International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology
Implications of developmental plasticity for the language acquisition of deaf children with cochlear implants
Section snippets
Overview
This review argues that there are three major tenets of developmental plasticity. First, sensory activity leads to neural development, and this is often known as the `glow and grow' theory. Second, the sustained effects of inactivity (sensory deprivation) can lead to a loss of responsiveness and selectivity in the auditory system. Third, the effects of inactivity may be reversed by the subsequent provision of sensory stimulation, and this is related to studies showing the protective effect of
Language acquisition and developmental plasticity
The recent electrophysiological literature briefly reviewed in Section 1shows that the brain continues to adapt and reorganize in response to environmental change. The following section discusses the physiological evidence in the light of the literature on language acquisition and associated sensitive periods. The reader is also referred to two recent reviews which provide a broadly physiological [22]and a rehabilitative [23]perspective.
Lenneberg [24]made a major contribution to the literature
Implications for future research
There appears to be a number of sensitive periods of language acquisition, rather than a single critical period as suggested by Lenneberg [24]. Moreover, the physiological data shows that learning and concomitant neural reorganization carries on into adulthood, albeit at a slower rate. Sensory activity leads to neural development, and the sustained effects of inactivity can lead to a loss of responsiveness in the auditory system. These effects may be reversed by the subsequent provision of
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Alan Palmer, Dr David Moore, Professor Quentin Summerfield, Mrs Sue Archbold, Ms Sharon Phipps, Dr Steve Mason and Ms Dee Dyar for constructive criticism. I also thank the two reviewers, whose comments enabled me to improve the quality of this paper. Parts of this review were presented at the International Conference on Language Development in Cochlear Implanted Children, December 8–9, 1996.
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2014, International Journal of Pediatric OtorhinolaryngologyCitation Excerpt :Notable differences in speech perception and production were initially demonstrated for children who received a cochlear implant under the age of about 5–6 years compared with children who received a cochlear implant after that age. These differences were attributed to a period of relative plasticity in the auditory system [17,22]. Recent work has focused on a critical or sensitive period wholly within the infancy/preschool-age stage of life.
The role of linguistic and environmental factors on grammatical development in French children with cochlear implants
2014, LinguaCitation Excerpt :Age at implantation represents one of the most widely researched issues in the field of pediatric cochlear implantation. For pre-lingually deaf children, neurobiological considerations suggest that age at implantation is the best predictor of the rate of language development because of the possible plasticity of the brain (Baumgartner et al., 2002; Robinson, 1998). The critical period view precludes grammatical progress at pace with typical development, claiming that even if children are implanted around 2 years of age, they are unlikely to acquire a sufficiently large vocabulary within the critical time span of 24–36 months to get grammatical development started since the critical time span has been missed.
A Theory of the Transition to Critical Period Plasticity: Inhibition Selectively Suppresses Spontaneous Activity
2013, NeuronCitation Excerpt :Many sensory and sensorimotor systems exhibit sequences of critical or sensitive periods that progress from simpler to increasingly more complex aspects of experience (Cang et al., 2005; Hensch, 2004; Brainard and Doupe, 2000; Werker et al., 2009; Hernandez and Li, 2007; Scott et al., 2007). In the auditory system, for example, a cascade of CPs induces plasticity for tonotopy, bandwidth tuning, binaural integration, directionality, phoneme discrimination, audio-visual matching, and semantic and syntactic development (Barkat et al., 2011; Insanally et al., 2009; Popescu and Polley, 2010; Werker et al., 2009; Robinson, 1998; Lenneberg, 1967). An appealing hypothesis is that these sequences of CPs may correspond to sequences of reductions in the spontaneous-to-evoked activity ratio along hierarchies of cortical areas (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991; Sharpee et al., 2011), switching the factors most strongly driving learning in each area from internally to externally generated (Tritsch et al., 2007; Moody and Bosma, 2005; Katz and Shatz, 1996; Hooks and Chen, 2006).