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The maturation of the uncrossed medial olivocochlear (UMOC) efferent remains poorly documented to date. The UMOC efferent system allows listeners to not only detect but also to process, recognize, and discriminate auditory stimuli. Its fibers can be explored non-invasively by recording the effect of contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS), resulting in a decrease in the amplitude of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE). The objective of the present cross-sectional study was to investigate how the effectiveness of this system varies with age in healthy subjects aged 8 years to adulthood. For this purpose, 120 right-handed native French-speaking subjects (57 females and 63 males) were divided into five age groups of 24 subjects each: 8y–10y, 10y–11y6m, 11y6m–13y, 13y–17y, and ≥18y. TEOAE amplitudes with and without CAS were recorded. The equivalent attenuation (EA) was calculated, corresponding to the change in TEOAE amplitude equivalent to the effect generated by CAS. General linear models were performed to control for the effect of ear, sex, and age on EA. No sex effect was found. A stronger EA was consistently found regardless of age group in the right ear compared to the left. In contrast to the right ear, for which, on average, EA remained constant across age groups, an increasingly weaker TEOAE suppression effect with age was found in the left ear, reinforcing the asymmetrical functioning of the UMOC efferent system in favor of the right ear in adulthood. Further studies are needed to investigate the lateralization of the UMOC efferent system and its changes over time in cases of atypical or reversed cortical asymmetries, especially in subjects with specific learning disorders.

Maternal input addressed to children after an early hospitalization (EH) was longitudinally compared to maternal input directed to typically developing children (TD), at 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months ...

Dichotic listening is the high-level auditory process which enables the perception of different verbal stimuli delivered simultaneously to the right and left ears (binaural integration), as well as the perception of a verbal stimulus presented to one ear while ignoring a different stimulus in the other ear (binaural separation). Deficits in central auditory processing have been reported in children with learning disabilities. The present study aimed to compare dichotic listening performances in right-handed impaired readers (IR) and non-impaired readers (non-IR) according to age. For this, a cross-sectional study was conducted in 120 IR (56 males and 64 females) divided into five age groups and 120 non-IR (63 male and 57 female) matched on chronological age (8 to 9 years; 9 to 10 years; 10 to 12 years; 12 to 18 years; adult). They were tested for binaural integration and binaural separation, allowing for the calculation of dichotic aptitude (DA), ear prevalence (EP), and attentional shift index (ASI). A series of ANOVAs showed an effect of age and of the reading group for all the dichotic-related measures, except for EP. Binaural separation scores were lower in IR who also showed more intrusive responses compared to non-IR. These intrusive responses, which were more frequent on the right ear for IR, decreased with age in both groups. Overall, these results suggest that dichotic listening scores improve with age as the central auditory pathways mature. However, whatever the age, performances are lower in IR than in non-IR. This might be explained by an incomplete maturation of the auditory pathways in IR; an early start for long-term follow-up and auditory training is suggested.

This study aims to compare word spelling outcomes for French-speaking deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) with hearing children who matched for age, level of education and gender. A ...

Objective This longitudinal study examines school achievement in terms of grade failures among deaf children ten years after cochlear implantation according to the children's age, language skills, intelligibility and parental socio-educational status. Methods The participants were 50 deaf children, the mean age at implantation was 3,7 years, with a standard deviation of 1,3 years. Data were collected at two time points: 5 and 10 years after implantation (CI + 5 and CI + 10). Results Results showed that at CI + 10 only 18% of the subjects were in the expected class for their age. Early cochlear implantation, a high level of parental education, good speech intelligibility and language skills in comprehension and expression at CI + 5 and CI + 10 improved school achievement at CI + 10. A logistic regression suggested that parental education and age at implantation were predictive factors for grade failure. Conclusion These results indicate that early cochlear implantation and high parental education levels are protective factors against schooling delays in deaf children after cochlear implantation.

Although Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) has been extensively investigated in the clinical literature, most of the findings regarding impairments in the production of syllable structure, recorded within this population, have been mainly focused on English. The main purpose of this two-year follow-up case study was, therefore, to examine whether syllable complexity may be considered as a robust indicator in CAS and whether it can explain the persistence of errors and, if so, at what age. This was tested in a boy followed up annually from age 5 to 7 who was administered a narrative task. Data analyses used the Phon program to estimate accuracies of different syllabic structures, phones, singleton and cluster consonants. Overall, the findings suggest that this child experienced difficulty producing syllabic structure commensurately with the level of complexity of the target structures. Notably, the presence of syllable planning/sequencing deficit found in French data clearly supports the hypotheses according to which (a) there is a relationship between the level of complexity of syllabic structures and their simplification and (b) the persistence of errors on the most complex syllables remains, becoming a robust indicator for identifying CAS from other speech disorders. Further cross-language investigations on syllable complexity in CAS are needed to design better assessments and to plan efficient intervention.

EnglishMusic and speech signals are complex sounds, based on similar acoustic patterns like duration, intensity and pitch, which follow several levels of organization: morphology, phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics for speech; rhythm, melody, and harmony for music. One of the most salient components of music is melody, resulting from a set of variations in pitch – correlate of frequency in perception – as a piece unfolds. Similarly, for speech, one of the most prominent components is melody which, combined with tempo and timbre of the voice, forms a real musical partition. In this literature overview, the main question is to know to what extent these two systems of communication, speech and music, are based on common prosodic phenomena, shared or distinct in infants and toddlers whereas the baby perceives in the uterine environment and during its development. From the third trimester of pregnancy, the fetus is already able to perceive rhythms based on a very regular temporal organization similar to those of music. Next, speech perception in newborn infants is related to music cues like accents, rhythm, speech-rate and pauses. At the same time, infant directed speech helps them not only to develop the prosodic forms of their native babbling, first words and early grammar, but also to refine the pragmatic aspects of language expressing their emotions. francaisLa musique et la parole sont des signaux sonores complexes, bases sur les memes configurations acoustiques que sont la duree, l’intensite et la hauteur, qui suivent plusieurs niveaux d’organisation : la morphologie, la phonologie, la semantique, la syntaxe et la pragmatique pour la parole ; le rythme, la melodie, et l’harmonie pour la musique. L’une des composantes les plus saillantes de la musique est sa dimension melodique, resultant d’un ensemble de variations de « hauteur » sonore – correlat perceptif de la frequence – intervenant au fur et a mesure qu’un morceau se deroule. De meme, pour la parole, l’une des composantes les plus saillantes est la melodie qui, combinee au tempo et au timbre de la voix, forme une veritable partition musicale. En nous appuyant sur les donnees de la litterature, nous nous demanderons dans quelle mesure ces deux systemes de communication, parole et musique, s’appuient sur des phenomenes prosodiques communs, partages ou distincts que percoit le bebe dans le milieu uterin et au cours de son developpement. Des le 3e trimestre de grossesse, le fœtus est deja capable de percevoir des rythmes qui reposent sur une organisation temporelle tres reguliere s’apparentant a ceux de la musique. Ensuite, le nouveau-ne presente des capacites de perception de la parole relatives a des indices communs a la musique tels que l’accentuation, le rythme, le debit et les pauses. Parallelement, le langage que les adultes adressent au bebe aide le nourrisson non seulement a parfaire ses connaissances sur les formes prosodiques du babillage, des mots et des phrases de sa langue maternelle mais aussi a exprimer ses emotions dans les aspects pragmatiques du langage.

Supplemental material, Appendix_1plus2._Stone_and_Bicycle_story for Promoting narrative skills in 5- to 8-year-old French-speaking children: The effects of a short conversational intervention by Edy Veneziano, Marie-Thérèse Le Normand, Marie-Helène Plumet and Juliette Elie-Deschamps in First Language

In this corpus study, it is asked whether young children speaking European French build their early syntax around grammatical or lexical words. Specifically, the study examines the relationship of grammatical and lexical words in three types of syntactic structures (determiner–noun, pronoun–verb and subject pronoun–verb). The corpus included 315 samples from children aged 24–48 months, a period of rapid growth in grammatical morphology and syntax. The results of a series of stepwise multiple regression analyses indicate that prepositions and auxiliaries explain the unique variance in determiner–noun and determiners and prepositions explain the unique variance in pronoun–verb and subject pronoun–verb combinations better than lexical categories. All these strong predictors support the view that grammatical words guide and facilitate syntactic knowledge. Early grammar is based not on a lexicon but on basic grammatical relationships that young children build gradually, making use of the formal distributional properties of their native language.

Mixed and inconsistent findings have been reported across languages concerning grammatical morphology in speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Some researchers argue for a selective sparing of grammar whereas others claim to have identified grammatical deficits. The present study aimed to investigate this issue in 26 participants with ASD speaking European French who were matched on age, gender and SES to 26 participants with typical development (TD). The groups were compared regarding their productivity and accuracy of syntactic and agreement categories using the French MOR part-of-speech tagger available from the CHILDES. The groups significantly differed in productivity with respect to nouns, adjectives, determiners, prepositions and gender markers. Error analysis revealed that ASD speakers exhibited a disrupted behaviour in grammatical morphology. They made gender, tense and preposition errors and they omitted determiners and pronouns in nominal and verbal contexts. ASD speakers may have a reduced sensitivity to perceiving and processing the distributional structure of syntactic categories when producing grammatical morphemes and agreement categories. The theoretical and cross-linguistic implications of these findings are discussed.

LENA est un systeme permettant un enregistrement audio continu sur une journee, puis la segmentation et l’analyse du traitement automatique du signal acoustique. L’algorithme de la reconnaissance de la parole developpe par les concepteurs du systeme LENA permet de delivrer des informations importantes sur la parole percue par l’enfant au neurodeveloppement typique, a risque (milieu socioeconomique defavorise), ou atypique (enfant presentant une deficience auditive, une prematurite ou un trouble du spectre autistique). Les etudes utilisant ce systeme ont explose ces cinq dernieres annees et confirment son interet technologique, notamment dans le domaine de l’intervention. La recherche fondamentale sur la parole et le langage commence aussi a entrevoir l’interet des fonctionnalites de cet outil qui permet d’une part une automatisation des nombreux comptages sur lesquels s’appuient les etudes quantitatives portant a la fois sur les productions de l’enfant et sur la perception de la parole qu’il entend, et d’autre part parce qu’il constitue une aide non negligeable a la transcription de corpus denses. Cette meta-analyse recense les avantages et les limites du systeme LENA (Langage ENvironment Analysis), ses applications dans les domaines de la recherche clinique et fondamentale et ses perspectives.

Previous studies of narrative development based on wordless picture stories indicate that before 7–8 years most children provide descriptive narratives with little inferential content such as explanations and attribution of mental states to the story characters. These components find greater expression in studies where children participated in conversations focused on the causes of the events. In the present study, 84 French-speaking children, from kindergarten to second grade, narrated the Stone story (a wordless five-picture story whose plot is based on a misunderstanding between two characters) before and after a short conversational intervention (SCI) focused on the causes of the events, as well as one week later when they also narrated a new story. Thirty additional children served as the Control group: instead of the SCI they played a Memory game with a set of cards containing the pictures of the Stone story. Children in the SCI group increased the inferential content of the narrative produced after the SCI, thus confirming with a larger sample findings obtained in previous studies. Moreover, results provide new evidence that the immediate improvements in inferential content were still present after a week’s delay and could also be applied to a new story. All narratives produced after the SCI were also longer and contained more markers of causality. The effect was stronger in first and second graders than in kindergarten children. By contrast, no significant improvements were found in the children of the Control group on any of the measures. Such results highlight the effectiveness of the SCI in promoting children’s narrative skills, its usefulness in their assessment, and have important implications for a better understanding of narrative development.

Summary Objectives Finding measures that track disease progression and determine treatment efficacy is vital for appropriate management in Friedreich ataxia (FA). The purpose of this study was to determine which cepstral- and spectral-based measures extracted from prolonged vowels using Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice (ADSV) program discriminate between those who have FA and normal voice (NV) peers. Study Design This is a descriptive, prospective study. Methods Initial 2 seconds of prolonged /a/, /i/, and /o/ were analyzed through ADSV from 20 individuals diagnosed with FA and 20 NV individuals. ADSV measures used were cepstral peak prominence (CPP), cepstral peak prominence standard deviation (CPP SD), low/high spectral ratio (L/H ratio), low/high spectral ratio standard deviation (L/H ratio SD), and the Cepstral/Spectral Index of Dysphonia (CSID). Results L/H ratio SD was the only measure where significant differences were found across all vowels between groups. Comparing measures per vowel, the vowel /o/ was significantly different between groups on four of five measures. Discrimination analysis revealed 100% of those in the FA group were classified correctly (sensitivity), whereas 95% of NV members were correctly identified (specificity) when all ADSV measures, with the exception of L/H ratio, were entered. Conclusions Unstable periods of phonation, such as initiations of voice production in vowels, may yield robust acoustic cues in the FA population. ADSV provides measures that, when considered together, have excellent sensitivity and very good specificity. Vowels yielded differing results on ADSV measures; analysis of different vowel types is recommended.

Loin d’etre un phenomene isole, les situations de bilinguisme ou de plurilinguisme representeraient au moins la moitie de la population mondiale. Dans tous les pays d’Europe, le contact avec d’autres cultures et d’autres langues se generalise. Si des retards de langage peuvent apparaitre, ce n’est pas le bilinguisme qui est responsable mais bien souvent la pauvrete et les mauvaises conditions familiales et sociales qui ralentissent le developpement du langage. Cette etude porte sur une cohorte de 22 enfants bilingues et de 43 enfants monolingues âges de 18 a 24 mois : 39 enfants sont issus de milieux favorises et 26 de milieux defavorises. Ces enfants ont ete suivis dans le cadre de la recherche-action Parler bambin sur une periode de six mois dans plusieurs creches de la zone urbaine sensible de Grenoble. Les resultats montrent que le bilinguisme ne constitue pas un risque de retard de langage chez ces enfants mais il peut le devenir comme chez les enfants monolingues qui vivent dans des milieux sociaux defavorises. L’enjeu clinique, pedagogique et social de ces donnees plaide en faveur d’actions de prevention precoce qui ont comme objectif de favoriser l’egalite des chances de tous les enfants du berceau a la creche pour les preparer a l’ecole, puis a la reussite sociale et professionnelle.

In this study, we examined the accuracy of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) system in European French. LENA is a digital recording device with software that facilitates the collection and analysis of audio recordings from young children, providing automated measures of the speech overheard and produced by the child. Eighteen native French-speaking children, who were divided into six age groups ranging from 3 to 48 months old, were recorded about 10-16 h per day, three days a week. A total of 324 samples (six 10-min chunks of recordings) were selected and then transcribed according to the CHAT format. Simple and mixed linear models between the LENA and human adult word count (AWC) and child vocalization count (CVC) estimates were performed, to determine to what extent the automatic and the human methods agreed. Both the AWC and CVC estimates were very reliable (r = .64 and .71, respectively) for the 324 samples. When controlling the random factors of participants and recordings, 1 h was sufficient to obtain a reliable sample. It was, however, found that two age groups (7-12 months and 13-18 months) had a significant effect on the AWC data and that the second day of recording had a significant effect on the CVC data. When noise-related factors were added to the model, only a significant effect of signal-to-noise ratio was found on the AWC data. All of these findings and their clinical implications are discussed, providing strong support for the reliability of LENA in French.

Cette etude vise a presenter differentes methodes d’evaluation et de nouveaux outils d’analyse de la parole, du langage et de la communication chez l’enfant avant 4 ans qui prennent en compte le developpement cognitif, les etats mentaux ainsi que toute l’organisation linguistique liee a l’ensemble du systeme de traitement de la parole et du langage, particulierement dans ses composantes prosodique, phonologique, lexicale, morphosyntaxique et discursive, de la perception aux intentions de communication. Le principe d’une telle demarche evaluative est de suivre les trajectoires developpementales et les potentialites evolutives du jeune enfant pour pouvoir ensuite mettre en place des strategies de prise en charge precoce.

This paper addresses the question of whether Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), an index of early productive grammar, predicts long-term outcomes of spoken language and literacy skills in French-speaking children with cochlear implants, and how this influence differs according to individual and environmental factors. Twenty-five school-aged children (12 boys and 13 girls), implanted between the ages of 25 and 78 months, were first followed at 3 and 5 years for MLU and then at 8 years after implantation for receptive language, reading and spelling. Univariate analyses of variance indicated that environmental factors (communication mode and SES) were significantly associated to receptive language and to a certain extent to literacy skills. Multivariate and regression analyses revealed that gender and MLU interacted with receptive language and literacy skills at 8 years after implantation. Such findings suggest that MLU at 3 years after implantation is a good predictor of receptive language and literacy skills 5 years later.

Dans le present article, nous etudions les productions langagieres de jeunes enfants francais en situation de jeu quasi naturelle avec un adulte. Nous savons que les enfants âges de 17 a 41 mois qui commencent a mobiliser leurs ressources verbales produisent des combinaisons geste-mot. Le role de ces combinaisons bimodales a deja ete bien etudie chez les enfants italiens et americains mais ce n’etait pas encore le cas chez l’enfant francais.Notre premier objectif est donc d’analyser les productions langagieres verbales, gestuelles et bimodales d’enfants francais pour verifier qu’on y retrouve bien les evolutions constatees ailleurs. Notre deuxieme objectif consiste a reflechir a une representation du developpement langagier precoce qui, a la difference d’indices telles la LME, prenne en compte l’ensemble des productions gestuelles, bimodales et verbales des jeunes enfants. A cette fin, nous proposons une analyse qui met sur le meme plan gestualite et verbalisations, ainsi que l’ebauche d’un modele bimodal qui reste a affiner par la suite.

Consonant production following the sensory restoration of audition was investigated in 22 prelinguistically deaf French children who received cochlear implants. Spontaneous speech productions were recorded at 6, 12, and 18 months post-surgery and consonant inventories were derived from both glossable and non-glossable phones using two acquisition criteria. The results showed that children initiated appropriate production of consonants after six months of implant use. Stops and labials were the most frequently produced speech sounds, whereas glides and palatals were still infrequent after 18 months. Speech accuracy also improved throughout the study. Consonant visibility appeared to influence the order of acquisition in the first months following the implantation and, as experience with auditory information increased, patterns of development tended to resemble those seen in children with normal hearing. Finally, a signed mode of communication and oral rehabilitation programs prior to implantation were better outcome predictors than age at implantation.

La prématurité induit des facteurs de risques de retard cognitif, particulièrement de retard dans le langage oral et écrit. Ces facteurs de risques peuvent être liés aux variables physiologiques et/ou environnementales. Cette étude a deux objectifs: (1) repérer quels sont les enfants prématurés les plus à risque de retard cognitif et de langage oral et écrit et (2) estimer l’intérêt d’un bilan précoce de langage oral proposé dès 3½ ans à ces enfants en mesurant sa prédictivité sur l’apprentissage de la lecture. Une cohorte de 50 enfants (23 garçons et 27 filles) nés prématurément ont été suivis de 2 ans à 7½ ans. Les résultats montrent que: a) 28% des enfants présentent un retard de production du langage à 3½ ans; b) 34% des enfants présentent un retard de la lecture à 7½ ans; c) la production du langage oral à 3½ ans est prédictif des capacités de lecture à 7½ et d) les enfants nés prématurément les plus à risques sont ceux qui évoluent dans un milieu défavorisé.

Le système LENATM (Language ENvironment Analysis) créé en 2008 peut enregistrer jusqu’à 16 heures de données de langage recueillies de manière naturelle et écologique dans l’environnement familial ou éducatif de l’enfant. Les algorithmes acoustiques développés par leurs concepteurs permettent de détecter tous les segments de l’enregistrement qui correspondent à la parole de l’enfant ou à celle d’un adulte, au bruit de la télévision ou de la radio, ou encore à du silence. Ainsi, ce système détecte automatiquement le signal de la parole à proximité ou à distance de l’enfant ainsi que le bruit environnant et mesure très rapidement le nombre des productions de l’enfant, de l’adulte ainsi que les tours de parole de l’adulte en interaction avec l’enfant. Plusieurs études ayant utilisé la technologie LENATM ont démontré sa validité, ce que nous avons pu récemment confi rmer pour la langue française. Cette nouvelle méthode de reconnaissance automatique de la parole ouvre ainsi une voie très prometteuse dans le domaine de la recherche sur le développement du langage de l’enfant.

International audience; The use of computer tools has led to major advances in the study of spoken language corpora. One area that has shown particular progress is the study of child language development. Although it is now easy to lexically tag every word in a spoken language corpus, one still has to choose between numerous ambiguous forms, especially with languages such as French or English, where more than 70% of words are ambiguous. Computational linguistics can now provide a fully automatic disambiguation of lexical tags. The tool presented here (POST) can tag and disambiguate a large text in a few seconds. This tool complements systems dealing with language transcription, and also suggests further theoretical developments in the assessment of the status of morphosyntax in spoken language corpora. The program currently works for French and English, but can be easily adapted for use with other languages. The analysis and computation of a corpus produced by normal French children aged two to four, as well as of a sample corpus produced by French SLI children, are given as examples.

This study investigates the cross-linguistic patterns of the overgeneralization of the Intransitive/ Transitive alternations found in children's speech and provides new evidence from findings based on the acquisition of French. The morphosyntactic characterization of such phenomenon in English and Hebrew child language is followed by a description of the morphosyntactic characterization of such alternation in adult French which relies on an account of SE-affixation proposed by Werhli (1986). On the basis of this account, predictions are made with respect to the overgeneralization of the Intransitive/Transitive alternation displayed by French children's speech which is borne out by the data drawn from several corpora. In addition, this account is shown to explain the results of a comprehension task carried out by AnnibaldiVion(1980) which were previously unexplained.

A linguistic analysis in low-risk preterm (PT) children was conducted to determine whether the acquisition of complex aspects of the lexicon, such as verbs, was influenced by their premature birth status and whether sociocultural factors played a modulating role in this aspect of cognitive development. Fifty-one PT children, distributed in three birthweight groups — extremely low (780–1200 g), very low (1201–1500 g) and low (1501–2210 g) — were evaluated at 42 months and 60 months of age to assess their production of main, auxiliary and non-finite verb types and tokens relative to that of two control groups of full-term children matched for age and socioeconomic level. The children's verb lexicon was collected during a 20-min controlled play context. Analyses of transcript data revealed first that the effect of sociocultural variables was independent of birth status or age. Further analyses revealed significant differences, indicating a marked increase in both verb type and token usage in the control children, whereas verb production in the three groups of PT children remained generally poorer. The data suggest that impaired language development is a cognitive consequence of prematurity independently of birthweight.

The study examines the use of singular personal pronouns in a group of 10 children with specific linguistic impairment (SLI), compared with a group often MLU-matched normally developing children. T...

Developmental outcome of a child (AX) who experienced a tracheostomy at three months are reported. He had prolonged hospitalization and psychomotor therapy in an intensive care unit. The course and the developmental changes are documented from birth to four years. A pattern of delay in speech and language production was found with (a) no hearing loss, (b) no cognitive impairment, (c) an average level of fine motor skills, (d) no behavioral disorders, and (e) a normal auditory comprehension and visual intelligence. His delay of speech and language production with reference to early intervention suggest that it may be a consequence of the asphyxia sustained or possibly of Ehler‐Danlos syndrome.

International audience; Temporal processing deficit could be associated with a specific difficulty in learning to read. In 1951, Stambak provided preliminary evi- dence that children with dyslexia performed less well than good readers in reproduction of 21 rhythmic patterns. Stambak's task was admi- nistered to 1,028 French children aged 5 – 6 years. The score distribution ( from 0 to 21) was quasi-normal, with some children failing completely and other performing perfectly. In second grade, reading was assessed in 695 of these children. Kindergarten variables explained 26% of the variance of the reading score at second grade. The Stambak score was strongly and linearly related to reading performance in second grade, after partialling out performance on other tasks (oral repetition, attention, and visuo-spatial tasks) and socio-cultural level. Findings are discussed in relation to perceptual, cerebellar, intermodal, and attention-related theories of developmental dyslexia. It is con- cluded that simple rhythm reproduction tasks in kindergarten are predictive of later reading performance.

A case of childhood acquired aphasia with epilepsy (AAE) is reported because of unusual epileptologic and psycholinguistic features. Epileptic seizures were extraordinarily polymorphous, including especially at 4 years 8 months an episode of epilepsia partialis continua. The most striking feature of EEG data was absence of notable activating effect of sleep. Comprehension was never completely lost and seemed partially related to an auditory—verbal unawareness or neglect. Expression deficit was principally a difficulty in naming tasks, and above all prolonged latencies filled with a song-like prolonged vocalization during this task and more rarely in spontaneous speech. There was an anosognosia of these vocalizations. Beside difficulties in naming tasks, major expression disorders were constantly of phonological nature. Word repetition disorder was significantly more severe than both expression and comprehension defects (picture naming and pointing tests). Cases of AAE reported in the literature are heterogeneous, and there is currently no satisfactory explanation of association of an acquired aphasia with epileptic disorders, and no established correlation between a certain type of psycholinguistic defect and a definite clinical or at least electrophysiological epileptic disorder. An effort to define more precisely both psycholinguistic and electro-clinical epileptic disorders might lead to a much needed nosologic classification of AAE.

The present study investigated prosody, particularlyprominence and prosodic contours in relation to speech actsthat carry useful information to maintain and regulatecommunicative intent and conversational skills. Participantswere eight autistic French-speaking children aged from 4 to 6.Spontaneous speech samples were collected in a free playsituation. Results revealed important prosodic disturbances inrelation to declaratives, exclamations and questions. Suchpatterns of results, to a certain extent, support the hypothesisthat abnormal prosody is identified as a core deficit inindividuals with autism.

International audience; In this study, we examined the influence of child gender and sociocultural (SCL) factors in languageproduction. Subjects were French Parisian children in nine age groups (24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45and 48 months). A total of 316 language samples were recorded during a 20-min standardized playsession. Measures of grammatical and lexical development included Mean Length of Utterance(MLU) and word type and token—specifically, grammatical words such as determiners, prepositionsand pronouns as well as verbs. ANOVAs revealed strong influences of SCL, with children from highSCL families showing more complex lexical productions and a higher rate of development. Theseobservations suggest that amount of exposure to language accounts for this differential rate ofacquisition. Analyses also revealed a general effect of gender, showing a small advantage in languageproduction for girls over boys until 36 months of age.

Prematurity entails risk factors of cognitive delay, particularly in language production and reading. These risk factors may be related to physiological and/or environmental variables. This study has two main objectives: (1) to track down which preterm children are most at risk of developing cognitive delays, particularly language production and reading; (2) to study whether screening of oral language in 3 1/2-year-olds predicts their future reading ability. A cohort of 50 pre-term children (23 boys and 27 girls) was followed from the ages of 2 to 7 1/2 years. The results show that: (a) 28% of the premature children present delayed language production at 3 1/2 years of age; (b) 34% of these children present delayed reading at 7 1/2 years of age; (c) language production at 3 1/2 years predicts the reading ability at 7 1/2 years, and (d) premature children who are most at risk are those who belong to low sociocultural groups.

Free speech recording samples of two groups of French SLI children aged 48 and 62 months (matched for MLU, 1.70) and two groups of French normally developing children aged 26 and 36 month (matched for MLU, 3.2) were compared to determine whether they showed a difference in the use of lexical categories. A category-by-category comparison showed few significant differences. For low MLU children, SLI produced significantly fewer infinitives, past participles, copulas, and demonstrative pronouns. For high MLU children, the difference persisted only in past participles use. As for English SLI children, French SLI children were delayed in their acquisition of verbs. However, the differences in the syntactic structure of English and French ruled out a syntactic explanation of the deficit. Phonetic problems seem to decrease with age, so they cannot be the only explanation behind the difficulties of SLI children, which probably involve cognitive problems such as processing limitations.

The capacity to incorporate significant words into the existing vocabulary and to use these words to form sentences with more mature syntactic structures emerges over a considerable time course in young deaf children who have undergone a cochlear implantation. The purpose of this follow-up study is to document the nature and time span of language production--in morphosyntactic and lexical skills--when a child's first experience with language sounds is provided artificially through electrical stimulation. To examine the development of these two aspects of linguistic processing, five deaf French children, all enrolled in similar postimplantation educational settings, were individually assessed at 6-month intervals over a period of 18 months. Computerized analyses were derived from their spontaneous speech in a 20-min standardized play session. Results for mean length of utterance and vocabulary revealed gradually improving performance for most children, in spite of the generally low starting point. Both measures of production nevertheless remained well below the norms established for normally hearing children. Although the achievement of higher production scores, which underlies more effective interpersonal exchanges, is evident after only 1 year of device use, it is clear that improvement does not always occur at the same pace, as shown by two of the children. This emphasizes the importance of longitudinal studies in documenting intersubject variability and intrasubject stability throughout the experience with an implant.

In the study of language acquisition following early brain damage, results have been divergent. On one hand, some studies claim that language eventually resumes to normal, whereas, on the other hand, studies show lasting deficits throughout development. Discrepancies in the results could arise from different etiologies and tests used. This study attempts to determine the extent to which the development of verb production is affected in later development in children who had simple partial epilepsy (SPE). Measures of diversity and fluency of three verb types, namely main verbs, auxiliary and copula verbs, and nonfinite verbs were used on three children diagnosed as SPE and compared to control groups. Our main results show a limited production of auxiliary verbs. Further analysis of their productions suggest a telegraphic style of speech, as reflected by a superior production of nonfinite verb type compared with normal children. These findings are interpreted as reflecting long-lasting consequences of early brain damage with respect to language development.

http://www.vjf.cnrs.fr/umr8606/FichExt/cparisse/JCLchris2000.pdf; International audience; Early morphosyntax is very rich and uniform in French-speaking young children. The present study aims to give a thorough analysis of the morphosyntax produced at the outset of multi-word speech, with a classification of free language produced at 2;0 by 27 French speaking children. The corpus was fully tagged by an automatic part-of-speech tagger. A classification performed with words taken in isolation shows a clear difference between the categories used in single-word utterances and those used in multi-word utterances. A classification performed with word sequences reveals surprisingly adult-like sequences of syntactic categories and words; the non-adult combinations are few in a French child's language.The very successful use of the tagger demonstrates the morphosyntactic coherence of the child's speech. When compared with adult language, the quantitative results, and more precisely the data concerning regularity and error types contribute to the documentation of all the specificities of the emerging morphosyntax in normally developing French children.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often show limitations in grammatical morphology that exceed their problems in other areas of language. One factor contributing to this difficulty might be the relatively brief durations of many grammatical morphemes. In the present study, this factor was explored by examining the use of articles by a group of French—speaking children with SLI. French differs from other languages studied to date in that the differences in duration between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables, such as articles, are much smaller. The data revealed that French—speaking children with SLI used articles with relatively high percentages equivalent to those seen for a group of normally developing French—speaking children matched according to mean length of utterance. In addition, the percentages seen for the French—speaking children with SLI were substantially higher than those observed for children with SLI who were acquiring Italian and English.Les enfants atteints de trou...

Resume L’objectif de cette etude est d’analyser l’organisation temporelle et rythmique de la parole spontanee elicitee dans une situation de jeu et dans un contexte de livre d’images chez dix enfants dysphasiques diagnostiques a 4 ans et suivis a intervalles reguliers jusqu’a 8 ans. Il s’agit d’explorer la nature de leur deficit phonologique syntaxique. Les resultats montrent que les enfants manifestent tous a 8 ans, a des degres divers, des desequilibres rythmiques de la parole qui se traduisent par un effort important dans le controle et la programmation de la parole, compte tenu des contraintes phonologiques (structure accentuelle du francais) et des contraintes d’appariement intonosyntaxique (segmentation en constituants prosodiques et actualisation d’un principe de congruence entre la prosodie et la syntaxe). Ces perturbations coexistent avec des deficits importants en memoire auditive

Phonetic transcriptions (study 1) and acoustic analysis (study 2) were used to clarify the nature and rhythm of vowel acquisition following the cochlear implantation of prelingually deaf children. In the first study, seven children were divided according to their degree of hearing loss (DHL): DHL I: 90–100 dB of hearing loss, 1 children; DHL II: 100–110 dB, 3 children; and DHL III: over 110 dB, 3 children. Spontaneous speech productions were recorded and videotaped 6 and 12 months postsurgery and vowel inventories were obtained by listing all vowels that occurred at least twice in the child’s repertoire at the time of recording. Results showed that degree of hearing loss and age at implantation have a significant impact on vowel acquisition. Indeed, DHL I and II children demonstrated more diversified as well as more typical pattern of acquisition. In the second study, the values of the first and second formants were extracted. The results suggest evolving use of the acoustic space, reflecting the use of auditory feedback to produce the three phonological features exploited to contrast French vowels (height, place of articulation, and rounding). The possible influence of visual feedback before cochlear implant is discussed.

L’objectif de ce travail est de comprendre comment des enfants atteints par une maladie genetique, letale, qui les entrave dans leur motricite a partir du second semestre de leur vie, parviennent a developper des competences precoces et a construire une cognition performante et efficace malgre l’impact traumatisant de la revelation de leur maladie annoncee a leurs parents. A partir de la, et dans une double perspective d’analyse psycholinguistique des enonces et d’approche psychopathologique du discours qui ouvre sur l’interet d’une linguistique subjectale et dynamique, est questionnee la dimension du lien par le langage venant compenser l’absence ou le manque de lien moteur avec l’autre (pointage psychique par les demonstratifs et substitut symbolique de l’action par l’usage accentue de verbes par exemple). Nous montrons la necessite de mener des recherches transdisciplinaires : il est essentiel qu’experience clinique, connaissances theoriques et demarche d’observation directe du comportement du jeune enfant atteint dans son corps puissent concourir ensemble au progres de nos connaissances.

This report concerns three tools in an attempt to provide an objective and flexible means of screening speech and language between the ages of three and four years;1) a composite and standardized neuropsycho linguistic battery; 2) a psycholinguistic assessment in a conversational play session (a bath situation);3) a questionnaire addressed to parents.