Speech-language therapy stimulation in children with Down’s syndrome

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the contributions of speech-language therapy to the language development of children with Down syndrome (DS). Methods: eleven children with DS participated in the research. The children were between zero and five years of age, of both genders and attending a university extension project involving eight therapy sessions following stimulation guidelines. Children were evaluated before and after speech-language stimulation. The stimulation guidelines were based on the following aspects of language development: coordination of sensorimotor schema, constitution of object permanence, gestural/body imitation, imitation of utterances, deferred imitation and use of symbolic schema, communicative intent, receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary: words and phrases. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution. Data were analyzed quantitatively. Results: there were significant differences in the pre- and post-speech-language intervention in the following skills parameters: gestural/body imitation, imitation of utterances, deferred imitation and use of symbolic schema, communicative intent and receptive vocabulary. Conclusion: early stimulation of linguistic and cognitive aspects is important in the development of children with DS, as evidenced by the immediate development of speech-language skills in children after the intervention.

Chimpanzee and gorilla humor: progressive emergence from origins in the wild to captivity to sign language learning

This article examines available (mainly anecdotal) evidence related to the experience of humor among chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild, in captivity and following systematic sign language training. Humor is defined as one form of symbolic play. Positive evidence of object permanence, cross-modal perception, deferred imitation and deception among chimpanzees and gorillas is used to document their cognitive capacity for humor. Playful teasing is proposed as the primordial form of humor among apes in the wild. This same form of humor is commonly found among signing apes, both in overt behavior and in signed communications. A second form of humor emerges in the context of captivity, consisting of throwing feces at human onlookers—who often respond to this with laughter. This early form of humor shows up in signing apes in the form of calling others “dirty,” a sign associated with feces. The diversity of forms of signing humor shown by apes is linked to McGhee, Paul E.Humor: Its origin and development. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman & Co, McGhee, Paul E.Understanding and promoting the development of children’s humor. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. model of humor development.

Learning of efficient behaviour in spatial exploration through observation of behaviour of conspecific in laboratory rats

Recent studies have suggested that rodent behaviour is influenced by the behaviour of surrounding conspecifics (e.g. emotional contagion and prosocial behaviour). However, little is known about deferred imitation and complex observational learning in rats. The purpose of this study was to reveal whether rats can learn from another rat's experiences. In a maze, observer rats watched the foraging behaviour of other rats (demonstrators) and then foraged in turn. The results showed that demonstrators explored inefficiently, but observers explored more efficiently after observing inefficient exploration by the demonstrators. This observational learning probably involved the acquisition of an efficient strategy through spatial exploration.

Developmental trend towards exact imitation in the second year of life

Findings from previous cross-sectional studies showed that while toddlers around their first birthday imitate selectively, that is, they systematically omit some kinds of target action steps or they copy only the goal, but not the means of the modeled actions, older toddlers imitate more exactly. The aim of the present article is to provide longitudinal evidence for this developmental trend and to investigate how imitation of different kinds of target action steps contributes to inter-individual differences in overall imitation performance. The present analysis of longitudinal deferred imitation data contrasted toddlers’ imitation of functional and relevant (FURE) versus arbitrary and irrelevant (ARIR) target action steps at the ages of 18 and 24 months. The results show that the difference between the imitation rates of these two kinds of target action steps decreased with age, supporting the developmental trend from selective towards more exact imitation. In addition, findings of the present analyses point to the prominent role of toddlers’ imitation of arbitrary and irrelevant target action steps in shaping inter-individual variability of overall deferred imitation performance.

What three-year-olds remember from their past

From birth on, infants show long-term recognition memory for persons. Furthermore, infants from six months onwards are able to store and retrieve demonstrated actions over long-term intervals in deferred imitation tasks. Thus, information about the model demonstrating the object-related actions is stored and recognition memory for the objects as well as memory for the actions is retrieved. To study the development of long-term retention for different memory contents systematically, the present study investigated the recognition of person- and object-related information as well as the retention of actions in two samples of three-year-olds who had participated in a deferred imitation task at either nine or 18 months of age. Results showed that three-year-olds who had participated at nine months of age retained actions in a re-enactment task; however, they neither indicated person- nor object-recognition in a picture-choice task (recognition task). Children who had participated at 18 months of age demonstrated person- and object-recognition but no re-enactment at three years of age. Findings are discussed against the background of memory development from a preverbal to a verbal age and in regard to the characteristics of the recognition vs re-enactment tasks and the stimuli used.