LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (Psych 830:353:01; Ling 615:373:01)

SPRING 2009 SYLLABUS

(Last Updated: 1/15/09)

ANNOUCEMENTS: NONE

Instructor: Prof. Karin Stromswold	Course Time: Mon & Thur 10:20-11:40
Phone: (732) 445-2448	Course location: SEC 118
E mail: karin@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Office Hours: Busch Psychology Building Room 233, Time: TBA
Sakai site: Language Acquisition

Required Readings (Read chapters in the order specified on the syllabus)

Hoff = Hoff, E. 2009. Language development, fourth edition. Wadsworth.

Good = Goodluck, H. 1991. Language acquisition. Blackwell. [The Goodluck chapters are available under “Resources” on the Sakai site.]

Date	TOPIC	READINGS
Thur 1/22	Intro to language & language development	Hoff ch. 1
Mon 1/26	Intro to language & language development	Goodluck ch. 1
Thur 1/29	Language & learnability	Good ch. 6 (p 140-156)
Mon 2/2	Phonological development	Hoff ch 4 (p 136-142); Good ch 2 (p 6-13)
Thur 2/5	Phonological development	Hoff ch 4 (p 143-157); Good ch 2 (p. 13-24)
Mon 2/9	Phonological development	Hoff ch 4 (p 158-167); Good ch 2 (p 24-29)
Thur 2/12	Phonological development	Hoff ch 4 (p 168 - 179); Good ch 2 (p 29-38)
Mon 2/16	1^st Hourly exam	Given in regular classroom
Thur 2/19	Lexical development (word learning)	Hoff, ch. 5
Mon 2/23	Lexical development	Hoff, ch. 5
Thur 2/26	Morphological development	Good ch. 3;
Mon 3/2	Morphological development	Hoff ch. 6 (p 221-236)
Thur 3/5	Syntactic (grammar) development	Good ch 4 (p 61-74); Hoff ch. 6 (p 237-249)
Mon 3/9	Syntactic (grammar) development	Good ch 4 (p 74-95)
Thur 3/12	Syntactic (grammar) development	Good ch. 4 (p 99-107); Hoff ch 6 (p 250-267)
Mon 3/23	Syntactic (grammar) development	Good ch. 5 (p 113-127);
Thur 3/26	2^nd Hourly exam	Given in regular classroom
Mon 3/30	No class
Thur 4/2	Pragmatic (communicative) development	Hoff, ch. 3
Mon 4/6	Pragmatic (communicative) development	Hoff, ch. 3
Thur 4/9	No class
Mon 4/13	Bilingualism	Hoff, ch. 8
Thur 4/16	Bilingualism	Hoff, ch. 8
Mon 4/20	Language learning in older children	Hoff, ch. 9, Good ch 5 (p 95-99
Thur 4/23	Neural bases of language development	Hoff, ch. 2
Mon 4/27	Atypical language development	Hoff, ch. 10
Thur 4/30	Atypical language development	Hoff, ch. 10
Mon 5/4	Wrap up/Review session
Friday 5/8 8 – 11 AM	Cumulative Final Exam	Time: 8 – 11 AM Place: To be announced

GRADING

Final grades will be determined by the total number of points earned in the class. Grades will be scaled so that the top-scoring student receives 100 points for the course. For example, if the top scoring student earns 95 points during the course, all students will have an additional 5 points added to their final grade. Course grades will be assigned as follows:
A (90-100 points); B+ (85-89 points); B (80-84 points); C+ (75-79 points); C (70-74 points); D (60-69 points); F (<60)

2 Hourly Exams For each hourly, students will have the option of taking either an essay or a multiple-choice version of the hourly. Each hourly is worth 25 points.

Final exam: The final exam is a cumulative, multiple-choice exam (no essay option) worth 50 points. Approximately 25% of the questions on the final will cover material from the first 1/3 of the course, 25% from the second 1/3 of the course, and approximately 50% of the questions will cover material from the last 1/3 of the course.

Makeup exams will not be given without a note from your doctor or dean

Method 1: Cumulative Performance

Method 2: Final Exam Performance

EXTRA CREDIT

Throughout the semester, you will have opportunities to extra credit points toward your final grade. The purpose of the extra credit assignments is to give you the experience of learning about language acquisition in ways that a researcher/scientist learns about language acquisition. You will receive one point toward your final grade for each acceptable paper you write (see below). You may earn a maximum of 5 extra credit points toward your final grade. Extra credit assignments are due the last day of class (Monday 5/4). No late extra credit papers will be accepted – no exceptions.

Ways of earning extra credit:

1) Attend a colloquium that concerns language and write a 2-page paper that summarizes the talk and what you have learned by attending the talk. Throughout the course, I will announce various colloquia/talks that definitely count towards extra credit. In addition, students may attend other language colloquia. If you plan to attend a colloquium that I do not announce in class must talk to me before the talk so I can determine whether the colloquium will count for extra credit. When you speak to me, you must bring a print out of the announcement that gives the name of the speaker, the title of the talk, what series the talk is part of, and an abstract of the talk. When you hand in your paper, please attach this announcement. Course lectures do not count.

2) Participate in a language experiment and write a 2-page paper that summarizes what you did in the experiment and what you think the experiment was investigating. You must also provide proof that you did the experiment (e.g., a signed consent form, a note from the experimenter, etc.). You must talk to me before you do the experiment so I can determine whether the experiment counts. When you speak with me, you will have to provide a print-out that gives the name of the experiment, the experimenter or lab that is conducting the experiment, and the affiliation of the experimenter (e.g., Rutgers Psychology Department). When you hand in your paper, please append this print out.

3) Read a peer-reviewed, published journal article on language acquisition and write a 2-page paper about what you learned by reading the paper. Any article that is published in the journals Journal of Child Language, Language Learning and Development, Language Acquisition, First Language, and Language Acquisition automatically counts for extra credit. If you would like to read an article that appears in some other journal, please speak to me before you read the journal paper so I can determine whether the journal article will count for extra credit. When you speak to me, you must bring a print out that has the name of the journal, the authors of the paper, the title of the paper, and the abstract. When you hand in your paper, please append a copy of the journal article. Book chapters, articles that appear in the popular press (e.g., New York Times, Scientific American, Time Magazine, etc.), and on-line articles (e.g., Wikipedia entries, NIH summaries, articles directed at parents, etc.) do not count.

How to find journal articles

1. Go to the following URL:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/findarticles.shtml

2. [You can get an overview on how to find an article at RU, by going to the following URL]
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/how_do_i/find_an_article.shtml

3. Go to the link that says “Indexes and Databases”
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/indexes.shtml
This lists all of the indexes and databases that RU subscribes to in alphabetic order and by subject.

4. For most of you, the most relevant databases will be:
PsycInfo:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/search_guides/psycinfo.shtml
Medline: http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/search_guides/medline.shtml
It is also not a bad idea to check the “by subject” to see if there are any additional or more specialized databases you should search.

5. Once you choose your database, login in by hitting the CONNECT button. You will be prompted to provide keywords or phrases.

6. The default search is a Keyword search. If “Map terms onto subject headings is “clicked”, your terms will be used to find matching subject headings, a strategy that sometimes is useful when you are just beginning

7. If you want to search for a particular author, click the author icon, and then provide the last name of the author and the author’s first initial.

8. If you “unclick” “map term to subject heading”, the system will yield matches where that word appears in the journal title, author, journal title or abstract.

9. If you get too many hits, you can use the “LIMIT” function to limit your search to particular years, articles with abstracts, review articles, age groups, population groups (e.g., animals vs. humans), publication type etc. For example, if you merely search for “autism” on PsycInfo, you will get 16155 hits … far too many to even read the abstracts of. But let’s say I am interested in animal models of autism, and only want articles written in English, with an abstract. By limiting my search to English, abstract and animal, I get a semi-manageable 205 hits.

10. Another strategy for when you get too many hits is to use the COMBINE function to combine the results of two or more searches. For example, on PsychInfo, combining the searches for “autism” with “genetics” yields a hefty 679 hits. Combining “autism”, “genetics” and “twin” will pick out the articles that have all 3 words, in this case a manageable 41 hits.

11. A third strategy if you really get too many hits is to put your search terms in quotations marks in which case only those articles which contain the words in that order are found. For example “genetics of autism” yields 27 hits.

12. If you get too few or no hits, the first thing to check is that you have spelled all of your words correctly. The second thing to do is to get rid of quotation marks if you have used them. The third thing to do is to eliminate terms. The fourth thing to do is to try a different database.

13. Once you have found a reference for something that appears in a journal and you are interested in reading, see if Rutgers has an electronic version of the journal by going to the following URL:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/ejournals/ejournals.shtml
Most of the time you will be interested in electronic journals, not electronic government journals.

14. Even if the RU Library does not have the electronic version of the journal, they may have a hard copy version of the journal. You can check this by going to: http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/how_do_i/subscribes.shtml

15. A good summary of databases available to Rutgers students can be found at the following URL and its links: http://wire.rutgers.edu/research_finding_library.html

16. Google searches are also sometimes useful, particularly once you have figured out who the key researchers are in an area. Try googling these authors’ names to find their homepages which often contain preprints of unpublished work.

Format of extra credit assignment. The content of extra credit papers is very flexible. Some possibilities are 1) a summary of the talk or paper, 2) what you liked/disliked about the talk or paper, 3) how you would change the talk or paper, 4) what you did and did not understand about the talk or paper, 5) how the material covered in the talk relates to what you have learned in class. The key is that your extra credit paper be written in your own words and contain your own thoughts. I do not expect professional-quality paper.

PLAGIARISM

DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. If you are caught plagiarizing any extra credit assignments, you will not receive for any of their extra credit assignments. Furthermore, depending on the egregiousness of the plagiarism, I reserve the right to lower your final grade and/or notify your dean about the plagiarism.

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?

1. If you copy something that is in print ANYWHERE (books, journals, popular magazines, on-line. blogs, mailing lists etc.), you are plagiarizing.

2. Taking someone else’s words and substituting a word here or there is still plagiarism.

3. Paraphrasing someone else’s words but ‘borrowing’ their line of argument and reasoning is plagiarism.

4. Plagiarism is stealing. Better to hand in something that is yours than to hand in something that you sole.

5. For more guidelines on plagiarism, see http://wire.rutgers.edu/research_plagiarism.html

STUDY GUIDE FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

10 hints for doing well in this class:

1) Come to every class and take good notes. If you do miss a class, get the notes from a classmate. I stress different topics in my lectures than those stressed in the readings. The material I stress in lecture tends to appear on exams.

2) Spend 10 minutes immediately after each lecture going over your lecture notes, reconstructing the lecture and making sure you understand the "key concepts" for the day.

3) Spend the 10 minutes before each lecture going over the lecture notes and "key concepts" from the previous class.

4) Try to at least skim the assigned readings before each class.

5) When you go back and reread the books, use the lecture notes to guide your reading.

6) If you are having trouble with one of the readings for a topic, talk to me about supplementary readings.

7) If you don't understand something said in the lectures or in the readings, let me know. Ask a question in class or come to my office hours. Chances are if you are confused, others are too.

8) Use your lecture notes and the "key concepts" to review for exams

9) Form study groups and quiz each other on key concepts.

10) Do not try to cram. The material in this course builds on itself, just like in a math or physics course and the exams are cumulative. If you don't learn the material in the beginning of the course, you are going to be lost.

KEY CONCEPTS

These are the key concepts for the ENTIRE course. In studying for the course, I recommend that you concentrate on the KEY CONCEPTS and your notes from lecture, using them to guide your readings.

INTRODUCTION

Induction

Nature vs. nurture

Nativism/Innateness

Universal Grammar

Empiricism

Interactionism/Emergentism

Language Acquisition Device (LAD) vs. domain general learning

Statistical learning vs. rule learning

Formalism vs. Functionalism

LEARNABILITY THEORY

Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus argument

Language acquisition as an induction problem

Gold's (1967) learnability theory

4 components to Gold's theory

class of languages to be learned

environment (= input & feedback, if any)

learning strategy or algorithm (= LAD)

success criterion

Positive evidence

Negative evidence

Text presentation

Informant presentation

Subset and superset languages

Productivity vs conservativism

Language acquisition as parameter setting

Innate constraints

Non-occuring errors

The 'no-negative evidence' problem: unrecoverable errors

The role of cognitive development on syntactic development

The role of input on language acquisition

Motherese (= infant directed speech)

Cross-cultural differences in input

Questions and aux acquisition

Competence vs. performance: comprehension vs. production

PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT (Learning the sound system of language)

Phonology

Articulatory phonetics

Phonetic/distinctive features

Minimal pairs

Prelinguistic stages of speech

Canonical (reduplicated) babbling

Nonreduplicated babbling

Prerepresentational phonology

Representational phonology

Substitution processes: stopping, fronting, gliding

Assimilation processes: voicing, devoicing, consonant harmony,

vowel assimilation

Syllabic structure processes: cluster reduction, final consonant deletion,

weak syllable deletion, reduplication

Supersegmental phonology: Stress, Intonation, Tone

Syllable structure: Onset, Rime, Nucleus, Coda

Sonority hierarchy

Phoneme boundary

Categorical perception

Voice onset time (VOT)

Development of perception of consonants: “Use it or lose it”

High amplitude sucking technique

Head turn technique

Syllable as unit of speech perception

[Prosodic bootstrapping (this will also be covered in the syntax unit]

LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT (Learning words)

Segmentation problem

Lexicon

Context bound word

Referential word

Ostensive definition

Nominals

Noun bias

Vocabulary spurt

Fast mapping

Naming insight

Holistic vs. analytic acquisition

Referential vs. expressive language users

Sex differences

Overextension

Underextension

Semantic Features Hypothesis

Prototype

Whole Object constraint

Taxonomic constraint

Mutual Exclusivity constraint

Principle of Contrast

Principle of Conventionality

Cross-situational learning

Sociopragmatic cues for word learning

Syntactic bootstrapping

Count nouns vs. mass nouns

Proper nouns (names) vs. common nouns (labels)

Ontological categories (objects vs. substances)

Professor Stromswold’s Lexical Development Lecture Notes

http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~karin/LexicalAcq_notes.pdf

MORPHOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

Morphology

Morpheme

Bound morphemes

Free morphemes

Derivational morphology

Inflectional morphology

Semantic predictability

Productivity of morphemes

Allomorphs (also known as allomorphemes)

Acquisition of inflections in inflectionally rich vs. inflectionally impoverished languages

Kiparsky's Level Order Model of Morphology

Acquisitional predictions of Kiparsky's model

Innovative denominal verbs

Innovative Causatives

Berko Wug test

U-shaped developmental curve

Overregularization: rule-based vs. connectionist accounts

SYNTAX DEVELOPMENT (Grammar learning)

Transition from 1 -> 2 word utterances

2 word acquisitional stage

Pivot grammars (= lexically based 'grammars')

Semantic (thematic) relations grammars

Acquisition of syntactic categories

Semantic bootstrapping

Phonological/prosodic bootstrapping

Correlational learner

Telegraphic speech

Open (lexical) vs. closed class (functional) morphemes

Brown's 14 grammatical morphemes

MLU (= mean length of utterance)

Syntactic stages (as measured by MLU)

Syntactic categories

Phrases

Rewrite rules

Grammatical trees

Predicates

Arguments

Adjuncts

D-structure

S-structure

Transformations

Acquisition of questions in English

Intonational questions

Auxiliary-less questions

Do-support

Subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI)

SAI in yes/no questions

SAI in wh-questions

SAI in argument vs adjunct wh-questions

SAI in embedded questions (won’t be tested on 2nd hourly)

SAI in how come questions (won’t be tested on 2nd hourly)

Structure dependence of SAI (won’t be tested on 2nd hourly)

Bellugi's stages in question acquisition

Problems with Bellugi’s theory

Acquisition of negation (won’t be tested on the 2^nd hourly)

Lone negation

Sentence external vs. internal negation

Anaphoric negation

Sentential negation

Subject-less negatives

no vs. not

Continuity (iceberg) acquisitional theories

Discontinuity (tadpole) acquisitional theories

Maturational theories of language acquisition

Principles & Parameters Theory of Syntax Acquisition

Optimality Theory & Syntax Acquisition

DISCOURSE/PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT (Learning how to communicate)

Linguistic competence vs. communicative competence

Pragmatics

Discourse

Sociolinguistics

Speech acts: Illocution, Locution, Perlocution

Gricean Rules for discourse

Take Turns

Be cooperative (quantity, quality, relevant, manner)

Narratives

Registers & Dialects

Communication in prelinguistic infants

Development of intentionality (perlocution, illocution, locution stages)

Maternal responsiveness & development of communicational intent

Early communcative behaviors

Primitive speech acts (labeling, repeating, answering, requesting action,

calling, greeting, protesting, practicing)

Emergence of discourse

Piaget's egocentric child

Crib talk (private speech)

Child-adult discourse

Repairs

Theory of Mind & discourse

Contingent vs. noncontingent speech acts

Child-child discourse

Acquiring socially appropriate language (pragmatics, registers, cultural

differences)

Gender differences

Relationship between communicative competence & linguistic competence

Professor Stromswold’s Discourse/Pragmatics Development Lecture Notes

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISTION (SLA) & BILINGUALISM

Second language acquisition vs. bilingualism

Critical period

SLA & phonology

SLA & syntax

Contrastive analysis hypothesis

Markedness account

Cognitive accounts

Interlanguage

Aculturation

Pedagogy (teaching) of SLA

Bilingualism

Do bilinguals have 1 language or 2?

Language mixing & codeswitching

Bilingualism & the rate of acquisition

Blingualism & cognitive development

Professor Stromswold’s Bilingualism Development Lecture Notes

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN OLDER CHILDREN

Late phonological acquisition:

accents & dialects

phonological awareness

phonemic awareness

reading & phonemic awareness

Late lexical learning

Quick Incidental Learning

Explicit learning vs. learning from context

Late morphological learning

derivational morphology is later than inflectional morphology

compounding

Late syntactic learning: complex sentence & “Control” sentences

Late pragmatic/discourse learning: coherence & cohesion

Reading & Literacy

Professor Stromswold’s Language Development in Older Children Lecture Notes

ATYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Why study language acquisition in special circumstances?

Double dissociation of function

Brain Injuries

Brain Injuries & the Critical/Sensitive Period

Equipotentiality hypothesis

Neuronal plasticity and language

Hemispherectomy children

Focal brain injuries in children & adults

Deafness

Normal acquisition of ASL as a native language

Oralism

Deaf isolates

Home Sign

Late ASL acquisition

Cochlear Implants

Blindness: phonology, lexicon, syntax

Down Syndrome: phonology, lexicon, syntax

Williams Syndrome: phonology, lexicon, syntax

Autism

Low functioning vs high functioning

Echolalia

Pragmatic disorders

Theory of Mind

Linguistic competence vs. communicative competence

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Definition of exclusion

Delay vs. deviance

Asynchronous development

Proposed etiologies (causes) of SLI

disorders affecting adequate input

disorders affecting output

disorders of auditory processing

non-modality specific disorders

linguistic disorders

no disorder (low end of the normal continuum)

Genetics of language and language disorders

[Background Neurolinguiistics Notes

Some Related Websites

Introduction to Language and Language Acquisition

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling001.html

Humorous piece on language acquisition

http://childes.psy.cmu.edu

CHILDES: Child Language Data Exchange System. Tools for studying children's language acquisition through the study of conversational interactions. The site features a database of transcripts, programs for analysis, and methods of coding data, among other things.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/index.html#baldi

Tongue in-cheek language essays

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/3920/index.html

An overview of the field and brief descriptions of its subdisciplines.

http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/academic/cult_sci/anthro/Language/what1.html

An introduction to the patterning of sounds, words, and phrases. Includes exercises and sound clips.

http://www.zompist.com/langfaq.html

Linguistics FAQ

Phonology

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/721554.stm

Role of babbling in language acquisition

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/29/tech/main520252.shtml

Decoding baby babble

http://www.easytofindchildcare.com/Sounds/babybabble.wav

Example of baby babbling: what type of babbling is this?

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/contents.html

Lots of video and audio clips of sounds around the world

http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html

Includes the full IPA chart and audio files, as well as information on the organization.

http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm

Notes from a phonetics course at the University of Manitoba, including phonetic transcriptions of English, vocal tract anatomy, properties of consonants and vowels, and acoustic phonetics, among other things.

http://www.ling.yale.edu/Ling120/index.html

The homepage for a course at Yale. Includes lecture materials and audio-video clips.

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/project/siphtra.htm

These interactive tutorials from University College London are part of a project called System for Interactive Phonetics Training and Assessment. They include voicing, plosives (i.e., stops), and other topics.

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter10/percpetial.html

Categorical speech perception demonstrations

http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~lholt/php/gallery_context.php

More speech perception demos

Lexicon

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cdi

The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. These are parent report forms to assess the development of language and communication in children. Included are lexical norms for English vocabulary acquisition showing when particular words and expressions are acquired.

http://thisisnotthat.com/humor/language.html#conundrum

Linguistic conundrums

http://memory.psych.upenn.edu/wordpools.php

Links to on-line lexicons & dictionaries that provide frequency information, imagability ratings, orthographic regularities, free association norms etc. about words.

http://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/mrcdatabase/uwa_mrc.htm

MRC psycholinguistic interactive lexical database. This database includes age of acquisition ratings

Morphology

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bender/paradox.html

Morphological paradoxes

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling005.html

This short essay from Robert Beard’s files illustrating what morphology is begins with "Jabberwocky," compares lexemes and morphemes, and makes a stop at Tagalog reduplication along the way.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/morphemes.html

A definition and illustration of the concept of a morpheme using examples from English.

http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/unpaired.htm

Unpaired words or why people aren’t couth, kempt or ruly

Syntax

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling004.html

A lighthearted introduction to syntax from Robert Beard’s files.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling003.html

A lighthearted introduction to syntax from Robert Beard’s files.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn

This engine translates entire paragraphs back and forth between English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism

http://www.hw.ac.uk/langWWW/icsla/icsla.htm

Neurolinguistics

http://www.biology.about.com/science/biology/library/organs/brain/blbrain.htm

Anatomy of the Brain. An outline with illustrations for students. Includes concise sections on Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area

http://www.stroke.cwc.net/niweb/faq.htm - 14 different parts of the brain do

What Do Different Parts of the Brain Do? Question 12 in a series of frequently asked questions written for stroke victims and their families features a clear, color-coded, numbered diagram of the left hemisphere, with an explanation. Scroll down to read question 13 concerning speech problems.

Aphasia

http://www.asha.org/speech/disabilities/Aphasia_info.cfm

http://fuzzy.iau.dtu.dk/aphasia.nsf

http://www.asha.org/speech/disabilities/index.cfm

http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html

http://www.aphasia.org/aphasiawebbypeople.php

Language Acquisition in Special Circumstances

Growing up different: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/video/watchonline.htm

http://www.asha.org/speech/disabilities/index.cfm

Linguistic isolates (“wild children”):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html

Nova #2112G: Secret of the Wild Child. The broadcast transcript of a Nova program on Genie. Includes interview material with Susan Curtiss and others involved in caring for Genie and studying her development.

Deafness :

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/silenttran.shtml

Deafplanet:

http://www.deafplanet.com/en/deafplanet/

Cochlear implant demonstrations: http://www.utdallas.edu/~loizou/cimplants/cdemos.htm

Down Syndrome: http://www.nas.com/downsyn/

Williams Syndrome: http://www.williams-syndrome.org/facts.htm

Autism: http://www.autism-society.org/