Mabel L. Rice

Words from "Sesame Street": Learning vocabulary while viewing.

The study is a longitudinal investigation of preschool childrens viewing of Sesame Street and their vocabulary development.

Tense marking in children with autism

A recent large-scale study identified a subgroup of children with autism who had a language profile similar to that found among children with specific language impairment (SLI), including difficulties with nonsense word repetition, an ability that has been implicated as one clinical marker for SLI. A second clinical marker for English-speaking children with SLI is high rates of omission of grammatical morphemes that mark tense in obligatory contexts. This study used experimental probes designed to elicit third person and past tense morphology with a large heterogeneous sample of children with autism. The subgroup of children with autism who were language impaired showed high rates of omission of tense marking on the experimental tasks. In addition, some of the children with autism made performance errors that were specific to the autistic population, such as echolalia. These findings further refine the characteristics of language impairment found in a subgroup of children with autism. Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that is defined on the basis of symptoms in three behavioral domains: problems in social interaction, problems in communication, and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of interests and activities (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994). Within the domain of communication, diagnostic features include delays and deficits in language acquisition, as well as qualitative impairments in discourse and other pragmatic aspects of language. The major emphasis in research on language in autism has focused on the pragmatic impairments, which are viewed as universal among individuals on the autism spectrum and are specific to this disorder (Lord & Paul, 1997; Tager‐ Flusberg, 1999). The pragmatic language impairments noted in autism include a restricted range and less frequent use of communicative functions (Landry & Loveland, 1989; Stone & Caro‐Martinez, 1990; Wetherby, Prizant, & Hutchinson, 1998; Wetherby & Prutting, 1984), difficulties with rules of discourse, such as maintaining ongoing topics of conversation, observing rules of taking turns, providing new information, or following a partner’s conversational topic

Language symptoms of developmental language disorders: An overview of autism, Down syndrome, fragile X, specific language impairment, and Williams syndrome

Language deficits occur in a variety of developmental disorders including autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, specific language impairment, and Williams syndrome. This paper describes the specific pattern of linguistic deficits in each of these disorders in terms of speech production, semantic, and syntactic abilities as well as the relationship between cognitive and linguistic skills and the presence of a deviant or delayed pattern of development. In the spirit of synthesis across diverse literatures, preliminary comparisons among the language profiles of these disorders are made. The full picture, however, is incomplete given the current state of the literature, which tends to focus on the analysis of a narrow range of linguistic phenomena within a single disorder. The field is in need of research that systematically compares these disorders and leads to detailed descriptions of linguistic phenotypes of each disorder. The study of children with language disorders has a long and rich history. Language disorders are widely recognized as hallmark symptoms of an array of developmental clinical conditions. The research literature is generally organized according to diagnostic category, usually with the aim of describing the language disorders of a particular clinical group, for example, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, specific language impairment (SLI), or Williams syndrome. There are fewer investigations involving pairwise comparisons across conditions to determine if language and/or cognitive profiles are the same or different across clinical groups. Rice and Warren (2004) argue that there is a current need for careful consideration of the ways in which language disorders are manifest across clinical conditions, given the momentum in genetic and biobehavioral

GAPS in the verb lexicons of children with specific language impairment

This is a study of the verb lexicons of three preschool boys with specific language impairment. The database was a corpus of 5486 spontaneous utterances collected over a 3-month period. The children relied heavily on a small set of General All-Purpose (GAP) verbs to fill the verb functions. Their overall verb error rate was very low (2% of their utterances). In general, their verb usage conformed to expected rules of form class assignment and argument structure. Their occasional substitution errors suggest semantic mismarkings and on-line problems of stem retrieval. Overall, the picture is of localized verb learning, at an early stage of mastery, supplemented by heavy use of the GAP verbs.

Verb use by language-impaired and normally developing children

This study examined verb use in a group of preschool-age children with language impairments and two control groups of normally developing children. The specific questions of the study involved the diversity of the language-impaired childrens verb lexicons relative to their age- and language-matched counterparts, and the presence of similar frequently used, multipurpose verb forms in both samples. Analysis of transcript data revealed that while language-impaired youngsters relied on a less diverse main verb lexicon than both their age- and language-matched peers, they used a similar set of high frequency verbs.

Television as a talking picture book: A prop for language-acquisition

This study provides longitudinal observations of young childrens behaviours while viewing television in their own homes, over a time when the children were actively involved in the process of language acquisition. Sixteen children were observed for a period ranging from 0; 6 to 0;8. At the beginning, their ages ranged from 0; 6.15 to 5.15; at the end, from 1; 2.15 to 3;0. The observations yielded documentation of an overwhelming and consistent occurrence of language-related behaviours among children and parents in the viewing situation. The categories of child and adult talk are reported, with description and examples of each category. The categories are compared with those reported for parent–child interactions outside the viewing experience, – in particular joint book-reading. A model of television as a talking picture book is proposed. It is argued that television has the potential to serve as a facilitator of childrens language acquisition.

Maltreated children's language and speech development: abused, neglected, and abused and neglected

Seventy-four preschool-age maltreated childrens receptive and expressive language, speech skills, general language and cognitive abilities were assessed to investigate the language, speech and cognitive skills of abused, neglected, and abused and neglected children. While all three groups were delayed, neglect was the type of maltreatment most strongly associated with both expressive and receptive language delays and overall language delay. The three groups did not differ in general cognitive development. The most important feature of our data, relative to a Vygotskian perpective, is that language development is particularly vulnerable in an environment devoid of parent-child social language exchange.

Convergent genetic linkage and associations to language, speech and reading measures in families of probands with Specific Language Impairment

We analyzed genetic linkage and association of measures of language, speech and reading phenotypes to candidate regions in a single set of families ascertained for SLI. Sib-pair and family-based analyses were carried out for candidate gene loci for Reading Disability (RD) on chromosomes 1p36, 3p12-q13, 6p22, and 15q21, and the speech-language candidate region on 7q31 in a sample of 322 participants ascertained for Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Replication or suggestive replication of linkage was obtained in all of these regions, but the evidence suggests that the genetic influences may not be identical for the three domains. In particular, linkage analysis replicated the influence of genes on chromosome 6p for all three domains, but association analysis indicated that only one of the candidate genes for reading disability, KIAA0319, had a strong effect on language phenotypes. The findings are consistent with a multiple gene model of the comorbidity between language impairments and reading disability and have implications for neurocognitive developmental models and maturational processes.

The acquisition of tense in English: Distinguishing child second language from first language and specific language impairment

This study reports on a comparison of the use and knowledge of tense-marking morphemes in English by first language (L1), second language (L2) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. The objective of our research was to ascertain whether the L2 childrens tense acquisition patterns were similar or dissimilar to those of the L1 and SLI groups, and whether they would fit an (Extended) Optional Infinitive profile, or an L2-based profile, e.g., the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. Results showed that the L2 children had a unique profile compared with their monolingual peers, which was better characterized by the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. At the same time, results reinforce the assumption underlying the (Extended) Optional Infinitive profile that internal constraints on the acquisition of tense could be a component of L1 development, with and without SLI.

Toward a genetics of language

Contents: Preface. Acknowledgments. Part I: Genetics. L. Brzustowicz, Looking for Language Genes: Lessons From Complex Language Studies. J.F. Miller, Commentary on Chapter 1. S.D. Smith, B.F. Pennington, J.C. DeFries, Linkage Analysis With Complex Behavioral Traits. J.B. Tomblin, Commentary on Chapter 2. D.L. Lefly, B.F. Pennington, Longitudinal Study of Children at High Family Risk for Dyslexia: The First Two Years. J.W. Gilger, How Can Behavioral Genetic Research Help Us Understand Language Development and Disorders? Part II: Linguistics and Language Acquisition. K. Wexler, Development of Inflection in a Biologically Based Theory of Language Acquisition. J. de Villiers, Defining the Open and Closed Program for Acquisition: The Case of Wh-Questions. C.E. Snow, Commentary on Chapter 6. Part III: Language Impairments. J.B. Tomblin, Genetic and Environmental Contributions to the Risk for Specific Language Impairment. S.D. Smith, Commentary on Chapter 7. M.L. Rice, K. Wexler, A Phenotype of Specific Language Impairment: Extended Optional Infinitives. J.W. Gilger, Commentary on Chapter 8. L.B. Leonard, Characterizing Specific Language Impairment: A Crosslinguistic Perspective. E. Plante, Commentary on Chapter 9. M.B. Crago, S.E.M. Allen, Building the Case for Impairment in Linguistic Representation. D. Poeppel, Commentary on Chapter 10. J.F. Miller, The Search for the Phenotype of Disordered Language Performance. Part IV: Brain Science. E. Plante, Phenotypic Variability in Brain-Behavior Studies of Specific Language Impairment. L.B. Leonard, Commentary on Chapter 12. D. Poeppel, What Genetics Can and Cannot Learn from PET Studies of Phonology. M. Crago, Commentary on Chapter 13. Part V: Interactionist Account of Language Acquisition. C.E. Snow, Toward a Rational Empiricism: Why Interactionism Is Not Behaviorism Any More Than Biology Is Genetics. J. de Villiers, Commentary on Chapter 14.