The agreement of caregivers' initial identification of children's developmental problems with the professional assessment in Taiwan

Children's developmental problems vary, with some easier to identify than others. The accuracy of caregivers’ initial identification of children's developmental problems is important in the timely treatment of those problems by medical professionals. In this study, we investigated the degree to which caregivers’ initial identification of children's developmental problems matched the clinical assessment by a team of qualified professionals in a developmental assessment unit of a medical center in Taiwan. The practitioners included a pediatric neurologist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, and two speech therapists. Caregivers of 943 children (age range: 2-80 months; mean: 37.7 months) who visited the unit for a suspected developmental problem were interviewed about the chief problem that led to the caregivers bringing their children to the unit. The results showed high agreement in the global and the motor domains between the caregivers and the professionals, and low agreement in the cognitive and the speech/language domains. The agreement was significantly related to the caregivers’ native origin and socioeconomic status index (SSI). Caregivers with a foreign origin (immigrant mothers) and low SSI were more likely to misidentify their children's problems. It is recommended that pediatric practitioners offer continuing education to caregivers, especially in the domains of cognitive and speech/language development.     

Birdsong memory and the brain: In search of the template

In his pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of filial imprinting, Gabriel Horn has gone a long way to fulfilling Karl Lashley's dream of finding the ‘engram’ or memory trace in the brain. Here we review recent research into the engram(s) of song learning in songbirds, particularly zebra finches. When juvenile songbirds learn their songs from a tutor, they form and alter a central representation of the tutor song, known as the ‘template’. Secondary auditory regions in the caudal medial pallium are likely to contain the neural substrate for the representation of tutor song, but the roles of the different regions remain to be elucidated. Female zebra finches do not sing, but nevertheless form an auditory memory of their father's song, for which the neural substrate is located in the caudomedial pallium. In males that are learning their songs, there is continual interaction between the secondary auditory regions and sensorimotor regions, similar to the interaction between Broca's and Wernicke's areas in human infants acquiring speech and language.     

Factors Affecting the Length of Responses in Field Investigative Interviews of Children (FIIC) in Child Sexual Abuse Cases

In this study some of the most prominent variables considered to facilitate interviewee responses in the literature of field investigative interviews of children (FIIC) are reviewed and included in the analysis of 100 FIICs. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that of all the variables, the interviewer's utterances had the most impact on the children's responses, with the open questions eliciting the longest answers. The variable to follow was the children's age, with the oldest children yielding longer responses than the younger children to the open questions. Contrary to the hypothesis, the interviewer's competence, children's gender, and time of interview had little impact on the length of the children's responses. Possible explanations for the results are discussed.     

Infants’ neural speech discrimination predicts individual differences in grammar ability at 6 years of age and their risk of developing speech-language disorders

The ‘sensitive period’ for phonetic learning posits that between 6 and 12 months of age, infants’ discrimination of native and nonnative speech sounds diverge. Individual differences in this dynamic processing of speech have been shown to predict later language acquisition up to 30 months of age, using parental surveys. Yet, it is unclear whether infant speech discrimination could predict longer-term language outcome and risk for developmental speech-language disorders, which affect up to 16 % of the population. The current study reports a prospective prediction of speech-language skills at a much later age—6 years-old—from the same children’s nonnative speech discrimination at 11 months-old, indexed by MEG mismatch responses. Children’s speech-language skills at 6 were comprehensively evaluated by a speech-language pathologist in two ways: individual differences in spoken grammar, and the presence versus absence of speech-language disorders. Results showed that the prefrontal MEG mismatch response at 11 months not only significantly predicted individual differences in spoken grammar skills at 6 years, but also accurately identified the presence versus absence of speech-language disorders, using a machine-learning classification. These results represent new evidence that advance our theoretical understanding of the neurodevelopmental trajectory of language acquisition and early risk factors for developmental speech-language disorders.     

Prosody in birdsong: A review and perspective

Birdsong shows striking parallels with human speech. Previous comparisons between birdsong and human vocalizations focused on syntax, phonology and phonetics. In this review, we propose that future comparative research should expand its focus to include prosody, i.e. the temporal and melodic properties that extend over larger units of song. To this end, we consider the similarities between birdsong structure and the prosodic hierarchy in human speech and between context-dependent acoustic variations in birdsong and the biological codes in human speech. Moreover, we discuss songbirds’ sensitivity to prosody-like acoustic features and the role of such features in song segmentation and song learning in relation to infants’ sensitivity to prosody and the role of prosody in early language acquisition. Finally, we make suggestions for future comparative birdsong research, including a framework of how prosody in birdsong can be studied. In particular, we propose to analyze birdsong as a multidimensional signal composed of specific acoustic features, and to assess whether these acoustic features are organized into prosody-like structures.     

Children and Adults as Language Learners: Rules,Variation, and Maturational Change

Here we overview our recent research investigating children and adults’ learning of rules and variation. In all these studies, our findings are that children and adults differ in how they acquire linguistic patterns that are productive, variable, inconsistently used, or lexically restricted. Some of our studies examine children's learning of natural languages; other studies expose learners to miniature languages and then ask them to produce novel sentences or judge their grammaticality. In every case there are important differences between learners as a function of their ages. Young children learn categorical rules and categorically follow patterns that are widespread in natural languages, even when their linguistic input exemplifies these patterns only probabilistically. In contrast, adult learners reproduce the probabilistic patterns of the input. Older children are in between, producing regular patterns somewhat more often than they appear in the input but also acquiring some probabilistic variation. These results suggest that the outcome of learning is quite different at different ages and that many of the properties of natural languages may be shaped by the behavior of children as they learn their native languages.     

The co‐development of speech and gesture in children with autism

Recent interest in gesture has led to an understanding of the development of gesture and speech in typically developing young children. Research suggests that initially gesture and speech form two independent systems which combine together temporally and semantically before children enter the two‐word period of language development. However, little is known about gesture development in children's disordered speech. This paper presents two case studies of young children with autism. The children are under 3 years of age and attend an intervention programme to facilitate their social and communication development. Early indications suggest that whilst both gesture and speech development is delayed in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the developmental trajectory is the same as for typically developing children.     

The spectrum of involuntary vocalizations in humans: A video atlas

In clinical practice, involuntary vocalizing behaviors are typically associated with Tourette syndrome and other tic disorders. However, they may also be encountered throughout the entire tenor of neuropsychiatry, movement disorders, and neurodevelopmental syndromes. Importantly, involuntary vocalizing behaviors may often constitute a predominant clinical sign, and, therefore, their early recognition and appropriate classification are necessary to guide diagnosis and treatment. Clinical literature and video‐documented cases on the topic are surprisingly scarce. Here, we pooled data from 5 expert centers of movement disorders, with instructive video material to cover the entire range of involuntary vocalizations in humans. Medical literature was also reviewed to document the range of possible etiologies associated with the different types of vocalizing behaviors and to explore treatment options. We propose a phenomenological classification of involuntary vocalizations within different categorical domains, including (1) tics and tic‐like vocalizations, (2) vocalizations as part of stereotypies, (3) vocalizations as part of dystonia or chorea, (4) continuous vocalizing behaviors such as groaning or grunting, (5) pathological laughter and crying, (6) vocalizations resembling physiological reflexes, and (7) other vocalizations, for example, those associated with exaggerated startle responses, as part of epilepsy and sleep‐related phenomena. We provide comprehensive lists of their associated etiologies, including neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative, neuroimmunological, and structural causes and clinical clues. We then expand on the pathophysiology of the different vocalizing behaviors and comment on available treatment options. Finally, we present an algorithmic approach that covers the wide range of involuntary vocalizations in humans, with the ultimate goal of improving diagnostic accuracy and guiding appropriate treatment. © 2019 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.     

Development of The Viking Speech Scale to classify the speech of children with cerebral palsy

Surveillance registers monitor the prevalence of cerebral palsy and the severity of resulting impairments across time and place. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy can affect children's speech production and limit their intelligibility. We describe the development of a scale to classify children's speech performance for use in cerebral palsy surveillance registers, and its reliability across raters and across time. Speech and language therapists, other healthcare professionals and parents classified the speech of 139 children with cerebral palsy (85 boys, 54 girls; mean age 6.03 years, SD 1.09) from observation and previous knowledge of the children. Another group of health professionals rated children's speech from information in their medical notes. With the exception of parents, raters reclassified children's speech at least four weeks after their initial classification. Raters were asked to rate how easy the scale was to use and how well the scale described the child's speech production using Likert scales. Inter-rater reliability was moderate to substantial (k > .58 for all comparisons). Test–retest reliability was substantial to almost perfect for all groups (k > .68). Over 74% of raters found the scale easy or very easy to use; 66% of parents and over 70% of health care professionals judged the scale to describe children's speech well or very well. We conclude that the Viking Speech Scale is a reliable tool to describe the speech performance of children with cerebral palsy, which can be applied through direct observation of children or through case note review.     

Social touch interacts with infants’ learning of auditory patterns

Infants’ experiences are defined by the presence of concurrent streams of perceptual information in social environments. Touch from caregivers is an especially pervasive feature of early development. Using three lab experiments and a corpus of naturalistic caregiver-infant interactions, we examined the relevance of touch in supporting infants’ learning of structure in an altogether different modality: audition. In each experiment, infants listened to sequences of sine-wave tones following the same abstract pattern (e.g., ABA or ABB) while receiving time-locked touch sequences from an experimenter that provided either informative or uninformative cues to the pattern (e.g., knee-elbow-knee or knee-elbow-elbow). Results showed that intersensorily redundant touch supported infants’ learning of tone patterns, but learning varied depending on the typicality of touch sequences in infants’ lives. These findings suggest that infants track touch sequences from moment to moment and in aggregate from their caregivers, and use the intersensory redundancy provided by touch to discover patterns in their environment.     

Can parenting foster resiliency to mental health problems in at-risk infants?

Knowledge is scarce about how to promote mental health in children when they have started life facing various risks. This study investigated whether parents' interactions with their young children can facilitate mental health resiliency after starting life ‘at risk’ in infancy. Data were sourced from a longitudinal population-based study in Victoria, Australia. An ‘at-risk’ infant sample (N = 283) was identified, with difficult temperament, maternal mental health problems, substance misuse, home violence and social isolation (one or more risks). Parenting practices were measured throughout early childhood. The Child Behaviour Checklist assessed resilience at school-entry. Discriminant function analysis differentiated at-risk infants who became resilient versus non-resilient. Findings highlighted parenting interactions with young children characterised by low levels of harsh discipline promoting resiliency over time. A third of babies in the population may face significant stressors. Parents facing early risks could be supported to access evidence-based programs to facilitate young children's mental health.     

Communication and language in mental handicap

People involved in facilitating communication and language in children with mental handicaps often use questions to elicit language from them. Using questions is not always very effective. Their extensive use might even hinder acquisition of spontaneous, creative, and functional language. The previous article surveyed various types of questions and indicated those which might be useful in intervention. This article argues that short responses to questions are often appropriate and should be accepted, examines facilitators' reactions to children's responses, and notes that children need to learn to ask as well as to answer questions.     

Oscillatory activity and EEG phase synchrony of concurrent word segmentation and meaning-mapping in 9-year-old children

When learning a new language, one must segment words from continuous speech and associate them with meanings. These complex processes can be boosted by attentional mechanisms triggered by multi-sensory information. Previous electrophysiological studies suggest that brain oscillations are sensitive to different hierarchical complexity levels of the input, making them a plausible neural substrate for speech parsing. Here, we investigated the functional role of brain oscillations during concurrent speech segmentation and meaning acquisition in sixty 9-year-old children. We collected EEG data during an audio-visual statistical learning task during which children were exposed to a learning condition with consistent word-picture associations and a random condition with inconsistent word-picture associations before being tested on their ability to recall words and word-picture associations. We capitalized on the brain dynamics to align neural activity to the same rate as an external rhythmic stimulus to explore modulations of neural synchronization and phase synchronization between electrodes during multi-sensory word learning. Results showed enhanced power at both word- and syllabic-rate and increased EEG phase synchronization between frontal and occipital regions in the learning compared to the random condition. These findings suggest that multi-sensory cueing and attentional mechanisms play an essential role in children's successful word learning.     

Contributing to the early detection of Rett syndrome: the potential role of auditory Gestalt perception

To assess whether there are qualitatively deviant characteristics in the early vocalizations of children with Rett syndrome, we had 400 native Austrian-German speakers listen to audio recordings of vocalizations from typically developing girls and girls with Rett syndrome. The audio recordings were rated as (a) inconspicuous, (b) conspicuous or (c) not able to decide between (a) and (b). The results showed that participants were accurate in differentiating the vocalizations of typically developing children compared to children with Rett syndrome. However, the accuracy for rating verbal behaviors was dependent on the type of vocalization with greater accuracy for canonical babbling compared to cooing vocalizations. The results suggest a potential role for the use of rating child vocalizations for early detection of Rett syndrome. This is important because clinical criteria related to speech and language development remain important for early identification of Rett syndrome.     

Typically developing and speech‐impaired children's adherence to the sonority hypothesis

During phonological development, children frequently produce consonant clusters as consonant singletons, a process commonly referred to as cluster reduction. The principles of sonority may provide a theoretical basis for explaining patterns of cluster reduction evident in children's speech. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether children's word‐initial cluster reductions adhered to the sonority hypothesis. Study one involved 16 children with typically developing speech, and study two involved 40 children with impaired speech. The children's consonant cluster productions characterized by a cluster reduction were analysed. When both groups of participants reduced word‐initial clusters to a target consonant, the sonority hypothesis was adhered to; but when the clusters were reduced to a non‐target consonant, the sonority hypothesis was violated. Analysis of target and non‐target reductions revealed that some reductions of the individual clusters, and those within specific cluster categories, adhered to the sonority hypothesis while others did not. In light of these findings, it is suggested that although sonority is a valuable concept, it may not account for all patterns of cluster reduction evident in children's speech.     

The collaborative construction of non‐serious episodes of interaction by non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers

Inequality in communicative resources available to non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy in comparison with their ‘naturally’ speaking co‐participants has material consequences for the ways in which face‐to‐face interaction is organized. Analyses of interaction involving non‐speaking children with physical disability and speaking adults has often interpreted the patterns of interaction observed as indicative of non‐speaking children's apparent passivity in interaction. Research concerned with these children's interactions with their peers has shown evidence of non‐speaking children's active engagement in episodes of interaction characterized by, for example, shared laughter and heightened affect. The analysis presented here utilizes the principles and practices of Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine how non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers bring about and organize episodes of non‐serious interaction. In so doing the analysis reveals how non‐speaking children are demonstrably active in developing the interaction as non‐serious, and how both children collaborate in constituting the non‐speaking child as playfully naughty.     

Grandparental care and sleep disturbances in preschool children: a population-based prospective cohort study

ObjectivesSleep disturbances are common in preschoolers, and profoundly affected by parenting. Grandparents are increasingly involved in childcare and have attracted worldwide attention for their potential impacts on child well-being. However, no studies have explored child sleep health within the context of grandparental care. We aimed to explore the association between grandparents as primary caregivers and children's sleep disturbances.MethodsParticipants included 20,324 preschoolers from the Shanghai Children's Health, Education and Lifestyle Evaluation-Preschool (SCHEDULE-P) in Shanghai, China. They were initially assessed in November 2016 and were reassessed in April 2018 and April 2019. Children's primary caregivers were collected at each survey. Sleep disturbances were assessed by the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ).ResultsAt baseline, 84.4% of children had global sleep disturbances (CSHQ total score >41). Compared with parents, random-effects model indicated that grandparents as primary caregivers increased the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for children's global sleep disturbances by 30% (OR [95%CI]: 1.30 [1.21, 1.40]). To the specific domains of CSHQ, two-way repeated-measures ANOVA showed significant “caregiver transition” group × wave interaction in the behavioral sleep disturbances, such as “Bedtime Resistance” (p < 0.001). At each survey, children with grandparents as primary caregivers demonstrated significant higher behavioral sleep disturbances than their counterparts with parental care.ConclusionsGrandparental care is associated with increased sleep disturbances, particularly behavioral sleep disturbances, in preschoolers. Future studies should explore the underlying mechanisms and whether sleep programs targeting grandparents can decrease children's sleep disturbances.     

Communication and language in mental handicap

People involved in facilitating communication and language in children with mental handicaps often use questions to elicit language from them. Using questions is not always very effective, and their extensive use might even hinder the acquisition of spontaneous, creative, and functional language. This article surveys various types of question and indicates those which might be useful in intervention. The next article in the series argues that short responses to questions are frequently appropriate and should be accepted, examines facilitators' reactions to children's responses, and notes that children need to learn to ask as well as to answer questions.     

Influence of familiarity on identifying prosodic vocalizations produced by children with severe dysarthria

Familiarity is thought to aid listeners in decoding disordered speech; however, as the speech signal degrades, the “familiarity advantage” becomes less beneficial. Despite highly unintelligible speech sound production, many children with dysarthria vocalize when interacting with familiar caregivers. Perhaps listeners can understand these vocalizations by cuing into prosodic consistencies in their child's productions. This paper examined whether familiarity influenced the identification of sustained vowels that varied in pitch, duration, and pitch–duration combinations, produced by 3 children with severe dysarthria due to cerebral palsy. Thirty‐six listeners participated in the study. For each speaker, there were 2 familiar listeners (FAM), 5 experienced listeners (EXP), and 5 unfamiliar/inexperienced listeners (INX). Results indicated that familiarity did not impact identification of prosodic contrasts. In fact, all 3 listener groups were highly accurate in identifying duration, somewhat less successful at identifying pitch, and least accurate in identifying combinations of pitch and duration. Influences of speaker–listener variables on familiarity are discussed.     

Effects of ethnicity on sub-clinical PTSD and depressive symptoms,following exposure to missile attacks in Israel—A pilot study

Abstract

Objective. The aim of this pilot study was to compare the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, major depression disorder (MDD)-related symptoms, and negative mood regulation capacities among Israeli Jewish and Arab children and their parents, all of whom had been exposed to recurrent missiles attacks during the Second Lebanon War. Methods. Participants consisted of 28 Jewish and 14 Arab children (aged 4–18 years) and their parents. They were assessed by self-report instruments and a semi-structured interview (K-SADS-PL). Results. Among children, PTSD and depressive symptoms were found to be interrelated. Parents’ depression and mood regulation were found to be related to their children's PTSD and depressive responses. Both children's and parents’ negative mood regulation capacities were inversely related to children's depressive and PTSD symptoms. Both Jewish and Arab children's scores on the Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and on the PTSD Scale Symptoms Interview (PSS-I) showed significant levels of emotional distress following the missile attacks. However, Arab children reported significantly higher levels of PTSD and depressive symptoms in comparison to Jewish children. Conclusion. Ethnicity seems to be an important factor in children's responses to war-related events.