture-pointing response with two sets of disyllabic target words. ChEgSS words were previously developed for children ≥5 years of age, and simple words were developed for preschoolers. Familiarisation ensured accurate identification of target words before testing.
STUDY SAMPLE
Participants were 3- and 4-year olds ( = 21) and young adults ( = 10) with normal hearing.
RESULTS
Preschoolers and adults had significantly lower SRTs for the simple words than the ChEgSS words, and lower SRTs for early-acquired than later-acquired ChEgSS words. For both word sets, SRTs were approximately 11-dB higher for preschoolers than adults, and child age was associated with SRTs. Preschoolers' receptive vocabulary size predicted performance for ChEgSS words but not simple words.
CONCLUSIONS
Preschoolers were more susceptible to speech-in-speech masking than adults, with a similar child-adult difference for the ChEgSS and simple words. Effects of receptive vocabulary in preschoolers' recognition of ChEgSS words indicate that vocabulary size is an important consideration, even when using closed-set methods.
Topics: Young Adult; Humans; Perceptual Masking; Speech; Speech Perception; Recognition, Psychology; Vocabulary
PubMed: 35184649
DOI: 10.1080/14992027.2022.2035833 -
Child Development May 2022The present study examined how children spontaneously represent facial cues associated with emotion. 106 three- to six-year-old children (48 male, 58 female; 9.4%...
The present study examined how children spontaneously represent facial cues associated with emotion. 106 three- to six-year-old children (48 male, 58 female; 9.4% Asian, 84.0% White, 6.6% more than one race) and 40 adults (10 male, 30 female; 10% Hispanic, 30% Asian, 2.5% Black, 57.5% White) were recruited from a Midwestern city (2019-2020), and sorted emotion cues in a spatial arrangement method that assesses emotion knowledge without reliance on emotion vocabulary. Using supervised and unsupervised analyses, the study found evidence for continuities and gradual changes in children's emotion knowledge compared to adults. Emotion knowledge develops through an incremental learning process in which children change their representations using combinations of factors-particularly valence-that are weighted differently across development.
Topics: Adult; Asian People; Child; Child, Preschool; Cues; Emotions; Female; Hispanic or Latino; Humans; Male; Vocabulary
PubMed: 34822168
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13716 -
Cognitive Science May 2022The vocabulary of human languages has been argued to support efficient communication by optimizing the trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. The argument has...
The vocabulary of human languages has been argued to support efficient communication by optimizing the trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. The argument has been originally based on cross-linguistic analyses of vocabulary in semantic domains of content words, such as kinship, color, and number terms. The present work applies this analysis to a category of function words: indefinite pronouns (e.g., someone, anyone, no one). We build on previous work to establish the meaning space and featural make-up for indefinite pronouns, and show that indefinite pronoun systems across languages optimize the simplicity/informativeness trade-off. This demonstrates that pressures for efficient communication shape both content and function word categories. In doing so, our work aligns with several concurrent studies exploring the simplicity/informativeness trade-off in functional vocabulary. Importantly, we further argue that the trade-off may explain some of the universal properties of indefinite pronouns, thus reducing the explanatory load for linguistic theories.
Topics: Communication; Humans; Language; Linguistics; Semantics; Vocabulary
PubMed: 35579878
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13142