A longitudinal study of language acquisition in autistic and down syndrome children

Tager–Flusberg, Helen; Calkins, Susan D.; Nolin, Tina; Baumberger, Therese; Anderson, Marcia; Chadwick-Dias, Ann

doi:10.1007/bf02206853

“…They were comparable to the autistic children in Tager-Flusberg, H. & Calkins, S. (1990). Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar?…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…The corresponding figures for the Down's syndrome and normal subjects were nil and two respectively. Using a Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks test, the difference between imitation and spontaneous MLU was highly significant for all groups (autistic : T = 12, p < 0.002; Down's syndrome : T = o, Tager-Flusberg, H. & Calkins, S. (1990). Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar?…”

Section: R E S U L T Smentioning

confidence: 97%

“…These results confirm the analyses of the MLU data indicating that the grammatical structure of spontaneous speech is significantly more advanced than imitation speech, for all the groups of children in this study. Even though only 13 of the 192 possible comparisons presented in Table 2 revealed higher maximum IPSyn scores in imitation than in spontaneous speech, we examined the data to see whether there were any relationships between MLU, amount of imitative speech, and such use of Tager-Flusberg, H. & Calkins, S. (1990). Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar?…”

Section: R E S U L T Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…an article, would be scored maximum N5. The corpus with the maximum score of N7 was then identified Tager-Flusberg, H. & Calkins, S. (1990). Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar?…”

Section: R E S U L T Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also included a control group of normally developing children who were matched to the other two groups on MLU. In this way we were able to study a relatively large number of subjects who covered a range of individual differences in imitation as well as in non-linguistic social and Tager-Flusberg, H. & Calkins, S. (1990). Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar? Evidence from a study of autistic, Down's syndrome and normal children

Tager–Flusberg¹,

Calkins

²

1990

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A B S T R A C TThis paper re-opens the question of whether imitation plays a significant role in the acquisition of grammar. Data for this study came from four samples of naturalistic mother-child speech taken over the course of one year from four autistic, four Down's syndrome and four normal children, covering a range of MLU stages. In general, autistic children used more formulaic language, including imitations, than Down's syndrome children, who in turn used more than the normal children. Comparisons of imitative and spontaneous corpora from the same transcripts were made using MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax. The main findings were that, with few exceptions, spontaneous speech utterances were longer, and contained more advanced grammatical constructions than did the imitation utterances. These findings held across all three groups of subjects. We conclude that imitation does not facilitate grammatical development.

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Age-related language characteristics of children and adolescents with fragile X syndrome

Fisch

¹

,

Holden

²

,

Carpenter³

et al. 1999

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In addition to moderate-to-severe mental retardation (MR), the fragile X [fra(X)] mutation produces significant impediments in speech and language. Severe delays in speech and language have been demonstrated in both adult males and young individuals with the fra(X) mutation. Having observed longitudinal declines in IQ scores in young males with fra(X) and given the relationship between cognitive ability and language skill, we wanted to determine whether speech-language deficits in young males with fra(X) were age-related in ways comparable with those observed in cognitive deficits. We examined a small sample (n = 16) of children and adolescents, ages 6-17 years, using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamental-Preschool (CELF-P). The CELF-P is used to evaluate language deficits in preschool children and assesses receptive and expressive language ability. It is standardized for children ages 3-7 years and provides age-normed standard scores. To evaluate changes in language scores, we converted raw scores into age-equivalents. Results indicate that males with fra(X) have significantly lower age equivalent scores compared with females. A cross-sectional analysis of males' age-equivalent scores reveals that a plateau is reached at approximately 48 months. Our findings suggest that, as with IQ and adaptive behavior scores, language development in young, fully mutated fra(X) individuals appears to reach a plateau as they age.

show abstract

Age‐related language characteristics of children and adolescents with fragile X syndrome

Fisch

¹

,

Holden

²

,

Carpenter³

et al. 1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In addition to moderate-to-severe mental retardation (MR), the fragile X [fra(X)] mutation produces significant impediments in speech and language. Severe delays in speech and language have been demonstrated in both adult males and young individuals with the fra(X) mutation. Having observed longitudinal declines in IQ scores in young males with fra(X) and given the relationship between cognitive ability and language skill, we wanted to determine whether speech-language deficits in young males with fra(X) were age-related in ways comparable with those observed in cognitive deficits. We examined a small sample (n = 16) of children and adolescents, ages 6-17 years, using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamental-Preschool (CELF-P). The CELF-P is used to evaluate language deficits in preschool children and assesses receptive and expressive language ability. It is standardized for children ages 3-7 years and provides age-normed standard scores. To evaluate changes in language scores, we converted raw scores into age-equivalents. Results indicate that males with fra(X) have significantly lower age equivalent scores compared with females. A cross-sectional analysis of males' age-equivalent scores reveals that a plateau is reached at approximately 48 months. Our findings suggest that, as with IQ and adaptive behavior scores, language development in young, fully mutated fra(X) individuals appears to reach a plateau as they age.

show abstract

A longitudinal study of language acquisition in autistic and down syndrome children

Cited by 282 publications

References 31 publications

Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar? Evidence from a study of autistic, Down's syndrome and normal children

Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar? Evidence from a study of autistic, Down's syndrome and normal children

Age-related language characteristics of children and adolescents with fragile X syndrome

Age‐related language characteristics of children and adolescents with fragile X syndrome

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