Language Status in Children with Birth Asphyxia: A Follow Up Study (Brain and Language)

Abstract

Development of the brain is essential to facilitate
language acquisition. Any form of injury and malfunctioning of
the brain can inhibit language acquisition in children and in the
case of adult can lead to dysfunction of language (Lenneberg,
1967 as cited in Lust, 2006). Birth asphyxia is one of the major
high risk factor that can interfere in language acquisition
(Jansson-Verkasalo, 2004) and causes delay in speech and
language development (D’Souza, Nolan, McCartney & Taylor,
1981). This follow up study (2011) is an extension of a pilot study
conducted by Shanthini et al. (2009) which was done to check if
there is any deviance in the language status of the children with
birth asphyxia in relation to their APGAR score, time at which
the APGAR score reached 8 and their cognition pertaining to
language as the subject’s age increases and to compare the
findings to that of the typically developing children with respect
to their gender by administering picture description and general
conversation tasks targeting on morpho-syntactic structures in
Tamil.