M. Cristina Caselli

From communication to language in two modalities

This study explores the interplay between gestures and words in the early vocabularies of 12 normally developing Italian children at 16 and 20 months of age. Focusing on spontaneous production of verbal and gestural types and tokens, we assessed the diversity and semantic content of the verbal and gestural vocabularies. Results indicated that the gestural modality was utilized extensively by all subjects. Whereas only half the group had more gesture than word types in their repertoires at 16 months, eight of the 12 subjects exhibited a clear preference for communication in the gestural modality, employing a larger number of gestural than verbal tokens. By 20 months, almost all of the subjects had many more word types and used words more frequently than gestures. By providing some sensorimotor components of an object-referent, gestures may lessen the demand on developing symbolic skills and aid the child in the transition to highly abstract word-referent relationships.

Relationship between gestures and words in children with Down's syndrome and typically developing children in the early stages of communicative development

BACKGROUND Previous research has emphasized the importance of gesture in early communicative development. These studies have reported that gestures are used frequently during the first two years of life and may play a transitional role in the language acquisition process. Although there are now numerous descriptions of the relationship between gesture and the developing language system in typically-developing (TD) children, relatively little is known about the nature and early development of the gesture-language system in children with developmental disorders involving specific profiles of language delay and/or impairment. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to compare early word and gesture use in children with DS and in typically-developing children to investigate potential differences in the relationship between gestural and verbal communication in early language development. METHODS AND PROCEDURES Ten children from upper-middle class families participated in the study. The five children with DS (3 boys and 2 girls) had an average chronological age of 47.6 months, an average mental age of 22.4 months, and an average language age of 18 months. Each child with DS was matched to a typically developing child on the basis of gender, language age, and observed expressive vocabulary size. Children were videotaped for 30 minutes as they interacted spontaneously with their mothers. All communicative and intelligible gestures and words produced by the children were transcribed from the videotapes. Data analyses focused on: a) overall production of gestures and words (i.e., gesture and word tokens); b) the size of childrens gestural and verbal repertoires (i.e., gesture and word types); and c) production and informational content of gesture-word combinations. MAIN OUTCOMES AND RESULTS Although children with DS had significantly smaller gestural repertoires than their language age-matched peers, there was no reliable difference between the two groups in the overall use of gesture. In addition, with DS produced two-element combinations (primarily gesture-word combinations) and did so at a rate comparable to that observed among their TD counterparts. However, no two-word combinations were observed among children with DS, and there were also group differences in the information contained in childrens gesture-word combinations. CONCLUSIONS Taken together, these findings suggest that in addition to the well-documented global delays in early communicative development, children with DS may exhibit additional pockets of delay, specifically in making the transition from one- to two-word speech. Results are further discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the organization of the developing gesture-language system and for the assessment of gesture in young children with communicative delays and disorders.

Specific language impairment in Italian: The first steps in the search for a clinical marker

Recent studies of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have identified language measures that seem quite accurate in distinguishing preschool-age children with SLI from their normally developing peers. However, the studies have focussed exclusively on English, and it is clear from the literature that the SLI profile varies between languages. This paper reports on three studies designed to assess the utility of particular language measures for Italian. In the first two studies, it was found that a composite measure based on the use of definite singular articles and third-person plural inflections showed good sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing Italian-speaking children with SLI from their typically developing peers. The third study showed that the same composite can be applied successfully to individual cases of SLI. Some of the additional steps needed to evaluate this composite measure are discussed.

Early linguistic abilities of Italian children with Williams syndrome.

Previous studies of linguistic and memory abilities in Italian-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS) are briefly reviewed. New data on linguistic performance of 6 Italian children with WS between 3 and 6 years of age are presented and compared with data on linguistic performance of 6 children with DS selected from a larger sample and matched for chronological age and vocabulary size and of 6 typically developing (TD) younger children matched for mental age and vocabulary size. The language measures also included a parent report of early phrase structure, a naming test, and a sentence repetition task. Analyses revealed that the 3 groups of children were at the same productive vocabulary level, but showed different patterns in sentence production and repetition. Children with WS produced more complete sentences, similar to TD children at the same vocabulary size, whereas children with DS produced more telegraphic and incomplete sentences. The difference between children with DS and those with WS was more marked on the repetition task, suggesting that phonological short-term memory may play a greater role when sentence production is measured through repetition. In addition, qualitative analysis of errors produced in the repetition test revealed interesting differences among the 3 groups. These results from younger children confirm and extend previous findings with older children and adolescents with WS. They further suggest that the apparently spared linguistic abilities of children with WS could emerge as an artifact of comparisons made to children with DS, whose sentence production competence is more compromised relative to other verbal and nonverbal abilities.

Sentence repetition as a measure of early grammatical development in Italian

BACKGROUND Research on language acquisition and disorders highlights the need to evaluate the early phases of language development for the early identification of children with language problems (screening), and to determine the nature and severity of language disorders (diagnosis). AIMS The paper presents a new Sentence Repetition Task developed for evaluating language abilities in Italian pre-schoolers. Two studies are reported. The first is aimed at evaluating the power of the Sentence Repetition Task in discriminating the developmental changes in childrens capacity to repeat sentences of different length and morphosyntactic complexity. Moreover, the test-retest reliability was assessed. The second study explored the relationship between the Sentence Repetition Task, free speech and verbal memory span. METHODS & PROCEDURES The test included 27 sentences of different length and complexity. Each sentence was accompanied with a picture reproducing its global meaning. In Study 1, the Sentence Repetition Task was administrated to 100 middle- and lower-class children (balanced for gender) between 2 and 4 years with a test-retest design. Test results were submitted to univariate analysis of variance, using five age levels as independent variables. To evaluate the test reliability, test-retest correlational analyses were conducted. In Study 2, 25 middle- and lower-class children between 2 and 4 years of age, balanced for age and gender, participated. The performance of the children on the repetition test was compared with their spontaneous language data. Moreover, the same children received a Verbal Memory Span test, consisting of a list of ten strings of different number of words. Correlational analyses were conducted to evaluate the relationships between the Sentence Repetition Task, free speech and the Verbal Memory Span test. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Study 1 showed that 2-year-old childrens repeated sentences were highly telegraphic. Between the age of 2.0 and 2.6 the mean length of utterance in the Sentence Repetition Task grew from approximately two to three words, and the number of omissions of articles, prepositions and modifiers significantly decreased. After 3.0 years old, omissions of free function words practically disappeared. The results of Study 2 showed that mean length of utterance, omission of articles and use of the verbs in the Sentence Repetition Task correlated with the same measures of the free speech. Moreover, positive correlations were found between verbal memory span and performance of both the repetition task and the free speech. CONCLUSIONS Results demonstrate that the repetition test is reliable, discriminates between the different age groups examined, highlights the relevant developmental stages described in the literature, and provides a reliable measure of the mean length of utterance.

What atypical populations can reveal about language development : The contrast between deafness and Williams syndrome

Two distinct lines of investigation are presented: the study of linguistic competence in the written language of deaf children and adults, and the study of linguistic development in children and adolescents with Williams syndrome (WS). Qualitative data focusing on spoken and written Italian and coming from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies conducted over the last 10 years are briefly reviewed and discussed. Italian people who are deaf demonstrate selective difficulties with aspects of grammatical morphology that play a syntactic rather than a semantic function. Italian people with WS display a particular asymmetric fragmentation within linguistic abilities: a profile of strength in phonological abilities but serious deficits in semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of language. The case of these two very different populations can offer us important clues for investigating which aspects of language and specifically of grammar are influenced by modality of perception.

Gesture and speech in maternal input to children with Down's syndrome

BACKGROUND Despite recent interest in relationships between maternal gesture and speech and communicative development in typically developing (TD) children, little work has examined either speech or gesture in mothers of children with Downs syndrome (DS). AIMS To compare aspects of speech and gesture production by mothers of children with DS with that of mothers of TD children. METHODS & PROCEDURES Participants were five mothers of children with DS (mean chronological age (CA) = 47.6 months; mean mental age (MA) = 22.4 months) and five mothers of TD children. To equate for expressive language ability, children in the TD and DS groups were individually matched on the basis of: (1) gender; (2) correspondence between the TD childs chronological age and the DS childs language age; and (3) observed expressive vocabulary size. Each mother-child dyad was videotaped for approximately 30 min during free play. Data analyses focused on: (1) the number and types (speech only, gesture only, mixed) of maternal utterances; (2) the gesture types (deictic, iconic, conventional, emphatic); and (3) for mixed utterances, the structure and the temporal patterning of spoken and gestured components. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Relative to mothers of TD children, mothers of children with DS produced significantly fewer utterances overall, but the distribution of utterance types did not differ between the two groups. Relative to mothers of TD children, mothers of children with DS used proportionately more deictic gestures and made more frequent use of showing. Mothers of TD children produced more pointing gestures. Finally, mothers of children with DS produced a significantly higher proportion of utterances consisting of a single gesture and a single verbal utterance; in contrast to mothers of TD children, more complex structures (one gesture with multiple verbal utterances, one verbal utterance with multiple gestures) were never observed. Within the category of utterances consisting of a gesture and a single verbal utterance, mothers of children with DS tended to produce gestures that were held throughout the complete verbal utterance, while the gestures of mothers of TD children tended to co-occur with only a portion of the utterance. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that mothers of children with DS adjust their communication to the developmental status of their child. Results are discussed in terms of the role of gesture in maternal communication and in the regulation of mother-child interaction.

Italian children's use of verb and noun morphology during the preschool years*:

Five groups of Italian-speaking children ages 2 to 7 years participated in tasks designed to assess their use of a range of grammatical morphemes. Present tense verb inflections and noun plural inflections reached ceiling levels by 4 years of age, whereas present tense copula forms and definite singular articles showed high accuracy levels by 5 years of age. Errors on present tense inflections were rarely infinitives. Instead, most errors could be characterized as ‘near misses’ – productions of forms that differed from the target by a single feature of person or number. Many of these one-feature errors were directional; first person forms were more likely to be replaced by third person forms than the reverse, and plural forms were more likely to be substituted by singular forms than the opposite pattern. Errors of this type are not handled by models of grammatical development that deal with broader constructs such as the availability or optionality of tense or finiteness.