EXAM 3: Language Development in Special Populations

Question 1

Deficits in sensory motor system: Deaf/Hard of hearing

Answer 1

Deaf-of-deaf children:
Gets taught/exposed to fluent ASL from birth

Deaf-of-hearing children
90% born to hearing parents

Question 2

Educational approaches for deaf-of-hearing children

Answer 2

1. Bilingual/Bicultural
   ASL as natural language of deaf culture
   ASL as primary language and Eng as second
2. Total Communication
   Simultaneous uses of multiple communication techniques that enhances an individual’s ability to communicate
3. Auditory-oral method
   Believes children with hearing impairment can develop listening/receptive language and expressive oral English
   Emphasizes the usage of residual hearing, amplification, and speech therapy
   Discourages signing

Question 3

Courses of sign development of deaf-of-deaf children

Answer 3

Same course as spoken language development
Same stages in same order
Similar processes underlie acquisition of sign and spoken language

Question 4

Oral language development in children with cochlear implants

Answer 4

Cochlear implant pathway: microphone behind ear, computer processer, cochlear implant, brain

If young and age of exposure is very young, children acquires language at same rate as hearing children and lessens the gap

Or they could maintain gap and lag behind, various factors

Question 5

Deficits in sensory motor system: Blindness

Answer 5

Language development builds on nonverbal communication
i.e. Mcgurke effect shows importance of visual cues to language, especially phonological development

Question 6

Blindness and phonological development

Answer 6

Highly visible articulatory movements, blind children did worse and sighted children did better
i.e. m,b,p

Nonvisible articulatory movements, sighted and blind children did the same
i.e. k,g,t

Visible information (aka lip configuration) contributes to phonological development, but otherwise normal

Question 7

Blindness and Pragmatics/conversations

Answer 7

Blind children had more difficulty with following conversation, pragmatics, and keeping maxims
Were also less likely to initiate topic and were mostly self-oriented topics

Question 8

Maxims

Answer 8

Cooperative principle; rules that govern a conversation
Implicit rules that we TEND to follow
4 types:
1. Quality
2. Quantity
3. Relevance
4. Manner

Question 9

1. Quality

Answer 9

Info we provide in a conversation must be true. If it is a lie, it is violated

Question 10

2. Quantity

Answer 10

Should provide sufficient amount of information, not too much or too little

Question 11

3. Relevance

Answer 11

Conversation must be relevant to the topic at hand

Question 12

4. Manner

Answer 12

The way you make contribution should be clear, concise, and quick

Question 13

Anderson (1993)

Answer 13

Showed blind children have a hard time with producing coherent and cohesive conversation, struggles with relevance

Question 14

Landau claims…

Answer 14

Blind and sighted children have no difference in early vocab, semantics, and syntax

Question 15

Chomsky claims…

Answer 15

Blind children acquire language more rapidly because they are dependent on it, more auditory reliance because no visual modality

Question 16

Down syndrome

Answer 16

Language tends to be more impaired than other cognitive functions
Especially struggles with grammar and more difficulty producing than understanding

Strengths of communicative and pragmatic development

Question 17

Williams syndrome

Answer 17

Disassociation of language and cognition
Same ID (IQ) as those with DS but better language skills, same language skills as those with higher IQ (SLI)
Discrepancy between language skills and general cognition
Highly sociable and emotive, unusual attention to face and voice

Evidence that mental capacity for language is separate from general mental capacity

Question 18

Williams syndrome v. Down syndrome

Answer 18

Study:
WS and DS students with similar ID (IQ) and age each had same picture book and was asked to narrate the pictures

Results:
WS students had longer, more detailed and higher MLU
Less errors
Very emotively told

DS students had shorter, more errors and lower MLU

Demonstrates the disassociation between language and cognition and their separate/independency

Question 19

Williams Syndrome and vocab

Answer 19

Much higher vocab compared to cognition
Further shows the disassociation of language and cognition
While vocab may be a strength…
Still lags behind TD children

Question 20

WS and higher attention to facial processing/language processing

Answer 20

WS children have more attention to language-processing and facial processing compared to TD children, potential cause of their advanced language skills in comparison to their lower mental cognitive abilities

Shows that those with WS show high sociability as well

Question 21

Autism

Answer 21

Impaired language, communication and social development
Marked by low interest in people and no preference for motherese or mom’s voice
Rare prelingual gestures and gesture usage weak correlation to vocab and no correlation to word comprehension
Brain scans reveal that they have larger brains than average

Highly agreed that those with autism develop language differently

Question 22

Autism and motherese

Answer 22

Study: 653 toddlers aged 12-18 months old
eye tracking test to quantify interest in motherese
Tested three situations:
1. Motherese v. Traffic
2. Motherese v. Techno
3. Motherese v. Monotone

Results:
Fixation on motherese significantly reduced in toddlers with ASD
If toddler fixated on motherese at or below 30%, ASD 94%

ASD child’s level of attention toward motherese related to social and language abilities

Question 23

ASD Attention to motherese and expressive/receptive language

Answer 23

The more attention they give to motherese-> greater receptive and expressive language

Question 24

Autism and gesture

Answer 24

Correlation between gesture usage and vocab
Early gesture use, early vocab, but weak correlation

No correlation between gesture usage and word comprehension

Suggests children with ASD learn vocab in different ways than TD children; same input, different processing

Question 25

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Answer 25

Isolable, distinct disorder that only affects language development and nothing else
Excluded if extraneous cause
Children with SLI not equally impaired in all departments of language
Especially delayed in grammatical morphology; tense and agreement markers

Question 26

SLI Cause/markers

Answer 26

Impaired phonological memory
non word repetition task significantly worse for SLI and heritable deficit
Language acquisition depends on phonological memory

Nonlinguistic minor cognitive deficits
limited in general processing capacity and processes info more slowly

More cognitive deficits than solely language

Question 27

SLI v. WS v. TD

Answer 27

Results confirm that general cognitive abilities and language develop independently as SLI has better cognitive skills than WS but same language skills as WS