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This chapter examines the importance of assessing the language abilities of DHH students in order to understand their potential for achievement in mathematics and science. It considers the Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory, a three-stratum hierarchical framework of cognitive abilities that postulates a general factor (g) and ten broad factors: crystallized intelligence (Gc), fluid reasoning (Gf ), auditory processing (Ga), visual processing (Gv), short-term memory (Gsm), long-term retrieval (Glr), processing speed (Gs), reaction time (Gt), literacy (Grw), and quantitative abilities (Gq). These ten broad abilities subsume over seventy narrow-stratum abilities. It argues that using CHC theory will aid in understanding the cognitive processes underlying language and literacy weaknesses that are unusual even within the deaf population.

This chapter reviews the literature on linguistic abilities in English-speaking older children, adolescents, and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) regarding morphosyntax, phonology, lexical semantics and pragmatics, and in those speaking other languages. The evidence for the status of different linguistic skills in individuals with WS is evaluated with reference to the current theoretical debate about the contribution of neurodevelopmental disorders to the understanding of typical cognitive organization. The chapter shows the neuroconstructivist approach and that the use of developmental trajectories have advanced current knowledge of the linguistic profile in this population. Links between brain abnormalities and resulting phenotypic outcomes are also discussed.

Taking a biologist's perspective on language evolution, this chapter advocates the use of a comparative method for exploring the various other components that make up the human language ability. It argues that studying animals, in particular nonhuman primates, is the only way to determine which components of language may be unique to humans and which may be shared with other species. With respect to speech perception, the evidence suggests that the underlying mechanisms also are shared with other mammals. The mechanisms underlying the speech production and perception in modern humans did not evolve for their current purposes; rather, they evolved for other communicative or cognitive functions in a common ancestor to humans and chimpanzees. However, the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals is the capacity to use recursive syntax — the ability to take units of language, such as words, and recombine them to produce an open-ended variety of meaningful expressions.

This chapter examines the relationship among the components of language ability in school: language proficiency relating to literacy learning and other language skills essential for academic achievement. It considers two dimensions of this academic language ability: secondary discourse ability and the set of abilities associated with metalinguistic awareness. It also looks at certain historical antecedents to the idea of modularity and applies the modular approach to Cummins’s Common Underlying Proficiency model. After outlining other applications of the modular approach to the study of bilingualism, the chapter summarizes the results of research on the Nahuatl-speaking community in Mexico. In addition, it discusses the work of Lev Vygotsky and A. R. Luria regarding “inner speech” before concluding with an analysis of metacognition.

This chapter explores the child’s abilities related to academic uses of language, including the abilities necessary for reading and writing. It looks at the underlying components of language proficiency that do not follow the deductive-like and universal development the way the essential components of grammatical competence do in early childhood. It also examines how learning to read, developing advanced comprehension abilities, and developing skill in text construction differ from uses of language that do not vary substantially from one person to another. The two types of language ability may differ due to the notion of “naturalness” in language learning. The chapter first provides an overview of secondary discourse ability and metalinguistic awareness before turning to the development of narrativization and levels of narrative ability, grammar development in children, and shared academic proficiencies in biliteracy.

The chapter gives full detail about how self-reflective consciousness emerges during the development of the child. The chapter stresses the importance of language. Episodic memory is thought to depend on self-narrative that is itself dependent upon sophisticated language abilities that do not display themselves until at least late toddlerhood. The chapter weaves the interconnection between language and self-reflective consciousness, with episodic memory. The chapter traces the emergence during ontogenesis of a specifically human kind of consciousness from a more primitive awareness. Developments in infancy awaken the initial sense of self but its further development at the reflective and narrative levels are constrained by the use of symbolic representations among social groups. Reflective consciousness relies on the kind of social interactions made possible by simple language and gesture or mime. These lead in normal development in natural language-using environments to more complex language and abstract symbolic social interactions.

This introductory chapter aims to investigate the evolution of human capacities for musical behaviours. It analyses evidence from different disciplines to understand the interrelationship and co-evolution of the various capacities that underlie musical behaviours. It explores potential selective reasons for development of musical capacities in human ancestors, the functional and cognitive links between musical abilities and other abilities (including the earliest language abilities), evolutionary rationales for human emotional responses to music, and the possible nature of and reasons for the early use of music.