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Journal of Speech, Language, and... Dec 2020Purpose Based on evidence of deficits in domain-general cognitive abilities associated with developmental language disorder (DLD), the current study examined sustained...
Purpose Based on evidence of deficits in domain-general cognitive abilities associated with developmental language disorder (DLD), the current study examined sustained attention performance in children with DLD compared to children with typical language development (TLD) and the interrelations between visual-spatial sustained attention, visual-spatial working memory, and language abilities across groups. Method Participants included 67 children at 7 years of age: 25 children with DLD (13 girls and 12 boys) and 42 children with TLD (23 girls and 19 boys). We assessed children's visual-spatial sustained attention, visual-spatial working memory, and language ability on a test of narrative language. Result Children with DLD scored significantly below their peers on a measure of visual-spatial sustained attention. Significant intercorrelations were observed between sustained attention, working memory, and language ability within the DLD group, but no correlations were observed between these measures in the TLD group. Conclusion Children with DLD have domain-general deficits in sustained attention, and correlational results have implications for whether and how language abilities are supported by domain-general cognition in both typical and disordered development.
Topics: Adult; Attention; Child; Cognition; Female; Humans; Language Development; Language Development Disorders; Male; Memory, Short-Term
PubMed: 33166200
DOI: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00265 -
CoDAS Mar 2017To investigate the correlation between age, socioeconomic status (SES), and performance on emissive and receptive vocabulary tests in children with typical language...
PURPOSE
To investigate the correlation between age, socioeconomic status (SES), and performance on emissive and receptive vocabulary tests in children with typical language development.
METHODS
The study sample was composed of 60 preschool children of both genders, aged 3 years to 5 years 11 months, with typical language development divided into three groups: G I (mean age=3 years 6 months), G II (mean age=4 years 4 months) and G III (mean age=5 years 9 months). The ABFW Child Language Test - Vocabulary and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) for emissive and receptive language were applied to the preschoolers. The socioeconomic classification questionnaire of the Brazilian Association of Survey Companies (ABEP) was applied to the preschoolers' parents/legal guardians. Data were analyzed according to the criteria of the aforementioned instruments and were arranged in Excel spreadsheet for Windows XP®. A multiple linear regression model was used, adopting a statistical significance level of 5%, to analyze the correlation between age, SES, and performance on the receptive and emissive vocabulary tests.
RESULTS
In the ABEP questionnaire, participants were classified mostly into social level C (63.3%), followed by levels B (26.6%) and D (10%). The preschoolers investigated presented emissive and receptive vocabulary adequate for the age groups. No statistically significant difference was found for the variables age and SES regarding emissive and receptive vocabulary. Higher test scores were observed with increased age and SES, for social levels "B" compared with "D" and for "C" with "D".
CONCLUSION
The variables age and socioeconomic status influenced the performance on emissive and receptive vocabulary tests in the study group.
Topics: Child Behavior; Child, Preschool; Female; Humans; Language Development; Language Tests; Male; Socioeconomic Factors; Vocabulary
PubMed: 28300961
DOI: 10.1590/2317-1782/20172016098 -
Infancy : the Official Journal of the... 2020The development of prelinguistic communication in typically developing infants is marked by changes in complexity as well as frequency, yet most measures focus on...
The development of prelinguistic communication in typically developing infants is marked by changes in complexity as well as frequency, yet most measures focus on frequency. In the current study we used the Communication Complexity Scale (CCS) to measure prelinguistic complexity of typically developing infants in a cross-sectional sample of 6-, 8-, 10- and 12-month-olds ( = 204) during semi-structured play interaction. For each toy/interactive episode, infants' highest level of communication complexity (ranging from 0 for no response to 12 for multi-word verbalization), for both joint attention (i.e., social) and behavior regulation (e.g., requesting) functions, was scored. In addition, the same interaction was coded for frequency of all prelinguistic communication acts. Results of multivariate models indicated age-related differences in prelinguistic complexity. Measures of prelinguistic complexity and frequency evidenced moderate to strong correlations, with age-related differences by function (joint attention and behavior regulation). Significant associations with parent-report communication questionnaires were observed for both complexity and frequency measures. Results indicate that evaluating complexity of infant preverbal communication skill with the CCS is a valuable approach that can meaningfully index developmental differences in prelinguistic and early linguistic communication.
Topics: Age Factors; Child Development; Child Language; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Male; Parents; Surveys and Questionnaires
PubMed: 32132879
DOI: 10.1111/infa.12318 -
Journal of Child Language Mar 2010ABSTRACTDuring the first eighteen months of life, infants acquire and refine a whole set of new motor skills that significantly change the ways in which the body moves... (Review)
Review
ABSTRACTDuring the first eighteen months of life, infants acquire and refine a whole set of new motor skills that significantly change the ways in which the body moves in and interacts with the environment. In this review article, I argue that motor acquisitions provide infants with an opportunity to practice skills relevant to language acquisition before they are needed for that purpose; and that the emergence of new motor skills changes infants' experience with objects and people in ways that are relevant for both general communicative development and the acquisition of language. Implications of this perspective for current views of co-occurring language and motor impairments and for methodology in the field of child language research are also considered.
Topics: Child Development; Child Language; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Models, Neurological; Motor Activity; Motor Skills
PubMed: 20096145
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000909990432 -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Nov 2023Language is a complex multidimensional cognitive system that is connected to many neurocognitive capacities. The development of language is therefore strongly... (Review)
Review
Language is a complex multidimensional cognitive system that is connected to many neurocognitive capacities. The development of language is therefore strongly intertwined with the development of these capacities and their neurobiological substrates. Consequently, language problems, for example those of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), are explained by a variety of etiological pathways and each of these pathways will be associated with specific risk factors. In this review, we attempt to link previously described factors that may interfere with language development to putative underlying neurobiological mechanisms of language development, hoping to uncover openings for future therapeutical approaches or interventions that can help children to optimally develop their language skills.
Topics: Child; Humans; Language Development Disorders; Language Development; Risk Factors
PubMed: 37741516
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105398 -
Seminars in Speech and Language Nov 2013Individual differences in children's language skills have been shown to stem in part from variations in the quantity and quality of parent speech input. However, most... (Review)
Review
Individual differences in children's language skills have been shown to stem in part from variations in the quantity and quality of parent speech input. However, most research focuses on mothers' input whereas less is known about the effects of variability in father input. In this article, we review the relation between parent input and child language development with a focus on low-income families, and review general findings about similarities and differences in mother and father speech. Within this review, we highlight conversation-eliciting speech, such as wh questions and clarification requests, which occur, on average, more frequently in father input than mother input. Conversation-eliciting speech is challenging for 2-year-old children and has been shown in research with mothers to relate to child vocabulary development. We then report a study examining whether fathers' use of conversation-eliciting speech relates to children's developing vocabulary skills at 24 months of age within a sample of low-income African American families. Understanding that speech input varies among fathers, and specific strengths that fathers bring to interactions with their young children can help speech-language pathologists develop and implement more effective interventions.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Black or African American; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Father-Child Relations; Fathers; Female; Humans; Language Development; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Middle Aged; Poverty; Vocabulary; Young Adult
PubMed: 24297617
DOI: 10.1055/s-0033-1353445 -
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews.... Jan 2017Vocabulary learning is deceptively hard, but toddlers often make it look easy. Prior theories proposed that children's rapid acquisition of words is based on... (Review)
Review
Vocabulary learning is deceptively hard, but toddlers often make it look easy. Prior theories proposed that children's rapid acquisition of words is based on language-specific knowledge and constraints. In contrast, more recent work converges on the view that word learning proceeds via domain-general processes that are tuned to richly structured-not impoverished-input. We argue that new theoretical insights, coupled with methodological tools, have pushed the field toward an appreciation of simple, content-free processes working together as a system to support the acquisition of words. We illustrate this by considering three central phenomena of early language development: referential ambiguity, fast-mapping, and the vocabulary spurt. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1421. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1421 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Topics: Child; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Learning; Vocabulary
PubMed: 27911490
DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1421 -
Occupational Therapy International 2022The value of pathological linguistics in children's cognitive development has attracted more and more experts' attention. Based on pathological linguistics, this paper...
The value of pathological linguistics in children's cognitive development has attracted more and more experts' attention. Based on pathological linguistics, this paper establishes an intervention system for children's cognition-language assessment and cognitive education, guided by a set of fixed procedures, which can quickly collect children's speech data in a short period of time. Based on this evaluation paradigm, the lab collected a large number of speech data of children aged 2-14 in the process of verbal communication. Based on the six linguistic dimensions of phonology, productivity, fluency, grammar, semantics, and logic, the corpus was subdivided into 16 indicators for manual annotation and machine recognition. A cognitive-language assessment database is established for language ability assessment and language barrier screening, and on this basis, the children's language assessment and cognitive education intervention system is completed based on six modules: user, assessment, scale, resources, teaching, and data. Through experimental research, this paper proves that there are differences in the contribution rates of six language dimensions to the screening of children's language disorders, and the top three are fluency (29.6%), pronunciation (25.7%), and productivity (19.3%). By analyzing the contribution rates, the development of children's comprehensive speech ability can be evaluated more accurately. The early intervention education of children's cognition has a great relationship with their comprehensive language ability. The intervention education before the age of 3 is beneficial to the language development of children with disabilities. Children's cognitive education has improved in cognitive performance, cognitive generalization level, emotional cognition, and language expression, indicating that the use of cognitive education system has a good effect, improving the level of children's cognitive education.
Topics: Child; Cognition; Humans; Language; Language Development; Linguistics; Occupational Therapy
PubMed: 36017504
DOI: 10.1155/2022/8692238 -
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Mar 2022This research investigated whether an experimental manipulation providing children with external language support reflects developmental processes whereby children come...
This research investigated whether an experimental manipulation providing children with external language support reflects developmental processes whereby children come to use language within spatial tasks. A total of 121 3- to 6-year-old children participated in language production and spatial recall tasks. The Production task measured children's task-relevant descriptions of spatial relations on the testing array. The Recall task assessed children's delayed search for hidden object locations on the testing array relative to one or more spatial reference frames (egocentric, room-centered, and intrinsic). During the Recall task, the experimenter provided children with either descriptive or nondescriptive verbal cues. Results showed that children's task-relevant language production improved with age and the effects of language support on spatial performance decreased with age. However, children's production of task-relevant language did not account for effects of language support. Instead, children benefited from language support irrespective of their task-relevant language production. These results suggest that verbal encoding is not a spontaneous process that young children use in support of their spatial performance. In addition, experimental manipulations of language support are not fully reflective of the ways in which children come to use language within spatial tasks.
Topics: Child; Child, Preschool; Cues; Humans; Language; Language Development; Mental Recall
PubMed: 34920377
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105317 -
BMC Pediatrics Sep 2023Accurate early identification of children with low language ability is important but existing measures generally have low sensitivity. This remains an area of concern...
BACKGROUND
Accurate early identification of children with low language ability is important but existing measures generally have low sensitivity. This remains an area of concern for preventive and public health services. This study aimed to create and evaluate a measure of child language, communication and related risks which can be used by community health nurses to accurately identify children with low language aged 24-30 months.
METHODS
The Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM) was developed and comprised five measurement sections, each measuring different aspects of development combined into a single measure. This was tested blind against a reference standard language measure, the Preschool Language Scale-5 (PLS-5), at the universal 24-30-month health visitor review in England. The threshold for likely low language was the tenth centile or below on the PLS-5. The aim was to ascertain the performance of the five individual sections in the scale, and consider the optimum combination of sections, for predicting low language ability. Specificity, sensitivity, and positive and negative predictive values were reported for each of the five sections of the ELIM alone and in conjunction with each other. The performance for children from monolingual English-speaking families and those who spoke languages other than English were also considered separately.
RESULTS
Three hundred and seventy-six children were assessed on both the ELIM identification measure and the PLS-5 with 362 providing complete data. While each section of the ELIM predicted low language ability, the optimal combination for predicting language outcome was the parent reported vocabulary checklist coupled with the practitioner observation of the child's communication and related behaviours. This gave a sensitivity of 0·98 with a specificity of 0·63.
CONCLUSIONS
A novel measure has been developed which accurately identifies children at risk of low language, allowing clinicians to target resources efficiently and intervene early.
Topics: Child, Preschool; Child; Humans; Language; Child Language; Language Development; Communication; Parents; Language Development Disorders
PubMed: 37773111
DOI: 10.1186/s12887-023-04079-x