Language Development Exam 3

Language Disorder

Significant deficit in learning to talk, understand, or anything outside of normative use at age milestones negatively. Can be expressive, receptive, or both.

Speech Sound Disorder

Deficit that prevents speech from being produced in a way that clearly reflects native language structure
Difficulties with placement of articulators. Speak either too fast or slow.

Systems Model

Something in a child’s environment contributes to learning difficulties

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) (or Specific Language Impairment [SLI])

Issue verbalizing concepts held in head. Cause is unknown, but there is a possibly genetic link

Expressive DLD Symptoms

Late production of first words and reduced narrative skills

Expressive Receptive DLD Symptoms

Vocab and sentence comprehension issues, decreased phonological processing skills, and reading comprehension issues. On top of expressive symptoms.

Comorbid with DLD

Reading Disabilities, spelling problems, lower math aptitude, clinical anxiety/depression, sexual abuse, and delinquency

Hearing Impariment

Impacts communication development, language acquisition, social development, literacy, and academic achievements.

Congenital Hearing Impairment

Impaired from birth

Acquired Hearing Impairment

Developed over lifetime

Sensorineural Hearing loss

Sounds reach the inner ear but cannot be transmitted properly to the auditory nerve/cortex (often due to cochlear damage).

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

• Lifelong pervasive neurodevelopmental disability

  • On a spectrum

• 1/31 people

• 3x more common in men

• Specifics: Severity, language impairment, cognitive impairment

Autism Deficits in sensory/motor/perception

• Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior or interests

• Insistence on sameness

  • Inflexible routines

  • Ritualized behaviors

• Restricted, fixated interests

  • Not being able to disengage with an activity

• Sensory differences

  • Hypersensory (overstimulated)

  • Hyposensory (understimulated)

  • Unusual sensory interests

Autism Deficits in Social Relations/responsiveness

• Low social-emotional reciprocity

• Difficulty developing and understanding relationships social expressiveness and responsiveness, reciprocity (eg response to name)

• Facial expression flat; reduced eye contact

• Low processing of emotional information or sharing emotions with others

• Low joint attention (especially initiating joint attention

• Few peer relationships appropriate for age level

Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT)

ASD treatment grounded in applied behavior analysis (aba) principles; focuses on:

• Child motivation

• Responses to multiple cues

• Self management

Eye/mouth gaze

Important because it supports social interaction and provides "visual speech"

Poverty

Inability to meet basic human needs. Different from SES; SES takes into account maternal education, employment, job prestige and income

Bilingualism

The ability to understand and use two languages regularly.

Language Switching

The process of alternating between two languages depending on context or interlocutor.

Perceptual Switching

Changing how one interprets a sound cue depending on which language is being used (e.g., tone treated as meaningful in Mandarin but not English).

Lexical Tone

Pitch patterns used to change the meaning of a word (common in Mandarin; absent in English).

Tone Sensitivity

The ability to detect and use pitch variations to distinguish word meaning.

Tone-Matched / Tone-Mismatched Trials

Experimental trials where the tone of a word either matches or does not match the tone learned previously.

Phonotactics

The rules governing how sounds can legally combine in a given language.

Phonotactic Cues

Sound patterns inside a word that signal what language the word belongs to.

Phonological Development

The process by which children learn the sound system of their language(s).

Word Learning (Lexical Acquisition)

The process of forming and storing new word–meaning associations.

Novel Word Learning

Learning new, unfamiliar (often invented) words during an experiment.

Child-Directed Speech (CDS)

The simplified, exaggerated way adults speak to young children to support learning.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

A combination of income, education, and occupation that influences children’s language experiences.

Input Quantity

How much language a child hears.

Input Quality

The richness and complexity of language a child hears.

Social Feedback

Responses from adults (facial, verbal, or interactive cues) that guide a child’s learning.

Inhibitory Control

Ability to suppress irrelevant information (e.g., ignoring tone in English but using tone in Mandarin).

Executive Function

Cognitive skills like attention, flexibility, and inhibition that support language switching.

Attentional Shifting

Ability to move attention from one cue to another (e.g., from pitch to consonants).

Eye-Tracking / Gaze Patterns

Experimental methods that monitor children’s visual attention to measure learning or processing.

Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP)

A method where children hear words and researchers track which of two images they look at.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

A neurodevelopmental condition associated with differences in communication, language, and social interaction.

Visual Attention Patterns

How children distribute eye gaze across objects or stimuli, often used to infer language processing.

Cue Weighting

How much importance a listener assigns to different acoustic cues (pitch, duration, etc.) when interpreting speech.

Acoustic Cue Integration

Combining multiple sound cues to identify or interpret words.

Prosody

Rhythm, intonation, and stress patterns in speech.

Intonation

Pitch movement that conveys emotion or sentence type, especially in non-tone languages.

Lexical Access

Retrieving word meanings from memory.

Cross-Linguistic Influence

When one language a child speaks affects how they use or perceive sounds in another language.

Language Dominance

When one language is stronger or more frequently used than the other in a bilingual individual.

Receptive Vocabulary

Words a child understands, even if they cannot yet produce them.

Expressive Vocabulary

Words a child can produce.

Mapping (Word–Object Mapping)

Connecting a novel word to the correct referent.

Unilateral Hearing Loss

Hearing loss in one ear; affects sound localization and hearing in noisy settings.

Bilateral Hearing Loss

Hearing loss in both ears; more significantly impacts speech and language development.

Conductive Hearing Loss

Sounds do not effectively reach the middle ear.

Mixed Hearing Loss

Combination of conductive and sensorineural loss.

Otitis Media

Middle-ear infection; can cause temporary hearing loss in children.

Tympanic Membrane

Eardrum; can develop holes causing hearing difficulties.

Middle Ear Ossicles

Three tiny bones (malleus, incus, stapes) that transmit sound; damage can cause hearing loss.

Cochlea

Inner-ear organ responsible for converting sound vibrations into neural signals.

Auditory Nerve

Nerve carrying hearing information from the cochlea to the brain.

Auditory Cortex

Brain region responsible for processing sound.

Cortical Ablation / Infarct

Damage to auditory brain regions leading to hearing or processing deficits.

Hearing Aids

Devices that amplify sound; most effective when loss involves inner-ear hair-cell damage.

Cochlear Implant

Surgically implanted device that bypasses the damaged cochlea and sends electrical signals directly to the auditory nerve.

Auditory Brainstem Implant

Device for individuals without an auditory nerve; stimulates the brainstem directly.

Vocoded Speech

Artificially degraded speech that simulates what speech sounds like through a cochlear implant.

Total Communication

Language approach combining oral speech with manual systems: signing, lip reading, facial expressions, and gestures.

Signed Languages

Natural languages with their own grammar and syntax (e.g., ASL), not derived from spoken languages.

Language Delay (Hearing Impairment)

All aspects of language development occur later in children with hearing loss, though ultimate mastery can be comparable with proper input.