Learning a word
-Need to map it 3-5 times
The Marvel of Language
- The father of a newborn says “he likes it”, and everyone agrees (we ascribe intent)
- By 12 months of age, the first word(s) appear(s)
- A child of 3-4 years of age has acquired the major components of his/her language
- At school age, the child: kindergarten kids
—-Varies speech to fit socio-communicative needs of any situation
—-Knows & pronounces thousands of words
—-Is skilled at production of complex grammatical forms
-Language learning NEVER stops- even at 85 you can learn new words
Definitions of Language
- “socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combination of those symbols”
- Language- an arbitrary but systematic set of symbolic relationships mutually agreed upon by a speech community to designate experiences. (her favorite definition)
Need to think about how functional kids are. Do they understand that language is used to designate experiences.
Language
Language :
- is generative & productive
- is symbolic—doesn’t need to be exact representation of object/action: ABSTRACT
- demonstrates displacement (not tied to here & now)
- There are multiple modalities: oral, written, sign/gesture
- need to do the whole package for school age kids. Standardized test only look at oral language.
- School-age language (and beyond) is very complex!
-Language constantly changes. Language impaired children do not understand
slang or how to use it. A lot of language impaired kids have not figured out language.
Semantics
Ever changing:
-Stall talker- on the phone in the bathroom
- Drailing- drunken emailing
- E-mnesia-forgot you sent email
- words disappear over time
School-age Children (old assumptions)
- Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten (the critical period hypothesis) most by age 12
- Critical periods for acquisition, neurological shut down (again, CPH)
- MLU says it all- 4
Critical period hypothesis
- if you don’t have things learned by a certain age, 5 or 12 then you will never have it (not true).
- We know that Neuropathways can be regenerated.
- Basic language learning occurs by age 3 or 4
Reality of school age children
- Reality: language learning never stops
-New technology keeps extending the
age of neurological maturation
-MLU was great through age 4 (ish),
but can’t account for complex syntax
Assumptions and practices
- “Professionals seem to assume that, if the students did not learn the first time around, they will never learn.”
- Students are blamed for not learning, rather than examining instructional practices. (could be the teaching style, not necessarily the student
Problems w/ older school age children
- Therapy & assessment based on adult models (e.g. word-finding therapy)
- Can’t use the same therapy for an adult that had a stroke as a child with word finding issues because the child has a much smaller vocabulary and has limited words mapped.
- Looking for fixed developmental sequences based on preschool language acquisition milestones
- 1st word-12 months
- 2 word combos- 18 months w/ 50 words
- Looking for large, clear differences between age level as in preschool models but:
- norms are scarce!!
- show smaller differences in average performance
- show greater variability.
Older kids need meta skills across communication domains (Problems w/ older school age children)
Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Phonology morphology
Current Professional Practices
-SLP’s should assess reading and writing skills and support development of skills when identified as delayed, according to ASHA’s Preferred Practice Patterns
Failure of Brown’s MLU Stage V
- Statistics in our field suggest
- Many children identified, treated and released as preschoolers “pop up” again in mid elementary school (3rd grade usually)
- Many kids transition into school with identified speech and language needs
- Other kids are first identified in mid-elementary
- Achieving Stage V is no guarantee of “normal” language ability
- In third grade a lot of kids will have issues again.
- RTI- response to intervention, prevents student from getting intervention immediately.
Learning Disabilities
- As defined by association of LD: significant difficulty in the acquisition and/or use of reading, writing, speaking, listening, math and social skills
- LD definition dates from late 1970’s
- Social skills added later
- Wallach & Butler suggested “language learning disabled” term (LLD)
- Usually have problems following math instructions
- Difference between LD and typical kids is that it is automatic for typical kids. We need to teach LI kids how to get the automaticity of language.
- You need to be able to ready fluidly and with automaticity in order to comprehend.
Learning disabilities as defined by IDEA
- As defined by IDEA: disorder in one or more processes involved in understanding or using spoken or written language
- Manifestations may include imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations
- LLD still fits
- NOTE: this is not an IDEA classification, but SLPs should understand that many (most?) LD students will have language problems in school contexts
- These difficulties are not always identified by standardized tests
- Spelling issues could be due to poor phonemic awareness.
Lang Learning Disabled 1
- Seem to have subtle phonological deficits that impact reading, spelling and learning
- Phonological production
- Generally intelligible; speech errors appear “inconsistent”; restricted to complex forms like statistics. (rhea paul ch. 10)
- Often had significant phonological errors as preschoolers
Lang Learning Disabled 2
- Phonological Awareness limitations
- Retrieval of phonological codes for memory, impacts
- Speech production
- Reading
- Word retrieval
Language Learning Disabled: Syntax
- Over reliance on comprehension strategies for processing verbal information
- word order, regardless of ordinal terms such as “before”
- Do what you usually do (because they don’t listen to new information)
- Word order is part of the issue, sensory issues, ADD
- “Immature” production
- Fewer complex sentences
- Problems with later developing morphological structures
- Comparatives and superlatives
- irregular forms (Plurals and past tense)
Language Learning Disabled: Semantics
- Smaller vocabulary with a tendency toward high-frequency, short words
- Restricted word meanings- apples are only red (green apples are not apples to them)
- No way the Indians traveled by dugouts! (did not realize that a dugout is a name for a canoe)
- Multiple meaning words limited
- Poor semantic organization
- Word-retrieval difficulties
Language Learning Disabled-Pragmatics/Discourse
- Limited verbal fluency-not stuttering, language that does not flow.
May exhibit
- Mazes- utterance does not go in a start line. Backing up, filled pauses, stops, restarts, repetitions, and abandoned utterances.
- False starts- um well, my mom took me to the store.
- Abandoned utterances- utterance is not completed.
Language Learning Disabled: Other
- Figurative language, including metaphors, similes, and idioms
- Expressive and receptive difficulties
- Difficulty processing complex language, tracking across multiple utterances
- Jokes require metaX skills (linguistic skills)
Jokes
can be:
- metasemantic
- metaphonological
- metasyntactic
How do we identify those children who need language intervention?
-Aren’t standardized test scores enough?
IDEA does not require standardized test scores, but some districts (states) do
Need adverse academic impact , KY requires standardized test scores
- What do we do about those children who qualify for school therapy vs. those kids who don’t, but still need therapy? Especially if a school SLP?
- What kind of intervention do I do? Do I do remediate or just intervene?
- What is RtI? Response to intervention
- Parents push the envelope, due to the internet!- parents self diagnose
- Remediate- fix a problem (usually after the problem is identified)
- Intervention- before a problem is identified.
- Some disabilities cannot be remediated so you need to do intervention
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School Age Overview23
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School-Age Communication DIsorders (The population)20
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Vocabulary Development & Word-Finding Difficulty33
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School Age Child & Adolescent19
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Language and Reading57
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L4L: Assessment51
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APD and ELL46
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Adolescence19
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Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD)30
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Aural Rehab51
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idioms and slang17
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Persuasion, Negotiation, and Explanation21
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Service Delivery Issues20
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Workload Analysis15
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KY Core Content Standards6
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Syllogisms20
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Analogies15
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Proverbs and Fables13
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Sarcasm & Ambiguity21
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Metaphors and Similes12
