Causative alternations of children with specific language impairment

Alternating verbs to indicate or to relinquish cause requires an understanding of semantic and syntactic knowledge. This study evaluated the ability of children with specific language impairment (SLI) to produce the causative alternation in comparison to age peers and to language peers. The children with SLI were proficient in lexically alternating verbs, yet provided fewer passive and periphrastic constructions and more different verbs and adjectival responses. Overgeneralization error data suggest that the semantic systems of some children with SLI were similar to their age comparisons. Individual differences within the SLI group suggested that some children were adept at providing syntactic responses and overgeneralizations, whereas some of the SLI group provided less mature responses of no alternations and no responses. These findings demonstrate a syntactic deficit in the causative alternation for some children with SLI.     

Auditory lexical decisions of children with specific language impairment

To determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) take longer than age peers to recognize sequences of sounds that represent words in their lexicon, we compared auditory lexical decision times of children with SLI to those of typically developing age peers. Children with SLI were significantly slower than peers, but speed of word recognition was not correlated with measures of language comprehension for children with SLI. Furthermore, time to detect an auditory signal and initiate a vocal response did not account for the differences between groups. Possible interpretations of the results are discussed with two explanations-differences between groups in task-related factors that stressed processing capacity or in the nature of phonetic/phonological representations-seeming more likely than others.     

Information processing by school-age children with specific language impairment: evidence from a modality effect paradigm

School-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and age-matched controls were tested for immediate recall of digits presented visually, auditorily, or audiovisually. Recall tasks compared speaking and pointing response modalities. Each participant was tested at a level that was consistent with her or his auditory short-term memory span. Traditional effects of primacy, recency, and modality (an auditory recall advantage) were obtained for both groups. The groups performed similarly when audiovisual stimuli were paired with a spoken response, but children with SLI had smaller recency effects together with an unusually poor recall when visually presented items were paired with a pointing response. Such results cannot be explained on the basis of an auditory or speech deficit per se, and suggest that children with SLI have difficulty either retaining or using phonological codes, or both, during tasks that require multiple mental operations. Capacity limitations, involving the rapid decay of phonological representations and/or performance limitations related to the use of less demanding and less effective coding and retrieval strategies, could have contributed to the working memory deficiencies in the children with SLI.     

Language in Italian children with Down syndrome and with specific language impairment.

This article compares lexical and grammatical abilities of a mental-age-matched sample of Italian preschoolers with Down syndrome (DS), specific language impairment (SLI), or typical development. Results showed that the children with DS or with SLI performed significantly worse than did the typically developing children. Although no significant differences emerged in lexical abilities and morphosyntactic comprehension abilities between the children with DS or with SLI, significant differences did emerge in morphosyntactic production capacities. Qualitative analysis of the morphosyntactic errors revealed strong similarities between the two groups. The results are discussed in terms of the role of verbal memory abilities and the linguistic features of Italian. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of presentation rate on serial memory in young children with specific language impairment

The study examined the serial memory ability of a group of preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) who were compared to age and language control groups. The children were asked to recognize serial patterns under short and long presentation durations. The subjects were presented with images of common objects (that appeared to be easily recoded into a phonological form) and iconic images of scribble drawings and unfamiliar faces (that did not appear to invite recoding). Under long presentation conditions, the performance of children with SLI resembled that of their age-matched peers on all 3 types of tasks. However, under short presentation conditions, children with SLI performed worse than their age-matched peers on all 3 tasks (and similarly to their language-matched peers). The performance of the children with SLI declined dramatically in all conditions when the items were presented for a brief period. If the serial memory deficits of young children with SLI were specific to phonological processing, their performance on recognizing the pattern of common objects should have been impaired, but not their performance with other visual tasks that are less likely to be recoded. Instead, serial memory in children with SLI was affected by presentation duration across tasks. The findings suggest that recognizing serial patterns is dependent, in part, on the speed of processing serial information. The findings are discussed in relation to models of limited capacity processing.     

Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language impairment

The purpose of this study was to identify a set of measures that would discriminate 31 predominantly Spanish-speaking children with normal language (NL children) from 31 children with language impairment (LI children). The LI children were identified as such by experienced, bilingual (Spanish/English), ASHA-certified, speech-language pathologists who were currently seeing the children in their caseloads. Children ranged in age from 5 to 7 years and were matched for age, gender, and school. Additionally, nonverbal cognitive measures assured that they did not differ significantly intellectually. Measures of vocabulary, novel bound-morpheme learning skills, and language form were randomly administered to all children. Further, parents responded to questions about their perceptions of their children's speech and language skills and family history of speech and language problems. A stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that 4 measures discriminated the groups of children with a sensitivity of 91.3% and a specificity of 100% (p < .0001): parental report of the child's speech and language skills, number of errors per T-unit, mean length per T-unit, and family history of speech and language problems. A second discriminant analysis indicated that the sensitivity and specificity could be maintained when only the first 2 measures were included. Confirmatory discriminant analyses of the 2- and 4-measure models indicated that the discriminant accuracy was stable on an independent sample.     

Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children

A critical clinical issue is the identification of a clinical marker, a linguistic form or principle that can be shown to be characteristic of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In this paper we evaluate, as candidate clinical markers, a set of morphemes that mark Tense. In English, this includes -s third person singular, -ed regular past, BE, and DO. According to the Extended Optional Infinitive Account (EOI) of Rice, Wexler, and Cleave (1995), this set of morphemes is likely to appear optionally in the grammars of children with SLI at a rate lower than the optionality evident in younger controls. Three groups of preschool children participated: 37 children with SLI, and two control groups, one of 40 MLU-equivalent children and another of 45 age-equivalent children. Three kinds of evidence support the conclusion that a set of morphemes that marks Tense can be considered a clinical marker: (a) low levels of accuracy for the target morphemes for the SLI group relative to either of the two control groups; (b) affectedness for the set of morphemes defined by the linguistic function of Tense, but not for morphemes unrelated to Tense; and (c) a bimodal distribution for Tense-marking morphemes relative to age peers, in which the typical children are at essentially adult levels of the grammar, whereas children in the SLI group were at low (i.e., non-adultlike) levels of performance. The clinical symptoms are evident in omissions of surface forms. Errors of subject-verb agreement and syntactic misuses are rare, showing that, as predicted, children in an EOI stage who are likely to mark Tense optionally at the same time know a great deal about the grammatical properties of finiteness and agreement in the adult grammar. The findings are discussed in terms of alternative accounts of the grammatical limitations of children with SLI and implications for clinical identification.     

Magnitude comparisons by children with specific language impairments: evidence of unimpaired symbolic processing

Astrocytes possess plasma membrane glutamate transporters that rapidly remove glutamate from the extracellular milieu and thereby prevent excitotoxic injury to neurons. Cellular oxidative stress is increased in neural tissues in a variety of acute and chronic neurodegenerative conditions. Recent findings suggest that oxidative stress increases neuronal vulnerability to excitotoxicity and that membrane lipid peroxidation plays a key role in this process. We now report that 4-hydroxynonenal (HNE), an aldehydic product of membrane lipid peroxidation, impairs glutamate transport in cultured cortical astrocytes. Impairment of glutamate transport occurred within 1-3 h of exposure to HNE; FeSO4, an inducer of membrane lipid peroxidation, also impaired glutamate transport. Vitamin E prevented impairment of glutamate transport induced by FeSO4, but not that induced by HNE, consistent with HNE acting as an effector of lipid peroxidation-induced impairment of glutamate transport. Glutathione, which binds and thereby detoxifies HNE, prevented HNE from impairing glutamate transport. Western blot, immunoprecipitation, and immunocytochemical analyses using an antibody against HNE-protein conjugates provided evidence that HNE covalently binds to many different astrocytic proteins including the glutamate transporter GLT-1. Data further suggest that HNE promotes intermolecular cross-linking of GLT-1 monomers to form dimers. HNE also induced mitochondrial dysfunction and accumulation of peroxides in astrocytes. Impairment of glutamate transport and mitochondrial function occurred with sublethal concentrations of HNE, concentrations known to be generated in cells exposed to various oxidative insults. Collectively, our data suggest that HNE may be an important mediator of oxidative stress-induced impairment of astrocytic glutamate transport and may thereby play a role in promoting neuronal excitotoxicity.     

School readiness among children with varying histories of language difficulties.

This study tested the hypotheses that (a) persistent language difficulties during childhood would predict lower school readiness and (b) language difficulties present just prior to school entry would predict lower school readiness beyond any effects of persistence. The study involved examining indicators of school readiness collected at kindergarten for children exhibiting various histories of language ability based on language measures collected at 15, 24, 36, and 54 months by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Child Care Research Network. Children (N = 1,064) were classified according to whether they exhibited expressive or receptive language difficulties at each time point measured. The relation between persistence and timing of these difficulties to each kindergarten outcome was studied through a common factor approach for categorical outcomes. Persistence of language difficulties was not generally related to kindergarten outcomes. However, a robust effect was found for timing of language difficulties: Children who exhibited language difficulties at 54 months exhibited significantly depressed performance on measures of school readiness. Findings are discussed in terms of current policy and research concerning kindergarten readiness for children exhibiting risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonetic profiles of toddlers with specific expressive language impairment (SLI-E)

Spontaneous language samples of 30 24-month-old toddlers diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Impairment (SLI-E) were compared with samples produced by an age-matched group of 30 typically developing toddlers. Vocalization patterns, phonetic inventories, and syllable formation patterns were compared. Toddlers with SLI-E vocalized significantly less often than their typically developing peers, had proportionately smaller consonantal and vowel inventories, and used a more restricted and less mature array of syllable shapes. Although the mean incidence of phoneme usage varied significantly in all comparisons, profiles of consonant usage were similar between the two groups for initial phoneme usage, but considerably different for final consonant closure. Such patterns of vocal and phonetic behavior confirm earlier reports of phonetic delay in SLI-E, and suggest that nongrammatical factors contribute to the development of expressive language deficits in toddlers. We further propose a bidirectional model for the expressive deficits in SLI-E, in which the child's limited phonetic capacity interacts with propensities in caretaker interaction to further reduce opportunities for expressive language learning and practice.     

Deficits in finite verb morphology: some assumptions in recent accounts of specific language impairment

Multiple aspartate-specific cysteine proteases have been identified and specific members of this family have been implicated in the apoptotic death of many mammalian cell types. Caspase-3-like proteases seem to play a pivotal role in neuronal apoptosis since mice with germline inactivation of the caspase-3 gene manifest profound alterations in neurogenesis. Moreover, inhibitors of caspase-3-related proteases have been shown to inhibit neuronal apoptosis. Here we extend recent work from our laboratory on the mechanisms mediating the neurotoxic actions of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium using ventral mesencephalon cultures containing dopamine neurons. We demonstrate that low concentrations of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium induce apoptosis in dopamine neurons by morphological and biochemical criteria. Moreover, pretreatment of ventral mesencephalon cultures with the tetrapeptide inhibitors of the caspase-3-like proteases zVAD-FMK or Ac-DEVD-CHO specifically inhibit death of dopamine neurons induced by low concentrations of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium, whereas the caspase-1-like inhibitor Ac-YVAD-CHO was without effect. Our data indicate that exposure of cultured ventral mesencephalon dopamine neurons to low concentrations of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium results in apoptotic death and that caspase-3-like proteases may mediate the neurotoxic apoptotic actions of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium.     

Acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills by children with cleft palate

This study compared the early cognitive and linguistic development of young children with cleft palate (N = 28) to that of noncleft children (N = 29). Measures included the Mental scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, the Minnesota Child Development Inventory, Mean Length of Utterance, and words acquired by 24 months. Children with cleft palate, although well within the normal range, performed significantly below the children in the control group on the Mental Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, some subscales of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory, and words acquired by 24 months. Differences observed in the cognitive development of children with and without cleft palate were verbal as opposed to nonverbal (i.e., linguistic in nature) and were related to hearing status at 12 months and velopharyngeal adequacy.     

Specific language impairment: preliminary investigation of factors associated with family history and with patterns of language performance

To examine patterns that might suggest etiologic subgroups of specific language impairment (SLI), information, including history of speech-language-learning (SLLD) problems in family members, was obtained on 53 children with SLI aged 4 to 9 1/2 years. The results led to the generation of a number of hypotheses for future research. In particular, the findings suggested that family history is related to pattern of language performance. In comparison with children who had both expressive and receptive language deficits, children with deficits in only expressive language had a higher proportion of affected family members (.47 vs. .22), of affected mothers (.57 vs. .17), and of affected siblings (.53 vs. .27). These and other findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with other data, hypotheses relative to explanations of SLI, and their implications for further research.     

Increasing learning rates by increasing student response rates: A summary of research.

Addresses prevention and remediation of learning problems within the context of time required to learn. Research on specific procedures which increase accurate responding rates and learning rates are presented. Several procedures that have been shown to improve learning rates without increasing time allocated for instruction during both teacher-led instruction and independent seat-work are described. These procedures are easy to implement, require few resources, and can be applied across a wide variety of instructional techniques. School psychologists may help prevent and remedy learning rate problems by assisting educators to implement these curricula and by participating in the development and empirical validation of other procedures and techniques that increase rates of accurate student responding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of stress by mothers of children with language development disorders

Subject of this study is the maternal stress as a result of the disabilities of language impaired children. The report concentrates on the influence of the children disabilities and the maternal coping strategies on the stress in the families. The study is based on an inquiry of 98 mothers with speech and language impaired children. Nearly 50% of the mothers suffer from stress because of their children' disabilities. Special caregiving demands, family conflicts, anxiety about the child future, depressive mood, aggressive feeling or deception were often experienced by the mothers as a direct consequence of their child's problems. The correlation of this specific maternal stress with general stress factors was insignificant. The maternal stress was more due to the attention deficits and the behavioural problems of the children than to the language delay. An increased level of stress was hardly related to the severity of the impairment, but to the maternal coping strategies. Mothers applying emotion focused coping strategies experienced more stress than those who predominantly used problem focused strategies. The results prove that mothers of children with even minor disabilities feel overstrained by their children' disorders. During counseling experts should attach more importance to deal with the needs and wishes of mothers and families of language impaired children. Reduction of family stress can be achieved by intervention programs helping the mothers to improve their psychological resources.     

Investigating the cause of language regularization in adults: Memory constraints or learning effects?

When language learners are exposed to inconsistent probabilistic grammatical patterns, they sometimes impose consistency on the language instead of learning the variation veridically. The authors hypothesized that this regularization results from problems with word retrieval rather than from learning per se. One prediction of this, that easing the demands of lexical retrieval leads to less regularization, was tested. Adult learners were exposed to a language containing inconsistent probabilistic patterns and were tested with either a standard production task or one of two tasks that reduced the demands of lexical retrieval. As predicted, participants tested with the modified tasks more closely matched the probability of the inconsistent items than did those tested with the standard task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Follow-up study of a right- and a left-hemispherectomized child: implications for localization and impairment of language in children

Two hemispherectomized girls, one operated on the right, the other on the left, were followed from time of surgery until 9 and 10 years of age and compared with respect to course of language acquisition following surgery. At conclusion of follow-up, receptive and expressive language, phoneme perception and production, and sentence processing of the two hemispherectomized children were compared with those of two control groups of similar age, one developing language normally, the other language-impaired. The left-hemispherectomized child's abilities were similar to those of the language-impaired children; the right-hemispherectomized child's abilities resembled those of the language-normal children. Implications for localization of developmental anomalies in language-impaired children are discussed.     

The effects of methylphenidate on learning in children with ADDH: The stimulus equivalence paradigm.

Investigated the effect of methylphenidate (MPH) on the ability of children with Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (ADDH) to learn both trained and untrained complex visual relationships and compared these findings to their school performance under identical dosage parameters. 26 children between the ages of 6 and 12 years with ADDH participated in a double-blind, placebo control, within-subjects design in which each child received four doses of MPH (5, 10, 15, 20 mg) and a placebo in a counterbalanced sequence. MPH enhanced children's learning of both taught and untaught visual relationships, and most changes were similar to, albeit less dramatic than, those obtained for the children's attention and academic performance in school. Results of group and single-subject analyses are presented and discussed with relevance to psychopharmacological research and understanding the complex relationship between learning and psychostimulants used in treating children with ADDH. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Growth impairment in very low birthweight children at 12 years: correlation with perinatal and outcome variables

AIM: To compare the growth of very low birthweight (VLBW) children in early adolescence with that of their normal birthweight peers; to examine the role of factors contributing to growth-parental height, perinatal variables, bone maturity and sexual maturation; to examine the correlation between head growth and cognitive and educational outcome. METHODS: Standing and sitting heights, weight, occipito-frontal circumference (OFC), skinfold thicknesses and pubertal staging were assessed in 137 VLBW children and 160 controls at 11-13.5 years of age. Ninety six (70%) of the VLBW children had their bone age assessed using the TW2 method. Reported parental heights were obtained by questionnaire. All children had standardised tests of cognitive and educational ability. Perinatal data had been collected prospectively as part of a longitudinal study. RESULTS: VLBW children had lower heights, weight, and OFC. Skinfold thicknesses were no different. The children's short stature was not accounted for by difference in parental height, degree of pubertal development, or by retarded bone age. Indeed, the TW2 RUS score was significantly advanced in the VLBW children. Using the bone ages to predict final adult height, 17% have a predicted height below the third centile and 33% below the tenth. Weight was appropriate for height, but there was a residual deficiency in OFC measurements after taking height into account. In the VLBW group smaller head size was associated with lower IQ and mathematics and reading scores. CONCLUSIONS: Growth problems persist in VLBW children and final heights may be even more abnormal than present heights suggest. VLBW children have smaller OFCs than expected from their short stature alone and this may be associated with poorer educational and cognitive outcomes.