Language Development in Children

A child says “red crayon”. This is an example of which type of semantic relation?

Attribute (red) + entity (crayon)

You have been asked to give a workshop to a group of parents of infants who attend a developmental nursery. The parents are interested in what they can do to communicate more successfully with their infants. Most of the infants are between 1 and 10 months old. Most of the parents do not have musch money or access to toys and objects, but you are told that they do spend plenty of time with their babies. What do you tell these parents?

speak to the baby in utterances (child-directed speech) that are higher pitched and have greater pitch fluctuation than ordinary speech.

A child using recurrence would say which of the following?

more cookie

An example of a sentence using an embedded form would be which of the following?

The boy with the haircut looks nice

A mother comes to you, concered because her son Jake was born prematurely and had to spend the first few months of his life in a neonatal intensive care unit. Now Jake is 9 months old, and his mother wants to make sure that his language development is “on target for his age.” You go to Jake’s home to observe him, and you also ask his mother to give you a detailed description of his communication patterns. As you evaluate Jake’s language development, you need to remember that one of the following does NOT occur between 8 and 10 months of age in the typically developing child. Which one is it?

using the phrases “all gone” to express emerging negation

What does develop is the comprehension of no, use variegated babble, and uncovering a hidden toy (beginning of object permanence)

You are conducting an assessment with an incoming kindergartner, Jason E., who has difficulty with word endings. Specifically, he tends to omit endings like -est (saying “sad” instead of “saddest”), ily (saying angry insead of angrily). He is having difficulty with which specific aspect of language?

morphology

A 7-year-old girl, Ashton, is referred to you by her second-grade classroom teacher, Mr. Alvarez. The teacher reports that Ashton “doesn’t always get along with her peers” and “doesn’t know how to hold a decent conversation”. In therapy your first priority with Ashton will be to

increase her skills in discourse

You observe a clinician working wiht a child who has a langugae impariment. They are making cookies together, and the clinician is aying things like “look, the dough goes in the bowl; the spoon is beside the bowl. We set the bowl on top of the counter. The clinician is working on developing the child’s skill in the are of understanding

locatives

A 5-year-old child ahs been referred to you for a language assessment. ther is a concern about his expressive langauge skills, and you decided to gather a langauge sample to assess expressive morphology and syntax. At one point, when looking at a book, the child points to a book character and says, “him no eat cookies” This is an example of

four words, five morphemes, personal pronoun + one negative + one verb + one plural noun

Which one of the following Piagetian stages, which include object permanence, corresponds with the emergence of a typically developing child’s first word?

sensorimotor

You receive a referral for a seventh-grader who is reported to “hop around a lot and i feel really confused after I talk with her”

announcing topic shifts

A 4th grader is referred to you for language testing by his teacher. His parents are concerned and upset with the teacher because they feel that Alex needs more help in reading and writing. The teacher reported that he began school not knowing basic concepts; he didn’t talk as much as the other children either”. What do you tell Alex’s parents?

Inform them that you would like to conduct an assessment of Alex’s langauge skills in a variety of domains to see whether he needs support services in oral and written langauge.

you are asked to asses a 4-year, 10-month old with down syndrome whose parents wish for her to begin kindergarten in the fall. The patient produces an MLU of 3.0 and has an expressive vocabulary of 350 words. She sustains a topic of conversation about 20% of the time and overregularizes past-tense inflections

The patient’s language skills are generally commensurate with those of a 2-to3-year-old child and starting kidergarten in the fall would probably be difficulty for her.

You are observing a clinician in a private practice setting. He specializes in child language disorder and serves elementary-age children from a variety of local public schools. The therapist uses a reward system. The clinician probably subscribes to which theory of child language development

behaviorists

You work with a patient who is 3-year-old whose language consists of present progressive -ing, prepositions in and on, and regular plural -s. His parents would like to enroll him for therpay because they want him to go to a local preschool. Which of the following morephemes would you begin with when matthew starts therapy?

irregular past-tense verbs.

You are referred a patient whose teacher reports the student does not remeber what she is told to do. What do you suspect is wrong?

temporal auditory processing

A patient says “down” when a cup of juice spills off the dinner tbale is using the relation of

action

A child is referred to you for an assessment of his pragmatic skills. The complaint of adults and children with whom he interacts is that he frequently gives commands and sunds rude and bossy. In therapy, you know you will need to work on

indirect requests.

A young child who often says things like “my doggy” or “their ball” is using the relation of

possession

You assess the language skills of a 6-year-old who talks in short sentences, few compound or complex sentences and find that this is typical at home too.

tell the teacher and parents that you would like to formally evaluate the patient because at 6 years they should have an average of 6.0-8.0 MLU

In order to begin producing two-word combinations, how many words do toddlers need to have in their expressive vocabulary?

50

A baby is looking at the family cat. His grandma sees him looking at the cat and directs her gaze toward the cat, also. She prepares to comment about the cat. Juan’s grandma is

following Juan’s line of regard.