Statistical Analysis with Missing Data

Child psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other child clinicians need to have a solid understanding of child language development. There are at least four important reasons that make this necessary. First, slowing, arrest, and deviation of language development are highly associated with, and complicate the course of, child psychopathology. Second, language competence plays a crucial role in emotional and mood regulation, evaluation, and therapy. Third, language deficits are the most frequent underpinning of the learning disorders, ubiquitous in our clinical populations. Fourth, clinicians should not confuse the rich linguistic and dialectal diversity of our clinical populations with abnormalities in child language development. The challenge for the clinician becomes, then, how to get immersed in the captivating field of child language acquisition without getting overwhelmed by its conceptual and empirical complexity. In the past 50 years and since the seminal works of Roger Brown, Jerome Bruner, and Catherine Snow, child language researchers (often known as developmental psycholinguists) have produced a remarkable body of knowledge. Linguists such as Chomsky and philosophers such as Grice have strongly influenced the science of child language. One of the major tenets of Chomskian linguistics (known as generative grammar) is that children’s capacity to acquire language is “hardwired” with “universal grammar”—an innate language acquisition device (LAD), a language “instinct”—at its core. This view is in part supported by the assertion that the linguistic input that children receive is relatively dismal and of poor quality relative to the high quantity and quality of output that they manage to produce after age 2 and that only an advanced, innate capacity to decode and organize linguistic input can enable them to “get from here (prelinguistic infant) to there (linguistic child).” In “Constructing a Language,” Tomasello presents a contrasting theory of how the child acquires language: It is not a universal grammar that allows for language development. Rather, human cognition universals of communicative needs and vocal-auditory processing result in some language universals, such as nouns and verbs as expressions of reference and predication (p. 19). The author proposes that two sets of cognitive skills resulting from biological/phylogenetic adaptations are fundamental to the ontogenetic origins of language. These sets of inherited cognitive skills are intentionreading on the one hand and pattern-finding, on the other. Intention-reading skills encompass the prelinguistic infant’s capacities to share attention to outside events with other persons, establishing joint attentional frames, to understand other people’s communicative intentions, and to imitate the adult’s communicative intentions (an intersubjective form of imitation that requires symbolic understanding and perspective-taking). Pattern-finding skills include the ability of infants as young as 7 months old to analyze concepts and percepts (most relevant here, auditory or speech percepts) and create concrete or abstract categories that contain analogous items. Tomasello, a most prominent developmental scientist with research foci on child language acquisition and on social cognition and social learning in children and primates, succinctly and clearly introduces the major points of his theory and his views on the origins of language in the initial chapters. In subsequent chapters, he delves into the details by covering most language acquisition domains, namely, word (lexical) learning, syntax, and morphology and conversation, narrative, and extended discourse. Although one of the remaining domains (pragmatics) is at the core of his theory and permeates the text throughout, the relative paucity of passages explicitly devoted to discussing acquisition and proBOOK REVIEWS

Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition

Relevance Communication And Cognition

A reduced keyboard disambiguating system (50) having a keyboard (54) with a reduced number of keys. A plurality of letters and symbols are assigned to a set of data keys (56) so that keystrokes entered by a user are ambiguous. Due to the ambiguity in each keystroke, an entered keystroke sequence could match a number of words with the same number of letters. The disambiguating system includes a memory (104) having a number of vocabulary modules (110). The vocabulary modules contain a library of objects that are each associated with a keystroke sequence. Each object is also associated with a frequency of use. Objects within the vocabulary modules that match the entered keystroke sequence are identified by the disambiguating system. Objects associated with a keystroke sequence that match the entered keystroke sequence are displayed to the user in a selection list (76). The objects are listed in the selection list according to their frequency of use. An unambiguous select key (60) is pressed by a user to delimit the end of a keystroke sequence. The first entry in the selection list is automatically selected by the disambiguating system as the default interpretation of the ambiguous keystroke sequence. The user accepts the selected interpretation by starting to enter another ambiguous keystroke sequence. Alternatively, the user may press the select key a number of times to select other entries in the selection list. For words that are not in the vocabulary modules, a two-stroke or multiple-stroke method are used to unambiguously specify each letter. The disambiguating system simultaneously interprets all entered keystroke sequences as a word, as a two-stroke sequence, and as a multiple-stroke sequence. The multiple interpretations are automatically and simultaneously provided to the user in the selection list.

Reduced keyboard disambiguating system

This study examined whether the simple view of reading framework is consistently applicable among high school Korean EFL learners. In addition, it was investigated whether an oral reading fluency component is an efficient predictor for reading comprehension on top of decoding skills and linguistic comprehension skills. Thirty tenth-grade students in Korean high school were selected as participants in this research, and their decoding skills, listening comprehension, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension in English were assessed. The data demonstrated that decoding was not an important component in predicting English reading proficiency, which does not support the original version of the simple view of reading. Instead, it was revealed that oral reading fluency had a strong predictive power of reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was found that the model should be modified as an additive model (listening comprehension + fluency) instead of a productive one. The result is discussed with respect to reading comprehension, taking into account learners’ grade level and EFL learners’ English education circumstances.

The Simple View of Reading

Background: Language impairment is often associated with behaviour problems. However, detailed relations between different types of language impairment and specific behaviour problems in children have yet to be demonstrated. The present study attempted to do just this with an eye to the implications to identify foci for early intervention.

Methods:  The language abilities of 71 five-year-old children with language impairment were assessed via the administration of an extensive battery of language tests. The children's behaviour profile was assessed via administration of the Child Behaviour Checklist.

Results:  Factor analyses confirmed the presence of four language factors: speech, syntax, semantics and phonology. Forty percent of the children displayed serious significant behaviour problems. The most frequently occurring behaviour problems were: withdrawn behaviour, somatic complaints, thought problems and aggressive behaviour. Behaviour problems were associated with three of the four language factors but not strongly associated with speech problems.

Conclusions:  Differential relations between specific types of language impairment and specific behaviour problems already exist at a young age. Phonological problems showed broad relations to problem behaviour; semantic language problems were especially related to internalizing behaviour problems. This finding suggests the need for specific therapies for both different types of language problems and different types of behaviour problems.

Behaviour problems in children with language impairment.

Contents: W.J.M. Levelt, Preface. L. Verhoeven, H. van Balkom, Introduction: Developmental Language Disorders: Classification, Assessment, and Intervention. Part I: Etiology. N. Botting, G. Conti-Ramsden, Characteristics of Children With Specific Language Impairment. J. Reilly, J. Weckerly, B. Wulfeck, Neuroplasticity and Development: The Acquisition of Morphosyntax in Children With Early Focal Lesions and Children With Specific Language Impairment. P.H. Been, F. Zwarts, Language Disorders Across Modalities: The Case of Developmental Dyslexia. P.H.T. Leppanen, H. Lyytinen, N. Choudbury, A.A. Benasich, Neuroimaging Measures in the Study of Specific Language Impairment. R.B. Gillam, L.M. Hoffman, Information Processing in Children With Specific Language Impairment. S. Goorhuis-Brouwer, F. Coster, H. Nakken, H.L. Spelberg, Environmental Factors in Developmental Language Disorders. Part II: Typology. B. Maassen, Speech Output Disorders. J. Katz, K. Tillery, Central Auditory Processing. L.B. Leonard, P. Deevy, Lexical Deficits in Specific Language Impairment. D. Ravid, R. Levie, G.A. Ben-Zvi, Morphological Disorders. J. de Jong, Grammatical Impairment: An Overview and a Sketch of Dutch. H. van Balkom, L. Verhoeven, Pragmatic Disability in Children With Specific Language Impairments. Part III: Assessment and Intervention. D.V.M. Bishop, Specific Language Impairment: Diagnostic Dilemmas. P. van Geert, A Dynamic Systems Approach to Diagnostic Measurement of SLI. H. de Ridder, H. van der Stege, Early Detection of Developmental Language Disorders. S.F. Warren, P.J. Yoder, Early Intervention for Young Children With Language Impairments. L. Verhoeven, E. Segers, Benefits of Speech Manipulation for Children With Language Disorders. J. Law, The Close Association Between Classification and Intervention for Children With Primary Language Impairments.

Classification of developmental language disorders. Theoretical Issues and Clinical Implications

http://mariekepeeters.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Peeters_ea_2009_longitudianl-development_RIDD.pdf

Importance of speech production for phonological awareness and word decoding: The case of children with cerebral palsy

Background: The population of children with specific language impairments (SLI) is heterogeneous. The present study was conducted to examine this heterogeneity more closely, by identifying and describing subgroups within the population of children with SLI in the Netherlands.

Method:  A broad battery of language tests and language-related cognitive tests were administered to 147 six-year-old and 136 eight-year-old children with SLI.

Results:  Factor analyses revealed 4 factors indicating 4 distinctive linguistic domains for both age samples: 1) lexical-semantic abilities, 2) auditory conceptualization, 3) verbal sequential memory and 4) speech production. These empirical findings were further validated by the positive correlations found between the language factors and the judgments of teachers and speech therapists. Finally, a cluster analysis revealed 4 distinct clusters of SLI children for each sample with specific language profiles based on the 4 factors. Results were nearly the same for both age samples.

Conclusions:  The language problems that emerged from the two samples of children with SLI could be described as falling into four types. Based on these language types, four subgroups of children with SLI could be distinguished, each with a specific profile. Some subgroups had severe problems on one specific type of language problem; others had severe problems in more than one type of language problem when compared to the other subgroups of the same age sample. The different profiles may indicate that a more dynamic approach is needed in intervention, considering the presence of both compensating and restricting factors within each child with SLI.

Hans van Balkom

Papers

Behaviour problems in children with language impairment.

Classification of developmental language disorders. Theoretical Issues and Clinical Implications

Importance of speech production for phonological awareness and word decoding: The case of children with cerebral palsy

Towards a typology of specific language impairment

How cognitive factors affect language development in children with intellectual disabilities.