CSD 2230 HUMAN COMMUNICATION DISORDERS

1. CSD 2230HUMAN COMMUNICATION DISORDERS Topic 6 Language Disorders Childhood Disorders Causes and Associated Disorders

2. Language Impairment “A heterogeneous group of developmental and/or acquired disorders and/or delays principally characterized by deficits and/or immaturities in the use of spoken or written language for comprehension and/or production purposes that may involve the form, content, and/or function of language in any combination.”

3. Causes and Associated Disorders Important to Childhood Language Disorders

4. Hearing Impairment • Language is learned through hearing • Deafness reduces the amount of auditory stimulation available to the child during the critical language learning period • All components of language can be affected • In general, the degree of hearing loss is related directly to the magnitude of the delay

5. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Occurs in about 2.5% of the population Characteristics • substantial limitations in present, overall functioning • significant sub average intellectual function • Severity is based on IQ • Mild (52-68) • Moderate (36-51) • Severe (20-35) • Profound (below 20) • limitations in adaptive skills, communication, self-care, home living, social skills, community use, self-direction, health and safety, academics, leisure, and work • limitations apparent before adulthood

6. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Causes: Biological • Genetic • Maternal infections • Toxins • Metabolic causes • Problems before birth • Complications during pregnancy • Brain diseases acquired after birth Social-environmental • Stimulation deprivation • Poverty—poor housing, poor medical care, poor nutrition, poor hygiene

7. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Some general characteristics of children with MR (mild-to-moderate degree): • Difficulty selecting which stimuli to attend to • Limitations in the ability to discriminate relevant cues • Organization and categorization of new information is impaired • Memory is much poorer than non-MR kids, especially short-term auditory memory

8. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Specific language characteristics of MR: • Language impairments are their single most important limitation. • The differences in their language skills, compared to age-matched non-MR kids are qualitative and quantitative • Initially, their language characteristics are normal but delayed • Utterances are shorter and less elaborate • In later years, the differences are more qualitative

9. Learning Disabilities National Joint Committee on Learning Disability “a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and are presumed to be due to CNS dysfunction. Even though a LD may occur with other handicapping conditions or environmental influences, it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences.”

10. Learning Disabilities Different forms of learning disability • Motor Hyperactivity, problems attending and concentrating,hypoactivity attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) • Attention Short attention spans, inattentiveness, excessive distractibility, and perseveration • Perception Problems interpreting incoming stimuli, trouble integrating information from a different sources, and dyslexia • Memory Problems with short term and long term retrieval

11. Learning Disabilities Specific language characteristics: • All aspects of language are usually affected • Delayed in morphological rule acquisition and in the development of syntactic complexity • Overall oral language develop may be slow • Preschoolers exhibit little interest in books and language

12. Specific Language Impairment significant limitations in language functioning that can’t be attributed to hearing loss, problems with oral structure and functioning, IQ or perception deficits

13. Specific Language Impairment Language characteristics: The primary characteristic of these kids is language delay, but it’s not the only thing • Difficulty extracting regularities from the language around them • Difficulty registering different contexts for language • Difficulty constructing word referent associations for vocabulary growth • Difficulty with auditory processing

14. Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Autism is the most severe form of PDD American Psychiatric Association defines autism as an impairment in reciprocal social interaction with a severely limited behavior, interest, and activity repertoire that has its onset before 30 months of age Likely causes Biological • 65% have abnormal brain activity • Anatomical brain differences • Increased seretonin • Prenatal complications, Fragile X syndrome, family history

15. Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Autism is characterized by the following deficiencies: • Rate and sequence of the development of motor, social-adaptive and cognitive skills • Response to sensory stimuli • Speech and language, cognition and nonverbal communication • Ability to relate to people, events, and objects appropriately

16. Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Specific language characteristics: • Lack of communication development is usually the first indicator of the disorder • About 50% remain non-speaking • Echolalia • Pragmatics and semantics of language are generally more disrupted than linguistic forms

17. Brain Injury Causes: • Traumatic brain injury • Cerebrovascular accidents • Congenital malformations • Convulsive disorders • Diseases of the brain

18. Brain Injury Characteristics of kids with TBI • Cognitive deficits Perception, memory, reasoning, and problem solving Permanent or temporary Partially or totally affect functioning • Psychological deficits: Social disinhibition , lack of initiative, distractibility Inability to adapt quickly, perseveration, low frustration levels Passive-aggressiveness, anxiety, depression Fear of failure.

19. Brain Injury Specific language characteristics • Pragmatic aspects of language are most affected • Lengthy, inappropriate, and off-topic utterances • Language comprehension is lacking • Higher linguistic abilities affected

20. Early Expressive Language Delay “Late Bloomers” No apparent etiology Language characteristics: • Substantial delays in expressive language • Initially seen as delay in vocabulary development • Other linguistic forms fall behind in later years

21. Neglect and Abuse Issues related to the poor development of early child language skills in these families • Poor maternal health • Substance abuse • Poor or nonexistent pediatric services • Poor nutrition • Physical abuse • Poor mother-child bond Specific lang characteristics: • All aspects of lang are usually affected • Less talkative, few conversational skills • Lless likely to spontaneously enter into conversation • reluctant to discuss emotions and feelings

22. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Accounts for 1 in every 500/600 births At the extreme end of the condition: • Premature birth with low birth weight • Central nervous system problems • Hyperactivity • Motor problems • Attention deficit • Cognitive problems

23. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Specific languages characteristics • Delayed development spoken language • Echolalia • Profound comprehension problems • Infants have few vocalizations, inappropriate gestures and delayed language • Preschoolers exhibit word retrieval problems, short sentences, and inappropriate conversational skills • Older kids have problems with abstraction, multiple meanings of words, temporal and spatial terms, and reading

24. Some Examples of Childhood Language Disorders CD ROM Ch.17.01 Errors of Language Form This segment shows a 5 year old girl playing with cars. She is pretending to be a 15 year old boy learning to drive. She makes agreement errors as she interacts with the SPL. She also uses the general verb “get” rather than drive, which is a content-based error.

25. Some Examples of Childhood Language Disorders CD ROM Ch.17.02 Content based expressive difficulties This segment shows a 3 year old girl looking through a “touch and feel” book. This child has some difficulty understanding the content of the book. Although she can understand language in context, she has difficulty understanding and expressing concepts such as color, descriptions and actions.

26. Some Examples of Childhood Language Disorders CD ROM Ch.17.03 Content based expressive difficulties This segment shows a 5 year old girl playing with a giraffe and a doctor’s kit. This child uses nonspecific language. The toys are used as props that provide context for listener understanding. Children with content-bases difficulties often use more general language in interaction. There are several instances of this in this segment.

27. Some Examples of Childhood Language Disorders CD ROM Ch.17.04 Expressive language delay This segment shows a 3 year old girl playing with the SLP with food and dishes. She used very few words, typically one-word utterances. Notice though that she does understand quite a bit of contextualized language and demonstrates appropriate social pragmatic responses to adult requests (use).