WSU SLP 6460 week 2 toddlers, prek, school age, adolescents with language disorders

specific language impairment

impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written, and/or other symbol systems; the disorder may involve the form, content, and/or function of language in any combination; no other developmental concerns besides language - children who were diagnosed with SLI in preK years are likely some of the same children who go on to be diagnosed with a SLD (specific learning disability) in school age years

terminology for language disorders

specific language impairment (SLI), expressive & receptive language delay/disorder (mixed language disorder), language delay/disorder, developmental language disorder (DLD), slow expressive language development (typically toddlers); can range in severity from borderline to profound

language disorder vs language delay

one term alone cannot specify the nature of a child’s impairment nor their language abilities; regardless of which term is chosen to label the condition you can assume that the language behaviors are different from and not greater than their same age peers & not on track developmentally

idiosyncratic

unusual

potential risk factors for language disorders

familial history, birth order, parent’s level of education (particularly maternal), gender (?)

hallmarks of SLI in toddlers and preschoolers

either/both comprehension and production may lag in development, child may be nonverbal, may mistake the child for being ‘shy’, could be personality traits or a coping mechanism

prelinguistic skills that children typically develop

cognitive base, social base, phonological base, speech-hearing base (the four bases)

cognitive base

object permanence, causality, symbolic functioning, understanding of objects, semantic relational concepts, cognitive style

causality (cognitive base)

child repeats action that effectively achieves desired result

symbolic functioning (cognitive base)

child uses one object to represent another in play, can match objects and sounds to a picture, child can recall and identify an object after seeing a picture

social base

socialization, nonverbal communication, interactive strategies, caregiver strategies

phonological base

sound production, speech sound production, syllable shapes

speech-hearing base

oral facial exam/feeding, audiological evaluation

semantic relational concepts (cognitive base)

child exhibits knowledge/skills of existence, non-existence (surprise/disappointment in an expected object being missing), rejection, recurrence, location, possession, agency, objective

cognitive style (cognitive base)

idiosyncratic style, shown through any type of interaction, the child will react in their own way to things familiar to them, may have common verbalizations or actions, may have many or few interactions with others; their style is indicative of the way a child perceives things

phonological deficits with SLI

quite common in young children with SLI, may have decreased intelligibility compared to same age peers

SLI and word acquisition

children with SLIs/phonetic impairments acquired words quicker that have sounds already in their phonetic inventory

semantic deficits in toddlers

delay in first word usage, slow to add new words to their vocabularies, problems with expressing and/or developing word meanings, delay in use of semantic relations (2 word combos), deficits with word retrieval and generating language

50 words

necessary amount to have in your lexicon to start putting two words together

syntax & morphological deficits

reduced MLU compared to same age peers, simpler sentences, errors or omission of obligatory grammatical elements

pragmatic deficits

fewer uses of communicative initiations (including gestures and vocalized initiations), difficulty with interrupting behavior, less responsive to peer’s attempts to initiate conversation, decreased initiation of conversation (gestural or verbal), tend to not ask for clarification even though they did not understand the message

narrative deficits

may produce less mature, less informative, and simpler stories

IDEA (individuals with disabilities education act)

provides services for ages birth-21 years old, Michigan up to 26

IFSP

individualized family service plan; part C of IDEA for infants & toddlers

school age children & SLI (age 5ish-adolescence)

effects of language deficits can be seen across domain skills: impacts reading, spelling, possibly learning overall; language is applied to education, social, & eventually vocational contexts, academic challenges arise when demands for language at school exceed the SLI child’s capacities

hallmarks of SLI in school age children

deficits in language form, content, and/or use

school age form deficits

deficits with past tense (irregular and regular), may demonstrate deficits in spoken and written domains, difficulty understanding and using complex syntax, struggles with phonological awareness so poor reading ability may persist

school age content deficits

limited lexicons compared to same age peers, struggles with understanding/using academic vocab, trouble with tier 2 vocab, difficulty understanding nonliteral language like similes, metaphors, & idioms, difficulty with spatial (on, under, above) and temporal concepts (before, during, after)

tier 1 vocabulary

words used on an every day basis; basic vocabulary

tier 2 vocabulary

academic words, words used in school, like parallelogram or precipitation

tier 3 vocabulary

words specific to a vocation