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EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES
by
Siti Fatimatuzahro
12211411
ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAM
SEKOLAH TINGGI ILMU BAHASA ASING (STIBA) INVADA
CIREBON
2015
EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES
This section offers a brief look at the way in which psycholinguistics can provide insights
into the processing problems of those with language difficulties - supporting the work of
general practitioners, psychiatrists and speech therapists.
The term 'exceptional circumstances' can be taken to include:

studies of the effects of deafness or blindness upon language

studies of language disorders where some aspect of linguistic processing is impaired

studies of individuals with cognitive difficulties where at least part of the language
faculty is spared.
An important consideration is whether the circumstances affect language in terms of

delay in acquisition - where, for example, a child of a physical age of five shows the
language competence of a child of three; or

deviance from standard forms - where a child acquires language in an order that is
different from most others; or where a child or adult produces language that diverges
markedly from that of most native speakers.
Sensory Impairment
Deafness
Modern approaches to deaf education prioritise the teaching of sign language. This means
that many profoundly deaf people are regarded as possessing a language in which they are
fluent - namely Sign. For them, spoken and written English are effectively a late-acquired
second language, mediated through Sign. A research project exploring this perspective on
deafness will be described in Section C12.
A major issue has been the extent to which prelinguistic deafness affects language
acquisition. There is evidence that it leads to delayed acquisition - infants may reach the fiftyword threshold around ten months later than their hearing peers.
But experts are unsure whether the route taken in acquisition deviates from that of a hearing
infant.
Blindness
Does visual impairment lead to delays in language acquisition, given that the child receives
no support from adult facial expressions, gestures or the sight of objects in the environment?
Blind infants certainly appear to acquire a phonological system a little more slowly than is
normal. They sometimes confuse phonemes which are similar in manner of articulation but
visually distinct: for example, 1nl and Im/. Their first words emerge at about the same time as
those of sighted infants. However, there may be some differences in the content of the early
vocabulary. Blind children generally engage less in sorting activities; this suggests that
blindness may limit the capacity to form categories, with consequences for vocabulary
acquisition.
Language disorders
Language disorders can be developmental (i.e. present from early childhood) or they can be
acquired as the result of surgery, a stroke, an accident or old age. Section B3 looks briefly at
acquired impairment in relation to studies of the brain; here, our concern is with
developmental impairment. The areas of research can be divided into those which deal with
linguistic impairment alone (this section) and those which raise questions about the
relationship between language and cognition (p. 44) .

Problems of fluency. For some speakers, the problems are largely psychological, as in
the case of stuttering, examined in Section B12. Other speakers have difficulty because
of physiological problems involving malformation or misoperation of the articulators
(mouth, tongue, jaws, palate, etc.). Cases such as these might appear to lie outside the
scope of psycholinguistics. However, they raise interesting questions about the nature of
language and of language acquisition.

What is the precise relationship between perception and production? Is a child's

ability to discriminate sounds affected when it cannot produce them accurately?

Does a child achieve full competence in its language when it is mainly restricted

to listening to it rather than producing it?

Does inability to produce spoken sounds affect inner speech, the 'voice in the head'
reported by many readers and writers? Does it limit the ability to acquire graphemephoneme correspondences (Section AS) – connections between written letters and
the way they are pronounced?
Current evidence suggests that that, so long as hearing and intelligence are not
impaired, the inability to articulate the sounds of speech does not prevent a child from
developing language understanding or inner speech.

Problems of written language. A distinction is made between dyslexia (reading difficulty)
and dysgraphia (writing difficulty), though many 'dyslexics' manifest both. The degree of
impairment varies greatly between individuals; as do specific symptoms. Some dyslexics
appear to suffer from a phonological deficit - they have problems in guessing the
spellings of non-words. Others show signs of a 'whole word' deficit and cannot recall the
spellings of unusual words.
Can you relate this to the 'dual-route' model of reading (Section A8 )?
Dyslexia shows up as a mismatch between low achievement in reading and an average or
high level of intelligence. However, it is often accompanied by difficulty in specific cognitive
areas - including spatial relationships (left vs right, east vs west), temporal relationships
(times, dates and months of the year) and mathematical operations. There is evidence that
dyslexia may be genetically transmitted. T. R. Miles, who spent his career studying dyslexia,
comments ( 1 993: 190-1 ):
. . . there may be an anomaly o f development which sometimes gives rise t o a n unusual
balance of skills. This anomaly is sometimes, but not always, the result of hereditary
factors. Reasoning is unaffected, and in some areas such as art or engineering there may be
exceptional talent. There are weaknesses, however, which may show themselves as early
as age 3 in spoken language and thereafter when the child is required to deal with written
language.
We will examine an example of dyslexic writing in Section B12.
The relationship between language and cognition
It is a remarkable fact that nearly all human beings grow up to achieve full competence in
their native tongue, regardless of wide variations in their intelligence and environment. This
has suggested to some commentators that language may develop independently of general
cognition. Confusingly, some of the evidence of language acquired in 'exceptional
circumstances' appears to contradict this hypothesis, while some appears to support it.

Studies of Down's Syndrome suggest a connection between cognitive impairment and
failure to acquire full linguistic competence. Down's sufferers show limitations of
attention, short-term memory and perceptual discrimination; they also have difficulty
with symbolic representation of any kind. All of this appears to affect language
performance, though there is great variation between individuals. Phonological
development is slow. Only a limited vocabulary is acquired, and utterances usually
remain short and telegraphic (lacking function words and inflections). There has been
much discussion as to whether language development in Down's sufferers is different in
kind from that of unaffected children or simply delayed. The issue is hard to resolve
because of the wide differences in individual performance, and because a delay in one
area of language (say, a limited vocabulary) might well affect the course of another (say,
length of utterance).

Autism represents a combination of cognitive and social impairment. Child sufferers may
be mute until the age of five, or may do little more than echo the words that adults say to
them. Underlying the condition appears to be a failure to relate to others, and thus to
appreciate the value of communication. One theory suggests that autistic children lack a
theory of mind - the ability to see the world from the point of view of another person. All
aspects of communication seem to suffer in autistic individuals, with the possible
exception of phonology. The development of language skills is not just delayed but is
deviant as well. Down's Syndrome and autism appear to demonstrate links between
cognitive development and language. However, the reverse is suggested by three other
situations: one where language is impaired but cognition is not, and two where cognition
is impaired but language is not.'

Specific Language Impairment: on rare occasions, a child who appears otherwise normal
fails to acquire language like its peers. These children achieve a linguistic competence
that is less than complete: they sometimes have restricted vocabularies or make relatively
basic errors of grammar. They may show problems of comprehension as well as
problems of production: finding it difficult to follow the utterances of others or to put
thoughts into words. In particular, they seem to have difficulty in sustaining a contextual
framework for a conversation. What is striking is that this linguistic deficit cannot be
clearly linked to low intelligence or cognitive impairment. It is known as Specific
Language Impairment (SLI) because it appears to affect language but not other faculties.
Some commentators have suggested that SLI may result from a deficit in the child's
ability to recognise recurring patterns such as inflections in the language it encounters.
Such a deficit could be specifically linguistic (a gap in the child's innate Universal
Grammar) but it might also be perceptual or cognitive (a lack of auditory patternmatching skill). Two different accounts of SLI are contrasted in Section D 12. Dorothy
Bishop, who has researched comprehension in SLI for many years, raises a third
possibility ( 1997: 37): that SLI may not be a unitary disorder but the result of a
combination of several different language impairments.

Sufferers from Williams Syndrome present symptoms which are the reverse of thQse of
SLI sufferers. They show signs of cognitive impairment, including low IQs, yet their
language competence appears to be relatively unaffected. This may be due to imbalances
in brain structure, with a reduction of some areas but a sparing of the cerebellum and
frontal lobes. The neurologist Terrence Deacon comments (1997: 268) :
[Williams Syndrome] is characterised by highly verbal individuals who seem adept at
storytelling and recitation of verbal information, but who also exhibit major cognitive
deficits in analysing thematic-level language processes, very poor problem-solving
abilities and very impaired spatial reasoning. Though they may have IQ scores in the
range of 50, their vocabulary and speaking skills test above normal at early ages . . . .
they are also intensely social and gregarious . . .

A similar mystery attends savants. These are individuals who are severely mentally
impaired, but show exceptional gifts, usually in relation to painting and music. Recently,
a savant has been discovered who possesses such gifts for language. Christopher was
diagnosed as brain-damaged early in life and has to live in care. Yet he is able to
translate from, and communicate in, some sixteen languages.
Modularity
There are those who believe that language and cognition are interconnected and that the
acquisition oflanguage goes hand in hand with the development of cognition. There are others
who believe that language is modular: a separate faculty, supported by cognitive processes
but not dependent upon them. The evidence from SLI, Williams Syndrome and Christopher is
often cited in support of the second position. As Neil Smith and Ianthi Tsimpli put it ( 1995:
3):
The existence of these varied conditions provides a classical example of double
dissociation: language can be impaired in someone of otherwise normal intelligence, and
– more surprisingly - someone with intelligence impaired by brain damage may none the
less have normal, or even enhanced, linguistic ability. It is worth emphasising that this
latter possibility constitutes a refutation of any position that insists on 'cognitive
prerequisites' for the development of language.
Terrence Deacon takes a different view (1997: 269) :
Intelligence isn't a unitary brain function, and language isn't walled off from other cognitive
functions. Nevertheless, in Williams syndrome we see a deficit in which cognitive functions
are splintered in a manner that selectively spares certain processes most critical to language
development . . . [This suggests that] the type oflearning biases that favour [the] symbolic
learning [involved in language acquisition] may be quite different . . . to those useful in the
majority of other learning contexts.
Field John. 2003. PSYCHOLlNGUISTICS. New York : Routledge is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group
Page 42 – 46