Week 12 - Child Language Disorders

Babbling

What is the order of babbling stages?

1. Cooing/Gooing

2. Canonical babbling

3. Reduplicated babbling

4. Variegated babbling

5. Jargon and protowords

Babbling

What is the first stage of babbling?

• 👶🏽 2 months: “cooing” and “gooing”

• Simple vowel-like sounds

• Not yet real speech sounds

Babbling

What is canonical babbling?

• 🗣 Starts around 4–8 months

• Consonant-vowel (CV) sequences

  • e.g., “ba,” “da”

Babbling

What is reduplicated babbling?

• 🔁 Repeating the same CV syllables

  • e.g., “ba-ba-ba” or “da-da-da”

Babbling

What is variegated babbling?

• 🔄 Combining different CV and CVC syllables

  • e.g., “ba-da-ma” or “gab-da”

Babbling

What happens in babbling between 8–12 months?

• 🗯 Use of jargon and protowords

• 🎶 Includes pitch, rhythm, and intonation

• Sounds like real speech, but with no consistent meaning

Babbling

What does early canonical babbling predict?

• ⏰ May predict earlier age of first word

• 📈 May predict larger vocabulary in childhood

Babbling

What can delayed or absent babbling indicate?

• ⚠ May be a sign of autism

• 🦻 May also indicate congenital hearing loss

Typical Language Development

What does “typical” language development mean?

• 📊 Significant variability from person to person

• ❌ Not everyone follows the same path in language development

• 🌍 Influencing factors:

  • Cultural and social factors

  • General cognitive skills (e.g., perceptual ability)

Typical Language Development

What happens in vocabulary growth between 12-18 months?

• 🗣 First word produced

• 50 words marks the start of expressive vocabulary

• ⚖ Over-extension: using a word too broadly

  • Example: calling all animals “dog”

• ⚖ Under-extension: using a word too narrowly

  • Example: using “dog” only for their pet dog

Typical Language Development

What is typically true about comprehension versus expression in early language development?

• 🧠 Comprehension is almost always more advanced than expression

• 📚 Children typically understand more words than they can say

Developmental Language Disorder

What is the old name for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)?

• Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Developmental Language Disorder

What is SLI (Specific Language Impairment), and how was it first used?

• 📅 First used in the 1980s

• Describes children with language difficulties for no apparent reason

• ❌ Not caused by brain injury, hearing loss, intellectual disability, or other medical conditions

• ✅ Normal nonverbal IQ (score of 85 or better)

• 🏷 Exclusionary diagnosis — given only if no other condition is present

Developmental Language Disorder

What are the diagnostic criteria for Developmental Language Disorder?

• 🗣 The child has language difficulties that create barriers to communication or learning in everyday life

• ⏳ The child’s language problems are unlikely to be resolved by age five

• ⚠ There is no known biomedical cause (“no obvious cause”)

Developmental Language Disorder

What are common signs of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in relation to grammatical morphemes?

• 🔄 Minimal progress on mastering grammatical morphemes (e.g., -ed, -s, BE, DO)

  • Children with DLD often leave out or misuse these small word parts (e.g., saying "She walk to the store" instead of "She walked").

• ❗ Difficulties with tense (e.g., -ed for past tense) and agreement morphemes (e.g., -s for plural) may persist beyond preschool years

  • These problems can continue as the child gets older.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

What are the key features of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)?

• 👥 Problems with social communication and interactions

• 🔁 Repetitive and restricted behaviors

• 🗣 Primary language deficit is in pragmatics (social use of language)

Hearing Impairment and (Spoken) Language Delay

What are the characteristics of language delay in children with hearing impairment?

• 🧠 Primary language deficit is in phonology (speech sounds)

• 🗣 Slower development of articulation skills and speech sound production

• 🔊 Speech sound accuracy is influenced by perceptual representations of sounds

• 🦻 Cochlear implants may help children overcome these challenges and develop near-normal language skills

Down Syndrome

What are the key features of Down Syndrome related to language development?

• 🧠 Most common cause of intellectual disability

  • 👶 Children with ID often have a younger mental age than physical age

• 🧬 Extra chromosome 21 (not heritable)

• 🗣 Primary language deficits: morphology and syntax

  • ❗ Impaired language skills are greater than expected based on cognitive abilities