Characterizing the Richness of Maternal Input for Word Learning in Neurogenetic Disorders

Promoting language abilities, including early word learning, in children with neurogenetic disorders with associated language disorders, such as Down syndrome (DS) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), is a main concern for caregivers and clinicians. For typically developing children, the quality and quantity of maternal language input and maternal gesture use contributes to child word learning, and a similar relation is likely present in DS and FXS. However, few studies have examined the combined effect of maternal language input and maternal gesture use on child word learning. We present a multidimensional approach for coding word-referent transparency in naturally occurring input to children with neurogenetic disorders. We conceptualize high-quality input from a multidimensional perspective, considering features from linguistic, interactive, and conceptual dimensions simultaneously. Using case examples, we highlight how infrequent the moments of word-referent transparency are for three toddlers with DS during play with their mothers. We discuss the implications of this multidimensional framework for children with DS and FXS, including the clinical application of our approach to promote early word learning for these children.

‘She – nature, woman, Goddess’: mythic, ethical and poetic feminist discourse in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Marsh Languages’ and Luce Irigaray’s In the Beginning She Was

This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philosophical text In the Beginning She Was. By doing so, an important conceptual resonance emerges between the two texts on the status of the loss of a maternal language and more broadly of the founding Mother at the origins of Western thought. Advancing a feminist poetics and ethics of the maternal, with its roots in nature, Atwood and Irigaray’s works are at odds with the enlightened language of our western masculine time, which seeks to disinherit its roots or to uproot itself. Atwood’s appeal in her poem ‘Marsh Languages’ reverberates with Luce Irigaray’s argument in In the Beginning She Was, which is that it is necessary for western philosophy to return to the marshes, so to speak, to return to the Presocratic philosopher-poets in order to discern how the logic of Western truth (via the male master-disciple) formed, and consequently discredited and covered over, a ‘she – nature, woman, Goddess’. Engaging with Greek myth (Hesiod’s Muses, Plato’s cave and mother-daughter duo Persephone-Demeter), Atwood as poet and Irigaray as philosopher interrogate and contest our western patriarchal tradition, for its erasure of ‘she – nature, woman, Goddess’, and suggest that the ethical implications of this silencing and forgetting have led to corrupt, destructive crisis-level relations, e.g. between humans, between humans and gods and between humans and nature.

The Clinical Features of Preschool Children With Speech and Language Disorder and the Role of Maternal Language

Objective To retrospectively review the characteristics of preschool children with speech and language disorders to determine their clinical features and compares the average degrees of language delay based on hospital visit purposes, language developmental delay causes, and maternal language.Methods One thousand one hundred two children (832 males, 270 females) with the chief complaint of language or speech problems who underwent language assessment for the first time were included. Their medical records, including demographic data, language environments, and family history of language problems and other developmental problems, were collected. Furthermore, the results of language and developmental assessments and hearing tests were collected.Results Among the children enrolled in this study, 24% had parental problems and 9% were nurtured by their grandparents. The average degree of language delay did not differ regarding purposes of hospital visits. The average degree of language delay was greatest in children with autism spectrum disorders and least in children with mixed receptive–expressive language disorders. In children with mothers who do not speak Korean as their native language, social quotients in the social maturity scale were less than 70.Conclusion Language environment is an essential factor that may cause speech and language disorders. Moreover, maternal language seems to affect the social quotient of the social maturity scale.

“I am an atypical mother”: Motherhood and maternal language in Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto’s poetry

In her debut book Dolore minimo, Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto engages in a reflection on motherhood to recount an autobiographical story of gender self-determination and male to female transition. This article explores Vivinetto’s poetry as the retelling of transformative moments in two mother–daughter relationships, which generate a reshaping of life and language. In the book, these two storylines intersect, blur, and even overlap, creating a poetic discourse in which the maternal acts simultaneously as powerful catalyzer and producer of meanings. In discussing how, in Dolore minimo, the relationship of two atypical mothers becomes the creative site of a new possible symbolic order, my analysis engages an atypical approach: it reads Vivinetto’s queer representation of motherhood via the theorization developed by the women of Diotima—including, in particular, Luisa Muraro, Chiara Zamboni, Diana Sartori, and Ida Dominijanni. These feminist thinkers have been generally criticized for reinforcing binary understandings of sex and gender, based on an essentialist view of the category of woman. Yet, what if the feminism forwarded by Diotima, by positioning the feminine as a creative producer and first-person narrator of change, could still offer a productive avenue for dialogue? The article begins with a discussion of Diotima’s key theorizations, which lays the groundwork for interpreting the maternal poetics of Dolore minimo. The subsequent sections examine in more depth how Vivinetto’s poetry has reinvented the figure of the mother as a teacher and learner of new words, and how, through this reinvention, she has crafted a maternal language that knits together new relations of contiguity and change. Ultimately, by redeploying the figure of the mother beyond cisgender norms, Vivinetto’s poetry is revealing the inexhaustible vitality of this character.

Maternal Input and Child Language Comprehension During Book Reading in Children With Down Syndrome

Purpose Communication interactions between parents and children during shared book reading impact a child's development of both language and literacy skills. This study examined maternal language input and child expressive communication during a shared book reading activity in children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with typical development (TD). Additionally, children's receptive language was examined to understand the relationship between maternal language input and child receptive language ability. Method Participants included 22 children with DS and 22 children with TD between 22 and 63 months of age and their mothers. Each mother–child dyad participated in a 7-min naturalistic shared book reading activity. Results Compared to mothers of children with TD, mothers of children with DS used significantly more utterances with less grammatical complexity, but a similar range of vocabulary diversity. Mothers of children with DS used more questions, descriptions, gestures, and labels, whereas mothers of children with TD used nearly half of their utterances to read directly from books. Children with DS communicated at a similar frequency compared to their peers with TD; however, they produced significantly fewer spoken words. Conclusions This study reveals important differences between early shared book reading interactions and provides implications for future research targeting parent-coached intervention strategies that may enhance children's learning during shared book reading by providing access to expressive language and print instruction.

Young Children with Down Syndrome: Mother-Child Dyadic Relationships

This chapter is focused on the mother-child dyadic relationship in families where a young child has Down syndrome. Because mothers enter into a relationship with a child within a particular context, a sociocultural perspective on parenting a child with Down syndrome promotes a deeper understanding of interaction in the mother-child dyad. Both the role of the family system, including positive parenting, and the contributions of the child’s attributes, especially temperament, are considered. Specific literature on the mother-child dyad is discussed, including maternal language input, the role of maternal directives during structured and unstructured tasks, and studies on autonomy-supportive parenting. Suggestions for future research include developing studies that focus on maternal strengths as well as conducting investigations that recognize the importance of the sociocultural context in which mother-child dyadic relationships are developed.

As Lettres de Cachet e os Psicodiagnósticos de sujeitos com problemas de aprendizagem de escrita em língua materna / The Lettres de Cachet and the Psychodiagnostics of subjects with problems to learning of writing in maternal language

Pretendeu-se refletir sobre as semelhanças entre as Lettres de Cachet e os Psicodiagnósticos (Psicodiagnósticos de sujeitos considerados portadores de dificuldades de aprendizageme produzidos em determinadas circunstâncias), documentos produzidos em contextos distintos e distantes no tempo e no espaço, as prisões reais francesas do século XVIII e as escolas/hospitais no Brasil do século XXI. Tomou-se como base teórica obras de Foucault (1926-1984), que nos permite compreender que ambos os documentos são frutos de tensões engendradas por meios de poder e contrapoder, cujos mecanismos sociais pretendem silenciar as singularidades, justificando e definindo práticas avaliativas produtoras de discursos presentes nas práticas institucionais disciplinares e médicas e no cotidiano das instituições de ensino e hospitalares, determinando valores e crenças presentes na histórica relação existente entre linguagem e poder. Como metodologia de análise adotou-se a proposta do Paradigma Indiciário.***We have intended to speculate upon the similarities between the Lettres de Cachet and the Psychodiagnostics (Psychodiagnostics of individuals considered to have learning difficulties and produced in certain circumstances), documents produced in different contexts and distant in time and space, the French royal prisions from the XVIII century and the schools/hospitals in Brazil in the XXI century. The theoretical works of Foucault (1926-1984) were used as a basis in this research, which allows us to comprehend that both documents are results of engendered tensions by power and counterpower means, whose social mechanisms mean to silent the singularities, justifying and defining evaluative practices that produce speeches presented in disciplinary and medic institutional practices and in this educational and hospital institutions’ quotidian, determining values and beliefs that are found in the historical relationship between language and power. As an analytical methodology the indicatorial paradigm purpose was adopted.

Heterogeneity in the trajectories of US Latine mothers’ dual-language input from infancy to preschool

We longitudinally examined the trajectories of Latine mothers’ ( N = 116) language input to their children during book-sharing interactions at four points in development, when children were between ages 2 and 5 years. Mother–child dyads were video-recorded sharing a wordless picture book, and transcriptions of mothers’ and children’s language yielded word types in Spanish and English at each assessment wave. Three distinct trajectories of change in mothers’ dual-language use were identified. Some mothers shifted from Spanish-dominant input to more balanced input between English and Spanish; other mothers provided English-dominant input and used more English and less Spanish over time; and the remaining mothers were stable in their Spanish-dominant input across child ages. Mothers’ immigration background, educational level, and children’s preschool language experiences each uniquely predicted trajectories of maternal language input. In general, children showed similar trajectories as their mothers, although mismatch occurred for some dyads at the later ages. The dual-language environments of Latine children are dynamic and shaped by individual and contextual factors.