This chapter presents a state of the art in atypical language development in Romance languages and introduces, as well, the chapters in this book. The first part describes the aim of the book. The second part describes typical language acquisition in Romance language and their main differences with English. Finally, the third section focuses on four clinical conditions that show atypical language development: prematurity, Specific Language Impairment, hearing loss, and genetic syndromes.
The preterm population is not characterised by an initial delay that recovers during development, but by atypical developmental trajectories, that can be understood through the neuroconstructivist approach. The neuropsychological profiles of very preterm infants show a great heterogeneity, depending on neonatal immaturity, medical complications, environmental, relational and social factors. The developmental trajectory of very preterm children is described in relation to the acquisition and consolidation of language and literacy from early infancy to adolescence. Indexes for early individuation of language and literacy delays, as well as for planning focused interventions, are discussed.
This chapter aims to compare language development and executive functions (EFs) in healthy preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) children, and to explore the influence of EFs and other factors on language abilities. One group of 111 low-risk PT children and another group of 34 FT children were followed from 4 to 5 years of age, and predictors of language abilities were analysed. The PT children in our study did not obtain significantly lower results than the FT children in any EF task. Cognitive score was the main predictor of linguistic results. EFs, verbal memory and non-verbal working memory in particular, had a moderately significant effect on morphosyntactic production and on grammar understanding. The results seem to reinforce the declarative/procedural model.
This study analysed the Risk for Language Delay (RLD) in a sample of healthy preterm children and a full-term control group. We collected direct and indirect measures of language development from 10 to 60 months, and we examined the influence of biomedical, cognitive and environmental variables over the RLD at 22, 30, and 60 months. While at the early ages there were not significant differences in the prevalence of RLD between preterm and full-term children, at 60 months receptive grammar delay was more frequent in the preterm group. Also, preterm children showed a higher instability in the prevalence of RLD over time. Lastly, cognitive development, maternal education and early expressive vocabulary were the most important factors to predict RLD.
Comparative study with infants differing in gestational age at birth, tested on a dual word segmentation and mapping task with natural language passages and visual cues to facilitate word extraction and word-referent association, two abilities linked to vocabulary building. Infants were tested at 9 months corrected age for gestation, with preterm infants having longer language experience than full-terms, but similar maturational age. Only full terms succeeded on the word mapping test. While visual cues were expected to facilitate word extraction, unsuccessful mapping is possibly related to the cognitive demands of the task, requiring simultaneous processes for the young learner. Differences in language development levels were also identified, suggesting a complex interplay of factors behind preterm infants’ early language learning skills.
Many Spanish-speaking children from low socioeconomic status grow in families with low maternal education (ME), which may reflect differences in quality and quantity of children’s input. Lexical and grammatical abilities from these children are frequently confused with those of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The aim of this research was to compare lexical and grammatical abilities in 400 monolingual children with and without SLI (aged 4;0 to 6;11) classified in ME groups. Analyses of variance revealed differences between ME groups. Regression analyses revealed that ME and age contributed to the greatest amount of variance in lexical but not grammatical abilities. The discussion is centered on the importance of considering ME as a distal factor that affects linguistic abilities.
Children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) have problems understanding idioms. However, whether similar difficulties are present in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and which cognitive and linguistic factors are implied, is still not fully addressed. In this chapter the competence to understand idioms in Spanish children with SLI and PLI is compared to a typically developing group, using a verbal and a visual condition. Visual idioms challenged both children with SLI and PLI, but verbal indioms only challenged children with PLI. Also, their performance was related to their grammar and pragmatics skills, but not to the vocabulary ones. However, only children with PLI improved their competence on the visual condition. Practical implications for diagnosing and designing interventions are discussed.
The chapter presents our findings on a complex experimental comparative study of the narrative analysis of language-impaired and typically-developing monolingual Russian children. The data of storytelling and retelling according to wordless picture sequences were collected from specifically language-impaired preschoolers, dyslexic school-age children, and typically-developing peers. Then, following the methodology of the dynamic approach to narrative assessment, an impact of such factors as session, story complexity, and story mode on the measures of narrative macrostructure, microstructure, linguistic dysfluency, and language errors was estimated. The study provides evidence that the given extralinguistic factors significantly influence the narrative measures; namely, the language-impaired children, contrary to the typically-developing peers, tended to be significantly sensitive to the experiment session and the story mode.
Verbs play an essential role in enabling sentences to be interpreted rapidly in real time. The objective of this work is to investigate how verb information is used during real-time comprehension of sentences in Spanish. Twenty-five children (aged 5.3–8.2 years) with specific language impairment (SLI), fifty typically developing children (aged 3.3–8.2 years), and thirty-one normal adults participated in three eye-tracking experiments involving spoken language comprehension. Participants listened to simple sentences in the presence of four depicted objects, only one of which satisfied the semantic restrictions of the verb. Eye movements revealed that children with SLI were able to recognize and retrieve the meaning of the verb rapidly enough to anticipate the upcoming semantically appropriate referent.
Previous studies have found a deficit in emotion recognition skills in children with hearing loss linked to their linguistic development. Our aim is to explore how different linguistic-communicative skills influence the capacity to recognise emotions from faces, at different developmental points, in children with and without hearing loss. We administered language measures and a task of emotion recognition (ER) to 166 children (75 with hearing loss). Results show that ER was linked to various linguistic-communicative skills in children with hearing loss, whereas fewer connections existed in hearing children. As these relations varied with age, we discuss how the importance of the different linguistic and communicative skills for ER varies throughout development and as a function of hearing status.
This study is meant to describe the executive functions (EFs) and eye fixation in a group of 13 children with Cochlear Implants (CI) and their controls with the purpose to establish the relationship between the mentioned skills and language. Children with CI showed a significantly lower performance and need more time in tasks of inhibition, mental flexibility, and working memory. Children with CI have different visual fixation patterns in which they tend to stare longer in peripheral areas, which might explain a less effective executive functioning. These findings coincide with the general domain of hearing theory, which states that hearing loss can affect other cognitive domains that are not related with auditory input and has implications for different sensorial systems.
A strong association between early vocabulary comprehension and production has been shown in typically developing children (TD), and there is robust evidence for a lexicon-grammar association. These relations have been inconsistent in children with Down Syndrome (DS). In this study, ten Spanish-speaking children with DS were observed for vocabulary comprehension, production and initial morphosyntax using a parental report, the Down-CDI. Results showed high individual differences and developmental patterns were not similar to the literature of children with TD. The relation between vocabulary size, composition, sentence length and complexity was inconsistent. Thus, some developmental patterns of TD children are similar in children with DS. There is an association between grammar and vocabulary at the general level, but not within specific components.
This chapter presents a comparative perspective on the morphological profiles of Williams Syndrome (WS) and Down Syndrome (DS). The initial research described these neurodevelopmental disorders as cases of specific preservation and delay of grammar, respectively, whereas later approaches have challenged such assumptions. The present study aimed to contribute to this discussion with data from 18 Spanish-speaking adolescents in three groups (WS, DS and typical development). Spontaneous speech was analysed with the tools of the CHILDES Project, transcribing and coding the parts of speech and morphological errors. While errors are less frequent in WS than in DS, their type and distribution remain atypical in both syndromes which points towards differential trajectories of language development.
Williams Syndrome narratives tend to display atypically frequent uses of evaluative language. The aim of the present study is to determine the narrative language profiles of a group of 12 WS participants. We video-recorded their oral recounts of a wordless animated video and compared them to those of typically developing children matched for verbal abilities (matched by MLU). We analyzed narrative structure and evaluative devices referring to internal states and to evidentiality. Our findings suggest that the narrative length and structure of WS and TD groups were similar, but the WS narratives lacked overall coherence and clarity. The use of evaluative language in WS was at the level expected for verbal age, and thus, not significantly excessive.
This chapter presents a state of the art in atypical language development in Romance languages and introduces, as well, the chapters in this book. The first part describes the aim of the book. The second part describes typical language acquisition in Romance language and their main differences with English. Finally, the third section focuses on four clinical conditions that show atypical language development: prematurity, Specific Language Impairment, hearing loss, and genetic syndromes.
The preterm population is not characterised by an initial delay that recovers during development, but by atypical developmental trajectories, that can be understood through the neuroconstructivist approach. The neuropsychological profiles of very preterm infants show a great heterogeneity, depending on neonatal immaturity, medical complications, environmental, relational and social factors. The developmental trajectory of very preterm children is described in relation to the acquisition and consolidation of language and literacy from early infancy to adolescence. Indexes for early individuation of language and literacy delays, as well as for planning focused interventions, are discussed.
This chapter aims to compare language development and executive functions (EFs) in healthy preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) children, and to explore the influence of EFs and other factors on language abilities. One group of 111 low-risk PT children and another group of 34 FT children were followed from 4 to 5 years of age, and predictors of language abilities were analysed. The PT children in our study did not obtain significantly lower results than the FT children in any EF task. Cognitive score was the main predictor of linguistic results. EFs, verbal memory and non-verbal working memory in particular, had a moderately significant effect on morphosyntactic production and on grammar understanding. The results seem to reinforce the declarative/procedural model.
This study analysed the Risk for Language Delay (RLD) in a sample of healthy preterm children and a full-term control group. We collected direct and indirect measures of language development from 10 to 60 months, and we examined the influence of biomedical, cognitive and environmental variables over the RLD at 22, 30, and 60 months. While at the early ages there were not significant differences in the prevalence of RLD between preterm and full-term children, at 60 months receptive grammar delay was more frequent in the preterm group. Also, preterm children showed a higher instability in the prevalence of RLD over time. Lastly, cognitive development, maternal education and early expressive vocabulary were the most important factors to predict RLD.
Comparative study with infants differing in gestational age at birth, tested on a dual word segmentation and mapping task with natural language passages and visual cues to facilitate word extraction and word-referent association, two abilities linked to vocabulary building. Infants were tested at 9 months corrected age for gestation, with preterm infants having longer language experience than full-terms, but similar maturational age. Only full terms succeeded on the word mapping test. While visual cues were expected to facilitate word extraction, unsuccessful mapping is possibly related to the cognitive demands of the task, requiring simultaneous processes for the young learner. Differences in language development levels were also identified, suggesting a complex interplay of factors behind preterm infants’ early language learning skills.
Many Spanish-speaking children from low socioeconomic status grow in families with low maternal education (ME), which may reflect differences in quality and quantity of children’s input. Lexical and grammatical abilities from these children are frequently confused with those of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The aim of this research was to compare lexical and grammatical abilities in 400 monolingual children with and without SLI (aged 4;0 to 6;11) classified in ME groups. Analyses of variance revealed differences between ME groups. Regression analyses revealed that ME and age contributed to the greatest amount of variance in lexical but not grammatical abilities. The discussion is centered on the importance of considering ME as a distal factor that affects linguistic abilities.
Children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) have problems understanding idioms. However, whether similar difficulties are present in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and which cognitive and linguistic factors are implied, is still not fully addressed. In this chapter the competence to understand idioms in Spanish children with SLI and PLI is compared to a typically developing group, using a verbal and a visual condition. Visual idioms challenged both children with SLI and PLI, but verbal indioms only challenged children with PLI. Also, their performance was related to their grammar and pragmatics skills, but not to the vocabulary ones. However, only children with PLI improved their competence on the visual condition. Practical implications for diagnosing and designing interventions are discussed.
The chapter presents our findings on a complex experimental comparative study of the narrative analysis of language-impaired and typically-developing monolingual Russian children. The data of storytelling and retelling according to wordless picture sequences were collected from specifically language-impaired preschoolers, dyslexic school-age children, and typically-developing peers. Then, following the methodology of the dynamic approach to narrative assessment, an impact of such factors as session, story complexity, and story mode on the measures of narrative macrostructure, microstructure, linguistic dysfluency, and language errors was estimated. The study provides evidence that the given extralinguistic factors significantly influence the narrative measures; namely, the language-impaired children, contrary to the typically-developing peers, tended to be significantly sensitive to the experiment session and the story mode.
Verbs play an essential role in enabling sentences to be interpreted rapidly in real time. The objective of this work is to investigate how verb information is used during real-time comprehension of sentences in Spanish. Twenty-five children (aged 5.3–8.2 years) with specific language impairment (SLI), fifty typically developing children (aged 3.3–8.2 years), and thirty-one normal adults participated in three eye-tracking experiments involving spoken language comprehension. Participants listened to simple sentences in the presence of four depicted objects, only one of which satisfied the semantic restrictions of the verb. Eye movements revealed that children with SLI were able to recognize and retrieve the meaning of the verb rapidly enough to anticipate the upcoming semantically appropriate referent.
Previous studies have found a deficit in emotion recognition skills in children with hearing loss linked to their linguistic development. Our aim is to explore how different linguistic-communicative skills influence the capacity to recognise emotions from faces, at different developmental points, in children with and without hearing loss. We administered language measures and a task of emotion recognition (ER) to 166 children (75 with hearing loss). Results show that ER was linked to various linguistic-communicative skills in children with hearing loss, whereas fewer connections existed in hearing children. As these relations varied with age, we discuss how the importance of the different linguistic and communicative skills for ER varies throughout development and as a function of hearing status.
This study is meant to describe the executive functions (EFs) and eye fixation in a group of 13 children with Cochlear Implants (CI) and their controls with the purpose to establish the relationship between the mentioned skills and language. Children with CI showed a significantly lower performance and need more time in tasks of inhibition, mental flexibility, and working memory. Children with CI have different visual fixation patterns in which they tend to stare longer in peripheral areas, which might explain a less effective executive functioning. These findings coincide with the general domain of hearing theory, which states that hearing loss can affect other cognitive domains that are not related with auditory input and has implications for different sensorial systems.
A strong association between early vocabulary comprehension and production has been shown in typically developing children (TD), and there is robust evidence for a lexicon-grammar association. These relations have been inconsistent in children with Down Syndrome (DS). In this study, ten Spanish-speaking children with DS were observed for vocabulary comprehension, production and initial morphosyntax using a parental report, the Down-CDI. Results showed high individual differences and developmental patterns were not similar to the literature of children with TD. The relation between vocabulary size, composition, sentence length and complexity was inconsistent. Thus, some developmental patterns of TD children are similar in children with DS. There is an association between grammar and vocabulary at the general level, but not within specific components.
This chapter presents a comparative perspective on the morphological profiles of Williams Syndrome (WS) and Down Syndrome (DS). The initial research described these neurodevelopmental disorders as cases of specific preservation and delay of grammar, respectively, whereas later approaches have challenged such assumptions. The present study aimed to contribute to this discussion with data from 18 Spanish-speaking adolescents in three groups (WS, DS and typical development). Spontaneous speech was analysed with the tools of the CHILDES Project, transcribing and coding the parts of speech and morphological errors. While errors are less frequent in WS than in DS, their type and distribution remain atypical in both syndromes which points towards differential trajectories of language development.
Williams Syndrome narratives tend to display atypically frequent uses of evaluative language. The aim of the present study is to determine the narrative language profiles of a group of 12 WS participants. We video-recorded their oral recounts of a wordless animated video and compared them to those of typically developing children matched for verbal abilities (matched by MLU). We analyzed narrative structure and evaluative devices referring to internal states and to evidentiality. Our findings suggest that the narrative length and structure of WS and TD groups were similar, but the WS narratives lacked overall coherence and clarity. The use of evaluative language in WS was at the level expected for verbal age, and thus, not significantly excessive.