Special Needs

1. Hearing Impairment
We learn the language or languages that are spoken around us but language developed can be delayed from hearing impairment.  Research states that over 1 million children in the United States are hearing impaired. It is important to understand how hearing impairments can affect a children's language development.

Language Difficulties 

• Phonological problems- some sounds resemble each other such as /p/, /b/, /m/
• Vocabulary difficulties-many achieve about a 4th grade level
• Morphology Limits- segmentation and definition is limited
• Syntax Problems- Have difficulty with passives and embedded clauses
• Syntax and semantics difficulties impact reading and writing

Treatment for Hearing Impaired

• Lip Reading
• American Sign Language (ASL)
• Hearing Aids or implants

2. Speech Impairment
Most speech impairments appear as misarticulating, delayed articulation, or dysfluency. 

Language Difficulties 

• Phonemes emerge late
• Phonology and syntax are difficult with both articulation and grammar
• Motor planning or coordination difficulty

Suspected Speech Disorders (Ratner, 2009)

• Failure to babble by 12 months of age
• Lack of gestures such s pointing, waving, or blowing kisses by 12 months of age
• No spoken words by 18 months of age
• Few than 50 single words and no two-word combinations by 24 months of age
• Any evidence of speech or language regression, regardless of age

Treatment for Speech Impairment

• Articulation therapy
• Direct instruction of sound placement
• Focus on final consonant in words to keep them separate
• Stutter Modification
• Fluency shaping-build repertoire of fluent utterances

3. ASD- Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Autism is characterized by impairments in social communication and by behavioral rigidity. Social impairments have the inability to share interest or enjoyments with others.(Ratner, 2009)

Language Difficulties

• Vocabulary- ASD children have difficulty with expressive and receptive language therefore creating a barrier.
• Structures- ASD children have difficulty with complex sentence structures because they do not have enough vocabulary to understand these structures.  They have a delay in syntax sentence acquisition.  Complex sentences are difficult therefore affecting their semantic development, and they have difficulty in phonology because they do not understand repeating of non-sense words.
• Functions- for those ASD that vocabulary and structure are okay, function can be the main barrier. Pragmatic problems relate to inter-subjectivity; communication is not practiced/expected and they have a poor estimation of the listeners' knowledge or needs.  They do not follow maxims in expressive acts nor interpret conversational implicatures in receptive acts.  Gaps and overlaps in turn taking are out of sync and turns are taken with a topic that isn't revenant.
• Rhetoric- may be limited inventory of genres, some have more difficulty with conversations, lessons, or tests.  Others may be precocious with rules of a specific genre. Decisions or cues to initiate, maintain, close genres may be difficult to learn and use.

Obvious Language impairments and motor behaviors

• Hand flapping
• Toe walking
• Lack of response to own name
• Eye gazing
• Absence of language or delay of language
• Impaired conversational initiation and response
• Dramatic play absent

Types of ASD

• Asperger syndrome
• PSS-NOS (Pervasive Development Delay- Not otherwise specified)

Treatment (Griffin, 2012)

• Early intervention
• Focus on Social communication; systematic, individualized instruction
• There is no single approach to treat autism
• Behavioral Approaches
• Traditional: target skill ID, Reinforce correct response
• ABA- Applied Behavior Analysis: Child's interests guide selection or targets and activities
• SCRETS- Social Communication, Emotional, Regulation, and Transactional Support: everyday context for learning, elaborate on child's focus
• TEACCH-Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-Handicapped Children: Special attention to schedules and physical parts of teaching environment

4. Specific Language Impairment
Specific Language Impairment is a delay or disorder of language skills. It is the more common learning disability.

Language Difficulties

• Phonology- non word repetition, and phoneme identity tasks
• Morphology- verb inflections but not noun inflections
• Vocabulary- less breadth and depth than age mates, fast-mapping requires more exposure
• Syntax and Morphology- expressive language is poor but receptive language is okay at young ages.  MLU and syntactic complexity is less than age mates.  They are more likely to omit than misuse items in clauses.

Treatment

• Address specific difficulty by identifying specific needs in expressive vocabulary, morphology and syntax
• Use meaningful examples
• Extensive and intensive work of each problem by explaining, practice in new contexts, and reteach and practice more

Six Techniques for working with children with SLI

• Imitating
• Modeling
• Focused stimulation
• Conversational recasting
• Expansion
• Scaffolding

5. Intellectual Disabilities

Intellectual disabilities are limitations to mental function and basic skills.  Many children with ID have multiple problems.  The degrees of these difficulties can vary.  


Signs of ID

• Trouble thinking logically
• Trouble solving problems
• Trouble seeing the consequences of their actions
• Trouble understanding social rules
• Hard to remember things
• Trouble speaking

Types

• Down syndrome
• Williams syndrome
• Fragile X

Language Difficulties

• Language Onset Delay- their brain structure doesn't develop properly during a critical period.  They have more difficulty with morphology and syntax and less difficulty with pragmatics.

Treatment

• Generalize out of training situation-can be very diffcult
• Need continuing parent counseling system
• AAC (Augmentative or alternative communication)

Tactics for Teachers

• Pre-organize information
• Highlight new or relevant information
• Train rehearsal strategies
• Over-learning & repetition 
• Teach in natural environments
• Early intervention- shortly after birth
• Typical developmental sets sequence of intervention targets

References

Griffin, P. (2012).  Language Functions [Powerpoint Presentation]. Retrieved from lecture notes.

Ratner, N. B. (2009 ). Atypical language Development Pp. 315-390 in Berko Gleason, J. & Ratner, N.B. (eds.) The Development of Language (7th edition) Boston: Allyn & Bacon.