Pragmatic aspects of language.

The social communication behaviors of children with language disorders may be inadequate or even inappropriate. Failure to initiate conversation and inappropriately interrupting the speakers are examples.

Prenatal Conditions (alcohol or HIV)

Perinatal Conditions (injury occuring from labor)

Neonatal Conditions (premature birth)

Genetic Syndromes (down syndrome or fragile x)

Evironmental Factors (deprived or impoverished)

Prelinguistic Communication Deficits (eye contact avoidance)

Failure to respond

Failure to follow directions

Delayed speech productions

lack of social smile or intrest like play

reduced use of gestures or only the use of gestures

impaired learning of speech sounds

Specific Langauge Impairment (SLI)

or AKA

Language-Learning Disabled (LLD)

Language disorders in children who are otherwise normal.

About 7-8% of kindergarten children exhibit SLI.

These children have certain characteristics that distinguish them from other populations.

articulatory or phonological problems

less complex syllable structures

word finding difficulites

difficulty understanding abstrct or figurative words

morphological problems (i.e, omission of -ing)

difficulty distinguishing between singular and plural forms of words.

reduced MLU

reduced pragmatic skills

may be more passive than other children in conversation

developing a narrative

reading and writing

topic initiation

turn taking

conversational repairs

etc...

Mental Retardation

Disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills.

Measured in terms of IQ, mental retardation is subaverage intelligence.

Limited communication skills is one of the significant features.

Inherited genetic syndromes (down syndrome).

Environmental induced genetic abnormalities (fetal alcohol syndrome).

A variety of prenantal factors (rubella, lead poisoning, trauma).

Natal factors (fetal anoxia)

Postnatal factors (lead poisoning and rabies)

All areas

phonologic, morphologic, semantic, syntax, and pragmatics.

depressed cognition

Very concrete and have difficulty with abstract concepts.

Smaller more concrete vocabulary than typically developing children.

May also have a gap between comprehension and expression, with comprehension being superior to expression.

Telegraphic speech.

Tend to omit bound morphemes and function words.

Diffulty understanding long and complex sentences.

Develop syntax structures at a slower pace.

Similiar characteristics to those with autism except for communication skills and intellectual levels, which are higher (IQ 70 or above).

Impaired social interactions that are similar to those of children with autism.

Repetitive and stereotyped behaviors that are similiar to those of children with autism.

Social skills training.

Systematic and prolonged language training.

Behavioral management.

Combination of language and behavioral management.

In severe cases AAC.

Mostly Pragmatic treatment.

New and Popular treatment plan (Prizant 2004):

SCRETS Social Communication and Emotional Regulation by implementing Ttransactional Supports: visual supports, environmental arrangements, and communication style adjustments.

Frequent natural setting assessments to determine how they are functioning within those settings.

These children should be served through a comprehensive team approach.

hemiplegia (one side of the body)

paraplegia (only the legs and lower trunk)

monoplegia (only one limb or a part of one)

diplegia (either two legs or two arms)

quadriplegia (all four limbs)

Slow, writing, involuntary movements

due to damage in the basal ganglia

Increased spasticity (increased tone, rigidity of the muscles) as well as stif abrupt, jerky, slow movements.

Due to damage to the motor cortex or direct motor pathways.

Their problems depend on the type of CP they have.

Commonly they have dysarthria and MR.

Multidisciplinary approach

and the use of AAC.

Process of quickly obtaining a general overview of child's language skills.

Most clinicians use screeners to determine whether further testing is needed.

There are some published screeners but often times a quick conversational sample is used.

Provide clinicians with a quantitative means of comparing the child's performance to the performance oflarge groups of children in a similar age group.

Federal laws state that standardized testing must be used in order to place children into special education services.

These tests should not be the only measure of assessment used for making clinical judgments about a child's language skills and the presence of a LLD.

Looks at learner modifiability, or a child's ability to learn when provided with instruction.

Often takes place in a test-teach-retest paradigm, in which the child is tested, taught a new material, and then retested to see how well and quickly he/she learned the material.

The child doesnt get penalized for a lack of experiencs.

Recording a student's language under relatively typical conditions, which usally involve conversation.

Also used to gather MLU and TTR.

MLU

Mean Length of Utterance

MLU=number of morphemes

      number of utterances

TTR

Type-Token Ratio

TTR=number of different words in sample

number of words in sample

For children b/t age of 3 & 8, the TTR is typically 1:2 or .5

Fillers- um, er, uh

Dysfluencies- lllllollipop

Discrete Trial Procedure

TREATMENT

The clinician places a stimulus picture in front of the child, asks the child a relevant question, immediately models the correct response for the child and waits a few seconds for th child to imitate the modeled response, reinforces the child for correct imitation,gives corrective feedbackif the child missed the target response, records the response, and waits a few seconds and initiates the next trial.

TYPICAL THERAPY

Instructions

Modeling

Prompting

Shaping

Manual guidance

Fading

Immediate, Response-contingent feedback

The clinician expands a child's telegraphic or incomplete utterance into a more grammatically complete utterance.

For example: The child "Doggy bark" and the clinician says, "Yes, look at the doggy barking".

Extension

AKA

Expatiation

The clinician comments on the child's utterances and adds new and relevant information.

For example: a child says "Play Ball" and the clinician says, "Yes, you are playing with a big, red ball".