"HE USED TO BE A LATE TALKER” : PARENTS’ NARRATION OF A FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD NAMED HASAN

This narrative inquiry is based on the lived experiences of parents who have a speech delayed child. A child with a language delay must go through in order to appropriately have strong competence in the language learning process. The data were derived from parents’ stories, a speech therapy progress book, medical records, and video recordings of classroom activities. Findings were focused on the thorough process a research subject has undergone to finally survive in catching up his lag of language development compared to the mainstream children of his age. After four years of intensive labor requiring parental involvement and three years of programmed therapy, the research subject achieves improvement milestones that enable him to catch up to conventional children's language development, which he should have completed. More research into the deployment of other linguistic aspects is needed to provide a clear picture of the development of his language learning.

Generalized Slowing Rather Than Inhibition Is Associated With Language Outcomes in Both Late Talkers and Children With Typical Early Development

Purpose While most of the children who are identified as late talkers at the age of 2 years catch up with their peers before school age, some continue to have language difficulties and will later be identified as having developmental language disorder. Our understanding of which children catch up and which do not is limited. The aim of the current study was to find out if inhibition is associated with late talker outcomes at school age. Method We recruited 73 school-aged children (ages 7–10 years) with a history of late talking ( n = 38) or typical development ( n = 35). Children completed measures of language skills and a flanker task to measure inhibition. School-age language outcome was measured as a continuous variable. Results Our analyses did not reveal associations between inhibition and school-age language index or history of late talking. However, stronger school-age language skills were associated with shorter overall response times on the flanker task, in both congruent and incongruent trials. This effect was not modulated by history of late talking, suggesting that a relationship between general response times and language development is similar in both children with typical early language development and late talkers. Conclusions Inhibition is not related to late talker language outcomes. However, children with better language outcomes had shorter general response times. We interpret this to reflect differences in general processing speed, suggesting that processing speed holds promise for predicting school-age language outcomes in both late talkers and children with typical early development. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14226722

Early Language Development of a Child with Expressive Language Disorder: A Parents’ Narration

Mainstream children generally experience typical stages throughout the milestones of their language development, from crying, cooing, babbling, until mature speech. Nevertheless, children with special condition usually have difficulties in getting through each phase of the development, such as those having expressive language disorder. These children usually encounter problems in communicating their needs and ideas verbally or non-verbally. This study attempts to present a story of the first five-year journey of Zaid’s language development, a child with expressive language disorder. Through interview, observation, and documentation, the study informs that Zaid was a late talker and experience difficulties in structuring well-ordered sentences.

The Corpus of Lithuanian Children Language: Development and application for modern studies in language acquisition

[full article and abstract in English] This paper describes The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language and its possible applications for modern studies on the first language acquisition. First of all, the procedure of data collection for the Corpus is discussed. Furthermore, the main methodological principles of longitudinal and experimental data compilation and transciption are decribed. Finally, different studies in developmental psycholinguistics which have been carried out so far and which demonstrate possible ways of the application of the Corpus data for different scientific purposes are introduced. The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language developed at Vytautas Magnus University comprises typical and atypical, longitudinal and experimental data of the Lithuanian language development. The Corpus was compiled using different methodological approaches, such as natural observation and semi-experiment. The longitudinal data (conversations between the target children and their caretakers) compiled according to the requirement of natural observation includes transcribed and morphologically annotated speech of two typically-developing children, one late talker, one early talker, one child from a low SES family, and a pair of twins. The data was collected during the period of 1993–2017 and and it can be divided into three cohorts. The semi-experimentaldata (~ 124 hours) comes from numerous studies in narratives and spontaneous dialogues elicited from typically-developing and language-impaired monolingual and bilingual (pre-) school age children. From the very beginning of data collection for the The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language, studies in the develomental changes of typical child language have been carried out. Over the past decade, these studies have been supplemented by statistical analysis of elicited semi-experimental data; the majority of these studies deal with typical vs. atypical (delayed or impaired) language acquisition and with differences between acquision of Lithuanian in a monolingual vs. bi-/polylingual settings. The paper provides an overview of data of The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language, which have been collected from 1993 but still needed to be structurized according to the employed methodology of data compilation and possible applications for different scientific purposes.

Case History Risk Factors for Specific Language Impairment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose Research suggests that the best approach to early identification of children with specific language impairment (SLI) should include assessment of risk factors. However, previous attempts to develop a list for this purpose have been unsuccessful. In this study, systematic review and meta-analytic procedures were used to determine whether any case history factors can be used to identify toddlers at risk of developing SLI. Method Epidemiological studies that examined the association between risk factors and SLI were identified. Results across studies were aggregated to determine more precisely the strength of association between each risk factor and the development of SLI. The clinical significance of these factors was established via comparison to late talker status. Results Eleven risk factors were found to be statistically significant predictors of SLI. Among these, maternal education level, 5-min Apgar score, birth order, and biological sex met criteria for clinical significance. Conclusions At least 4 case history factors are as predictive as late talker status in the context of early identification of toddlers at risk for SLI. The findings of this review highlight the importance of taking a child's genetic and environmental context into consideration when deciding whether further evaluation and early intervention services are warranted. Supplemental Materials https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5150122

Late Talkers: A Population-Based Study of Risk Factors and School Readiness Consequences

PurposeThis study was designed to (a) identify sociodemographic, pregnancy and birth, family health, and parenting and child care risk factors for being a late talker at 24 months of age; (b) determine whether late talkers continue to have low vocabulary at 48 months; and (c) investigate whether being a late talker plays a unique role in children's school readiness at 60 months.MethodWe analyzed data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a population-based sample of 9,600 children. Data were gathered when the children were 9, 24, 48, and 60 months old.ResultsThe risk of being a late talker at 24 months was significantly associated with being a boy, lower socioeconomic status, being a nonsingleton, older maternal age at birth, moderately low birth weight, lower quality parenting, receipt of day care for less than 10 hr/week, and attention problems. Being a late talker increased children's risk of having low vocabulary at 48 months and low school readiness at 60 months. Family socioeconomic status had the largest and most profound effect on children's school readiness.ConclusionsLimited vocabulary knowledge at 24 and 48 months is uniquely predictive of later school readiness. Young children with low vocabularies require additional supports prior to school entry.