SPAU 4308 - Ch. 3

Language Disorders in Children. Marissa_J_Sierra

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

A condition characterized by extreme difficulty in language acquisition in the presence of otherwise typical development

SLI is...

a lifelong disability

What is the most frequently occurring of all communication disorders and neurodevelopmental disorder?

SLI

Mental Age (MA)

The age level at which a child is functioning on cognitive/intellectual task

What is generally measured by intelligence test?

MA

What are children's language performance compared to?

Those of children with similar MAs

When language performance is lower than MA

A language impairment is presumed to be present

Some children may have language skills higher than their

cognitive skills

Many children with ID...

Do not get identified as having language impairment because may be little to no gap between their MA and LA.

Children who have above average cognitive skills but language skills significantly below their cognitive levels

might be seen as having a language impairment

Language Age (LA)

a child's performance on a language test

Cognitive referencing

When language scores from various assessment instruments are compared to the intellectual ability score (e.g. Full Scale IQ) in order to determine the presence of a language impairment.

Social Standard

societal values placed on the degree of language facility and on the degree of success for life functions that are dependent on language facility

Language Impairment

Clinically significant departure from what is expected for children of the child's own CA

Clinical Markers

is a behavioral feature or characteristics or a combination of particular features or characteristics that children with SLI have

Language Delay

Language skills are slow to emerge or develop
- Same sequence

Language Disorder

A deviance in the usual rate , trajectory, and/or sequence with which specific language skills emerge.

What do clinical markers do?

1. Identify young children with SLI
2. Separating children with SLI from other conditions
3. Predicting which children are at risk for continuing vs. outgrowing

Assertiveness

the degree to which they initiate conversational acts or turns

Responsiveness

responsiveness to their conversational partners' needs

Language-learning environment

Overall not viewed as probable cause for SLI

Recast

Add or modify the utterance to make it more complex or complete

Language plateaus

Some skills may "get stuck"

Illusory Recovery

recover from deficits

Indirect Intervention

Consultation or collaboration with others

Direct Intervention

more appropriate when the aim is to establish a new language behavior

cognitive deficits

Deficits in particular areas of cognitive functioning

Information processing deficits

Stems from problems in how well the children can deal with incoming stimuli and/or use the stimuli in order to learn language and/or acquire info

Central auditory processing disorder

Difficulty processing auditory stimuli

Normal variation, normal distribution, and a statistical approach

Any test score provides only an estimate of a child's "true" Language performance

Standard error or measurement

A range around a standard score, add and subtracting the SEM to get the confidence interval (Ex. SS\= 79, SEM +/-8 with 95% confidence interval \= 71 to 87)

Nonspecific language impairment

Some children have NVIQ scores btwn -1 and -2 SD and have language abilities falling below normal

Clinical markers of SLI

- Verb morphology
- Tense marking should emerge between 2 and 4
- Nonword repetition test/task (NWRN/NWT)

Some children with language impairment can potentially...

Interfere with academic performance or social interactions even though test scores may be low average.

Risk factors for Language problems

identifying children at risk for language difficulties: neonates, birth factors, chromosomal syndromes, neurological or physical conditions.

Surface account

Focuses on the phonetic features of the problem grammatical morphemes

Children with SLI

Learn the rules about verb making, but have difficulties accessing them

Fey's interactionist's approach

4 approaches

active conversationalist

+Assertive + Responsive.
-Child is both an active initiator and responder.
-Grammar may be incorrect and responses may be inappropriate.

Verbal Noncommunicator

+assertive -responsive

passive conversationalist

-assertiveness +responsiveness

inactive communicator

- assertiveness -responsiveness

Communicative characteristics of preschoolers less well liked

- irrelevant comments
- Make fewer contingent responses
- Being less responsive to peers
- taking longer turns on conversations
- interrupting more
- engaging in more talking over or talking simultaneously

Narratives

- Contain less info
- less mature
- Use low content words (things)

Parent/caregiver- child interactions

Helps to identify possible factors in the interactions that can be modified or included in the interactive routines to enhance and facilitate a child's language learning

Social Communicative Interaction

Assess children as they interact with other children
- Social interactive coding system