Language Development in Special Populations

Question 1

American Sign Language (ASL)

Answer 1

Like spoken language>Components of words. Grammar is productive system with grammatical morphemes.

Question 2

Stages of (native) ASL development

Answer 2

Same at same ages* as (native) oral language

• Manual babbling (7-12 months)
• Single-sign words (1 year)
• Two-sign combinations
• Grammatical morphemes
• Increasingly complex syntax

Question 3

(ASL) Communicative development

Answer 3

….

Question 4

(ASL) Phonological development

Answer 4

Deaf infants cry, coo, and begin to babble

>They babble less and rarely reach canonical (bababa) babbling

Question 5

(ASL) Oralist training

Answer 5

Lip reading is the only avenue to spoken language
Phonological processes show a phonological system
>School –> kul

Question 6

(ASL) Lexical development

Answer 6

Oral vocabulary is delayed and growth is slower that typically-developing peers

Question 7

(ASL) Syntax development

Answer 7

…delayed..

Question 8

Oral language development with Cochlear Implants (CI)

Answer 8

“artificial ear” which is a surgical implant to inner ear. Stimulated auditory nerve based on input from a microphone

Question 9

Down syndrome

Answer 9

Chromosomal abnormality, 1 in 800 newborns.
Language is impared
Language is more impaired than general cognition
>Grammar is particularly affected
>Production deficits exceed comprehension deficits

Question 10

(DS) Phonological development

Answer 10

Canonical babbling is delayed ~2 months .

…

Question 11

(DS) Lexical development

Answer 11

Starts late and goes slowly
First word ~2 years

Productive vocab increasingly lags mental age

Question 12

(DS) Communicative development

Answer 12

Infants vocalize and make eye contact more than reg kids(TD-typically developing).
Difficulty relating to a person about object
Oriented more to people and less to things than TD

Question 13

Down syndrome summary

Answer 13

Phonological, lexical and grammatical development more impaired than general cognition
Communicative development less impacted
Broadly consistent with interactionism (domain-general theory)
>People with Down syndrome have both impared cognition and language
>Where language is more impacted than mental age, could be because mental age is a blunt measure (IQ test)

Question 14

Lower-functioning

Answer 14

Intellectual disability range of IQ
Either do not speak or primarily use echolalic speech
>Meaningless repetition of word or word group produced by someone else

Question 15

High functioning

Answer 15

Normal nonverbal IQ
Delayed and deviant language
>odd prosody

Question 16

Higher functioning autistic- syntactic development

Answer 16

Slow but normal stages

Use fewer construction types - very few questions

Question 17

Higher functioning autistic- Communicative development

Answer 17

Infant’s nonverbal communication behaviors are very different.
>Little interest in people, no pref for mothers speech at birth
>Rare pointing gestures
>Lack joint attention skills

Question 18

SLI

Answer 18

Specific language impairment. How can language be impaired when everything else is normal? No known cause

Question 19

(SLI) Morphology

Answer 19

lags syntax more than normal.
>In TD children, grammatical morphemes appear at the 2-3 word stage.
>Children with SLI still omit many grammatical morphemes at the MLU of 6-7

Question 20

Language faculty (nativist): Missing rule hypothesis

Answer 20

Innate language acquisition device is missing the grammatical morphology piece.

Question 21

Causes of SLI: Nonlinguistic cognition

Answer 21

Compare children with SLI to typically-developing children

>Slower than normal nonlinguistic information processing

Question 22

Temporal processing disorder

Answer 22

Speech is a rapidly changing auditory signal

Children with SLI have deficit in processing rapid acoustic changes

Question 23

Phonological salience hypothesis

Answer 23

Grammatical morphemes that are most difficult for children with SLI are short and unstressed