Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2020) | Viewed by 25293

Special Issue Editor

Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Facultade de Filoloxía (Departamento de Lingua e Literatura Españolas, Teoría da Literatura e Lingüística Xeral), Avda. Castelao, s/n. Campus Norte, 15782 Santiago de Compostela (ESPAÑA)
Interests: language acquisition; clinical linguistics; linguistic technologies; minority languages

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

The aim of this Special Issue is to showcase state-of-the art articles on different issues related to atypical speech, language and communication development in childhood, younger adults and senior people. Specifically we aim at putting together research from different disciplines, intending to cover a complete set of conditions causing those linguistic disorders.

As a consequence of the complex and multifaceted nature of human language, on the one hand, the study of children's communicative difficulties is at the interface between medicine (pediatricians, neurologists, ENT specialists) and the allied professions (speech and language therapists, audiologists), as well as education, clinical linguistics and psychology.. On the other hand, the study of age-related changes in cognitive and language functions has been also focused by different disciplines including linguistics, communication sciences, psychology, gerontology and neuroscience, among others. In both cases, professionals in these disciplines may adopt different ways of conceptualizing and approaching the communicative difficulties that affect these populations.

By bringing together papers from multiple disciplines and perspectives we hope to be able to gain a better understanding of the field and to share new insights regarding methodology. In this sense, we seek contributions which explore any area related to the development of linguistic abilities in exceptional circumstances in its different dimensions and within the framework of multiple methodologies and formal accounts as used by researchers in the field. These contributions may be either theory-oriented and critically examine issues related to the main topic of this Special Issue or empirically-based, thus  providing findings through solid data and research design.

With regard to children’s communicative disorders, we particularly welcome contributions that take both a usage-based theoretical framework and a social-pragmatic approach to linguistic abilities in childhood (Tomasello 2003, 2008) and that aim at providing an answer to the following questions: (i) to what extent do the communicative difficulties children experience in everyday life depend only on the nature of their impairments?; and (ii) which is the role played by the type of opportunities given by the environment? (Bishop et al. 2016). This approach will allow us to establish levels of functional impairment instead of classifying children as suffering from this or that disability. In this sense, we would like to emphasize the need to address issues such as cultural and linguistic diversity (Battle 2002, Goldstein 2000 and Roseberry-McKibbin 2018). There has been relatively little work investigating populations other than monolingual speakers of Indo-European languages and even though Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (2019) present an overview of the most recent findings in several relevant fields dealing with atypical language development in children speaking Romance languages, further research is also required to investigate the implications not only of culturally and linguistically diverse societies in bi/multilingual children with speech, language and communication development difficulties, but also the implications of this approach for assessing and treating individuals with language needs. We believe that this Special Issue will contribute to address this research gap by including contributions from researchers working with multicultural and/or bi/multilingual children whose linguistic abilities develop under exceptional circumstances.In relation to communication, hearing and swallowing disorders in the older adult (either mono- or multilingual), it is our goal to provide current information regarding not only normal aging changes in cognitive and linguistic processes, but also exceptional ones, which refer to a language deterioration at language comprehension and production level as well as to swallowing function. The question becomes to what extent can they interfere with daily living and independent functioning? In other words, what we bear in mind are some of the specific communicative declines which are often seen in senior people such as word retrieval (namely the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon), sentence comprehension, reading or discourse abilities, among others. (Wright 2016, Hickey et al. 2018)

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

* Atypical linguistic abilities development (including delayed or deviant language acquisition difficulties): Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

* Speech, Language and Communication Developmental Disorders associated with biomedical conditions (neurobiological aspects, genetic syndromes)

* Sign Languages Disorders (Deafness and Hearing loss)

* Co-occurring disorders associated with or derived from Speech, Language and Communication Developmental Disorders: socio-contextual, emotional and behavioural aspects; learning disabilities related to atypical language development in childhood.

* Linguistic technologies at the service of Speech, Language and Communication disorders

* Atypical bi/multilingual Speech, Language and Communication disorders (including minority/minoritized languages)

* Neurodegenerative diseases (i.e., Dementia -early-onset dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia-,  Parkinson’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Multiple Sclerosis)

* Acquired neurogenic language disorders (Cerebrovascular diseases, i.e. Stroke-Related Aphasia)

* Speech Sound Disorders: voice and fluency disorders, motor speech disorders (articulation disorders, dysarthria, dyspraxia)

* Diagnosis and assessment of Speech, Language and Communication disorders: early diagnosis, dynamic and ecologically valid assessment (linguistic profiling, natural observation questionnaires/interviews), standardized tests

 

The deadline for abstract submissions is March30, 2020. The length of abstracts should be around 500 words. Abstracts can be sent to the Guest Editor of this volume ([email protected]) or to Languages editorial office ([email protected]). Once the abstract is approved, we expect to receive a full version of the manuscript by May 30, 2020.

All submitted manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed. The assessment criteria include originality and significance of research, theoretically-driven literature review and currency of references, validity and reliability of research designs and methods. As to the projected length of the Special Issue and articles, the overall target length of this Special Issue would be 90,000 to 135,000 words with articles that are between 8,000 and 10,000 words in length; that is, 10 to 12 articles plus a solid introductory content article. 

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

  • Abstract submission deadline: March 30, 2020
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: April 15, 2020
  • Full manuscript deadline: July 30, 2020

We look forward to receiving your abstract submissions!

Prof. Ana Isabel Codesido-García
Guest Editor

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • developmental speech–language–communication disorders
  • bi/multicultural–bi/multilingual populations
  • minority/minoritized languages
  • psycholinguistics
  • clinical linguistics
  • genetic syndromes
  • sign languages
  • linguistic technologies
  • diagnosis and assessment

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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24 pages, 492 KiB  
Article
Theory of Mind, Executive Functions, and Syntax in Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
by Maria Andreou, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Stephanie Durrleman and Eleni Peristeri
Languages 2020, 5(4), 67; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/languages5040067 - 25 Nov 2020
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 6358
Abstract
Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) are a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ToM may be enhanced by various factors, including bilingualism, executive functions (EF), and complex syntax. This work investigates the language-cognition interface in ASD by exploring whether ToM can [...] Read more.
Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) are a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ToM may be enhanced by various factors, including bilingualism, executive functions (EF), and complex syntax. This work investigates the language-cognition interface in ASD by exploring whether ToM can be enhanced by bilingualism, whether such ToM boosts would be due to EF or syntax, and whether routes to mentalizing would differ between bilinguals and monolinguals on the spectrum. Twenty-seven monolingual Greek-speaking and twenty-nine bilingual Albanian-Greek children with ASD were tested on ToM reasoning in verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks, an executive function 2-back task, and a sentence repetition task. Results revealed that bilingual children with ASD performed better than monolinguals with ASD in the low-verbal ToM and the 2-back tasks. In the sentence repetition task, bilinguals scored higher than monolinguals in complex sentences, and specifically in adverbials and relatives. Regarding the relations between ToM, EF, and sentence repetition, the monolingual group’s performance in the verbal ToM tasks was associated with complement syntax, whereas, for the bilingual children with ASD, performance in both verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks was associated with EF and adverbial clause repetition. The overall pattern of results suggests that mentalizing may follow distinct pathways across the two groups. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development)
18 pages, 1163 KiB  
Article
A Developmental Disorder of Signed Language Production in a Native Deaf Signer of ASL
by David Quinto-Pozos and Frances Cooley
Languages 2020, 5(4), 40; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/languages5040040 - 21 Oct 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3145
Abstract
Evidence for a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) could surface with language processing/comprehension, language production, or a combination of both. Whereas, various studies have described cases of DLD in signing deaf children, there exist few detailed examples of deaf children who exhibit production issues [...] Read more.
Evidence for a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) could surface with language processing/comprehension, language production, or a combination of both. Whereas, various studies have described cases of DLD in signing deaf children, there exist few detailed examples of deaf children who exhibit production issues in the absence of processing or comprehension challenges or motor deficits. We describe such a situation by detailing a case study of “Gregory”, a deaf native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). We adopt a detailed case-study methodology for obtaining information from Gregory’s family and school, which we combine with linguistic and non-linguistic data that we collected through one-on-one sessions with Gregory. The results provide evidence of persistent issues with language production (in particular, atypical articulation of some phonological aspects of signs), yet typical comprehension skills and unremarkable fine-motor motor skills. We also provide a snapshot of Gregory’s rich linguistic environment, which we speculate, may serve to attenuate his production deficit. The results of this study have implications for the provision of language services for signing deaf children in schools and also for language therapists. We propose that language therapists who are fluent in signed language be trained to work with signing children. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development)
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20 pages, 486 KiB  
Article
Cognitive Skills Involved in Reading Comprehension of Adolescents with Low Educational Opportunities
by Valeria Abusamra, Micaela Difalcis, Gisela Martínez, Daniel M. Low and Jesica Formoso
Languages 2020, 5(3), 34; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/languages5030034 - 15 Sep 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4532
Abstract
Reading comprehension is a fundamental resource for educational and social development. It is a skill that brings into play a diverse and complex set of processes and cognitive functions based on building a mental representation of a given text. We set out to [...] Read more.
Reading comprehension is a fundamental resource for educational and social development. It is a skill that brings into play a diverse and complex set of processes and cognitive functions based on building a mental representation of a given text. We set out to study how different domain-general and linguistic abilities explain text comprehension in a population of secondary school students with low educational opportunities. The sample consisted of 45 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 from two secondary schools in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Each participant was evaluated both in-group and individually for three sessions during school hours. A text comprehension screening test and a battery of tasks that measure different underlying cognitive processes were administered. Using multiple linear regression, we found that vocabulary, non-word reading, and verbal inhibition are the skills that best explain reading comprehension skills. Understanding how much different domain-general and linguistic subprocesses are associated with text comprehension is key to designing effective interventions that are also grounded in theory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development)
14 pages, 397 KiB  
Article
Voice Characteristics in Smith–Magenis Syndrome: An Acoustic Study of Laryngeal Biomechanics
by Irene Hidalgo-De la Guía, Elena Garayzábal-Heinze and Pedro Gómez-Vilda
Languages 2020, 5(3), 31; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/languages5030031 - 31 Aug 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2535
Abstract
Smith–Magenis syndrome (SMS) is a rare genetic disease characterized by intellectual disability, serious behavior disorders, neurodevelopment delay, and speech and language disorders. An acoustic and biomechanical analysis of the voice of SMS young adults was carried out due to (a) the close relationship [...] Read more.
Smith–Magenis syndrome (SMS) is a rare genetic disease characterized by intellectual disability, serious behavior disorders, neurodevelopment delay, and speech and language disorders. An acoustic and biomechanical analysis of the voice of SMS young adults was carried out due to (a) the close relationship between the laryngeal biomechanics and the clinical and emotional state of a person; (b) the fact that no research on the voice in this syndrome has been conducted previously. The vocal timbre of most people diagnosed with SMS does not seem to be according to the complexion of diagnosed individuals, nor to their gender and age, so it could be interesting to attend the analysis of phonation of people with a rare genetic syndrome such as SMS. We used BioMetPhon, a specific piece of software to analyze the glottal source and biomechanics of vocals folds. Nineteen features related to dysphonia, physiology, and biomechanics of the vocal folds were considered. The adult phonation of 9 individuals with SMS was analyzed and compared to 100 normative male and female adult voices. Results showed that the phonation of the SMS group significantly deviates from the adult normophonic profile in more than one of the 19 features examined, such as stiffness of the thyroarytenoid muscle and dynamic mass of the vocal fold cover, among others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development)

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13 pages, 403 KiB  
Case Report
Language Development Disorder in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), a Case Study
by Yuri E. Vega-Rodríguez, Elena Garayzabal-Heinze and Esther Moraleda-Sepúlveda
Languages 2020, 5(4), 37; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/languages5040037 - 10 Oct 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 6950
Abstract
Prenatal alcohol exposure can cause developmental damage in children. There are different types and ranges of alterations that fall under the name of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Disabilities in learning, cognition, and behavior are observed. Environmental conditions are an influencing factor in [...] Read more.
Prenatal alcohol exposure can cause developmental damage in children. There are different types and ranges of alterations that fall under the name of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Disabilities in learning, cognition, and behavior are observed. Environmental conditions are an influencing factor in this population since they are generally adverse and are either not diagnosed at an early stage or given the appropriate support and approach. We present a case study of a 9-year-old child, in which all the variables affecting his development (FASD diagnosis and socioenvironmental conditions) were observed and analyzed. His early childhood under institutional care, the move to a foster home at the age of 6, and several measures of evaluation from foster care to the present are described. Difficulties in vocabulary, access to vocabulary, morphology, syntax, grammar, oral narrative, pragmatics, speech, and communication were observed, along with cognitive difficulties in memory, perception and executive functioning, social adaptation, learning, and behavior. An early diagnosis and approach enable this population to develop skills in different dimensions to address early adversity despite their neurological and behavioral commitment. Speech-language pathologist services are crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of the language and communication difficulties that characterize this syndrome. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atypical Speech, Language and Communication Development)
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