What are the differences in language development between early and late normal development children?
What are the differences in language development in early childhood between children with typical development patterns and children with attention deficit disorder?
What are the differences in language development in late childhood between children with typical development patterns and children with attention deficit disorder?
What are the developmental difference in language acquisition between early and late childhood stages for children with attention deficit disorder?
Introduction
Language development has been a principal issue of interest in developmental psychology, especially with consideration of multiple external and internal factors that can affect this aspect of learning – both in early childhood and at later stages. Pungello and colleagues (2009) summarize the existing research stating that early language development in children is principal for further academic achievements and learning. Therefore, there is a need to study factors that can either foster or impede language development. Attention deficit disorder has been researched in the context of its impact on children’s behavioral and cognitive development. As Redmond (2016) states, attention deficit disorder symptoms manifest themselves in early childhood and might persist throughout the lifespan, impairing the individual’s abilities in vocational, educational and social domains. Thereby, the study of El Sady et al. (2013) is also supportive of the impacts of attention deficit disorder on language development levels among pre-school children: attention deficit disorder is associated with language impairments, particularly in receptive language age. As language development in childhood is the process based on such active processes as listening and hearing, inability to focus attention on sounds and voices might result in further problems with pragmatic, syntactic and semantic language skills (El Sady et al., 2013; Timler, 2014). Given the significance of attention deficit disorder as a reported risk factor of language difficulties, it would be reasonable to initiate a comparative research of the disorder’s effects on language development in two dimensions – as compared to children with typical development patterns and in the time perspective, between early and late childhood – in order to deepen the existing knowledge on the disorder’s short and long-term implications.
Methodology
As the research is comparative in its nature, the sample would consist of two main groups – children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and the control group of children with typical development patterns. At the same time, as the tendencies of language development are to be investigated in the cross-age perspective, the study should be based on the mixed method of data collection which could include parents’ and clinicians’ reports and existing clinical records for the retrospective part (i.e., early childhood) and relevant language development inventories for assessment of the current level of language development. One of the assessment tools to be used for data collection among participants in late childhood could be the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-4). The scale would provide objective information on children’s current language competency level. At the same time, parents’ and clinicians’ reports might be used in data collection for late childhood as well. Another relevant inventory is the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4). Comparative mixed-method analysis could be applied for data processing and results generation, which would allow us to delineate certain visible tendencies in language development among children with typical development patterns and children with attention deficit disorder and identify short-term/long-term differences in and impacts on language development between the two sample groups of the research.
Reference List
El Sady, S. R., Nabeih, A. A., Mostafa, E. M. A., & Sadek, A. A. (2013). Language impairment in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in preschool children. The Egyptian Journal of Medical Human Genetics, 14(4), 383-389.
Pungello, E. P., Iruka, I. U., Dotterer, A. M., Mills-Koonce, R., & Reznick, J. S. (2009). The effects of socioeconomic status, race, and parenting on language development in early childhood. Developmental Psychology, 45(2), 544-557. doi:10.1037/a0013917
Redmond, S. M. (2016). Language impairment in the attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder context. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 59(1), 133-142. Timler, G. R. (2014). Use of the children's communication checklist-2 for classification of language impairment risk in young school-age children with attention
Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder. American Journal of Speech - Language Pathology, 23(1), 73-83.
