Language Development

The word infant is derived from the Latin word infans, which means literally "unable to speak". Consequently, the acquisition of speech is often regarded as marking the end of infancy. However, deciding precisely when speech has appeared (and hence, when infancy has ended) is not an easy matter. This is because the early development of language takes place very gradually. Thus, during the months which follow the production of the first word, the infant might learn to produce only one, two or three new words per month (Benedict, 1979; Nelson, 1973). Consequently, during these early months of language development, the infant still relies much more heavily upon cries, actions, and gestures rather than  speech for the purposes  of communication (Lock, 1978,1980; Lock, Service, Brito, & Chandler, Chapter 10, this volume; Schaffer, 1977, Chapter 8, this volume; Zinober & Martlew, 1985a, 1985b). And even after the infant has come to rely upon words as a major medium of communication, that infant might still not be able to combine words together to form simple two-word utterances with any degree of regularity until several more months have passed (Bloom, 1973; Garman, 1979).
The present chapter describes these various linguistic developments which gradually draw the period of infancy to a close. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part considers the first words which infants acquire, whereas the second part describes the subsequent linguistic developments that occur during the period of single-word speech. The third part considers how infants make the final transition into the multi-word speech of early childhood.

In this study, it was postulated that typically developing (i.e., normally developing without incidence of a speech or language delay or disorder) Spanish/Englishspeaking children ages 4 to 5 years old would show different articulation productions and phonological patterns in both languages. Sixteen participants from Florida were tested with Spanish and English articulation and phonology tests. For articulation, two manner or

Every year, 10 000 infants are born in the United States with sensorineural deafness. Deaf children of hearing (and nonsigning) parents are unique among all children in the world in that they cannot easily or naturally learn the language that their parents speak. These parents face tough choices. Should they seek a cochlear implant for their child? If so, should they also learn to sign? As pediatricians, we need to help parents understand the risks and benefits of different approaches to parent-child communication when the child is deaf. The benefits of learning sign language clearly outweigh the risks. For parents and families who are willing and able, this approach seems clearly preferable to an approach that focuses solely on oral communication.

The relationship between early maternal responsivity and later child communication outcomes in young children with fragile X syndrome was investigated. Data were obtained from 55 mother–child dyads over a 36-month period. Performance data were obtained at each measurement point from video observations of four different contexts. These were coded for (a) child communication behaviors, (b) parent responsivity, and (c) behavior management behaviors. Results indicate that early maternal responsivity predicts the level of four important child language outcomes at 36 months of age after controlling for child developmental level and autism symptomology.

Children with developmental disabilities often converse less frequently than their developmentally matched peers. This low conversational participation can cause problems for the children’s future language and discourse development. The purpose of this experimental study was to test the hypothesis that adult topic-continuing wh-questions would elicit topic continuations in children with relatively low language ability, but not in children with relatively high language ability. Twenty-three children with developmental delays interacted with an adult who conducted two play sessions. In each session, the adult used a different interaction style. The two styles differed in the adult’s use of topic-continuing wh-questions. Results indicate that adult use of topic-continuing wh-questions supported the use of child continuations in children at all language levels. The type of continuations (single word versus multiword) that were elicited depended on the language level of the children. Cli...

A group of five preschool children with developmental disability and their mothers participated in a study into the efficacy of a parent-implemented language intervention. Each parent was included in the team as a consultee, with a speech pathologist and special educator acting as consultants within a collaborative consultation process. Treatment for each child was developed using this process, with specific strategies to increase language production skills decided by the team. Strategies were used within an interactive model of early language intervention. The effectiveness of treatment was determined within a multiple baseline design. For three children, the impact of treatment was evident, but the results were not replicated for the other two children. Descriptive analysis of mothers' communicative behaviours indicated that, following treatment, they tended to direct more utterances to their children, used more models, fewer questions and directives, and more (although limite...

There has been general consensus that initial word learning during early infancy is a slow and time-consuming process that requires very frequent exposure, whereas later in development, infants are able to quickly learn a novel word for a novel meaning. From the perspective of memory maturation, this shift in behavioral development might represent a shift from slow procedural to fast declarative memory formation. Alternatively, it might be caused by the maturation of specific brain structures within the declarative memory system that may support lexical mapping from the very first. Here, we used the neurophysiological method of ERPs to watch the brain activity of 6-month-old infants, when repeatedly presented with object–word pairs in a cross-modal learning paradigm. We report first evidence that infants as young as 6 months are able to associate objects and words after only very few exposures. A memory test 1 day later showed that infants did not fully forget this newly acquired kn...

The present study explored how children’s prephonological writing foretells differential learning outcomes in primary school. The authors asked Portuguese-speaking preschool children in Brazil (mean age 4 year 3 months) to spell 12 words. Monte Carlo tests were used to identify the 31 children whose writing was not based on spellings or sounds of the target words. Two and a half years later, the children took a standardized spelling test. The more closely the digram (two-letter sequence) frequencies in the preschool task correlated with those in children’s books, the better scores the children had in primary school, and the more preschoolers used letters from their own name, the lower their subsequent scores. Thus, preschoolers whose prephonological writing revealed attentiveness to the statistical properties of text subsequently performed better in conventional spelling. These analytic techniques may help in the early identification of children at risk for spelling difficulties.

Since 1990 the DRA Speech Research Unit has conducted research into applications of speech recognition technology to speech and language development for young children. This has been done in collaboration wirh Hereford and Worcester County Council Education ...

A common theory of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptom onset includes toddlers who do not display symptoms until well after age 2, which are termed late-onset ASD cases. Objectives were to analyze differences in clinical phenotype between toddlers identified as ASD at initial evaluations (early diagnosed) versus those initially considered nonspectrum, then later identified as ASD (late diagnosed). Two hundred seventy-three toddlers recruited from the general population based on a failed developmental screening form or parent or physician concerns were followed longitudinally from 12 months and identified as early- and late-diagnosed cases of ASD, language delayed, or typically developing. Toddlers completed common standardized assessments and experimental eye-tracking and observational measures every 9–12 months until age 3. Longitudinal performance on standardized assessments and experimental tests from initial evaluations were compared. Delay in social communication skills was ...

Lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children aged 6-9 years with cochlear implants (CI) and compared to clinical groups of children with language impairment (LI) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as to age-matched children with normal hearing (NH). In addition, the influence of age at implantation on lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children with CI. 97 children divided into four groups participated, CI (n=34), LI (n=12), ASD (n=12), and NH (n=39). A battery of tests, including picture naming, receptive vocabulary and knowledge of semantic features, was used for assessment. A semantic response analysis of the erroneous responses on the picture-naming test was also performed. The group of children with CI exhibited a naming ability comparable to that of the age-matched children with NH, and they also possessed a relevant semantic knowledge of certain words that they were unable to name correctly. Children with CI had a significantly better understa...

OBJECTIVE: To test the independent association of adult language input, television viewing, and adult-child conversations on language acquisition among infants and toddlers. METHODS: Two hundred seventy-five families of children aged 2 to 48 months who were representative of the US census were enrolled in a cross-sectional study of the home language environment and child language development (phase 1). Of these, a representative sample of 71 families continued for a longitudinal assessment over 18 months (phase 2). In the cross-sectional sample, language development scores were regressed on adult word count, television viewing, and adult-child conversations, controlling for socioeconomic attributes. In the longitudinal sample, phase 2 language development scores were regressed on phase 1 language development, as well as phase 1 adult word count, television viewing, and adult-child conversations, controlling for socioeconomic attributes. RESULTS: In fully adjusted regressions, the ef...

Serial assessments of cognitive and language development are recommended for very preterm children, but standardized neuropsychological testing is time-consuming and expensive, as well as tiring for the child.To validate the Italian version of the PARCA-R parent questionnaire and test its clinical effectiveness in assessing cognitive development of very preterm children at 2 years of corrected age.120 consecutive Italian very preterm children (mean gestational age 28.8 weeks, standard deviation 2.1) were assessed in four hospitals through the Mental Development Index (MDI) of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-II). Parents completed the PARCA-R questionnaire, designed to measure children's non-verbal and verbal (vocabulary and sentence complexity) cognitive level. The correlation between the MDI and the PARCA-R Parent Report Composite (PRC) was tested through the Pearson correlation coefficient, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to identify optimal PRC cut-offs.Significant correlation between the PRC score and MDI (r = 0.60, p < 0.001) indicated good concurrent validity. The area under the ROC curve was 0.83, and the cut-off of 46 lead to 72.7% sensitivity and 77.1% specificity in identifying children with moderate/severe cognitive delay (MDI < 70). Negative predictive value was 96.6 (90.3–99.3). Screening through PARCA-R would reduce the number of children with MDI ≥ 70 undergoing BSID-II or equivalent standardized tool from 109 to 25.The Italian version of PARCA-R retains good discriminative power for identifying cognitive delay in 2-year very preterm children. It is well accepted by parents, and represents a valid and efficient alternative for developmental screening and outcome measurement.