Language Development

Annotated Bibliography: Language Development

• Thompson, L. A., Black, E., Duff, W. P., Black, N. P., Saliba, H., & Dawson, K. (2011). Protected health information on social networking sites: Ethical and legal considerations. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(1). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221358/

The annotated bibliography is focused on a timely issue of the wide usage of social networks among medical workers. The issue of privacy violation is in the center of the research. The study is based on the cross-sectional analysis of the Facebook profiles of the medical students, who might provide some textual and photographic information, names, date and portrayals of people whose privacy could potentially be violated. As a significant and widely spread means of communication and interaction, any social network like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or any other gives a possibility to exchange any information. Consequently, it can concern the privacy rights of people. Among the crucial problems that can be caused by such information exchange, Thompson et al. distinguish the presentation of some data by a medical professional in an unprofessional way and possible violation of the patients’ privacy. In such a way, blatantly illegal and unprofessional behavior can become a result of the online information exchange and irresponsibility of the medical workers. Together with experimental evidence of the given research, the authors support the objective with the real-life incidents in the academic institutions providing some examples of unprofessional workers’ behavior caused by online postings breaking confidentiality. According to the research, posting textual or photographic information concerning the patients exposes serious concerns with the ethical and legal issues of patients’ portrayal and challenges the international and US privacy laws. Among all, medical mission trips were proved to be the most spread sources of disclosing such photographic information. The Hippocratic Oath, HIPAA, and ethical considerations should articulate the online reports of the medical students.

• Buckley, B. (2003). Children's communications skills: From birth to five years. New York, NY: Routledge.

The author of the book, Belinda Buckley, is a speech and language therapist, who has established her own clinic in London. As an independent professional, she is a member of Health Professions Council. Having gained the experience in the education and health setting, she continues to prove her competence and study. Her book has become a basis for a number of courses on language development at the universities. Therefore, the intended audience of her publication includes not only parents but also future and already practicing language therapists and other medical workers. In her book, Buckley distinguishes between the main points of communication development among children and babies. She marks out the communication skills that are common for each stage of the child’s language development. The real examples from life and the line-drawings make the material easy to comprehend and quite interesting. The tables, images, summaries and glossaries make the book helpful to the therapists of different levels. The practical guidelines and advice contribute to the parents’ interest in the information provided in the book. By researching the cognitive and language development among children till 5 years, the book is exceptionally important as it gives clear explanations of the reasons why talking with children is important for their communicational skills.

• Tsao, F. M., Liu, H. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Speech perception in infancy predicts language development in the second year of life: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 75(4): 1067–84.

Feng-Ming Tsao, Hui-Mei Liu and Patricia Kuhl are the scholars, whose number of works in the field of child neuropsychology is considerable. At the same time, Ph. D. Feng-Ming Tsao is a follower of Patricia Kuhl, who is a co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at Washington University and also a Professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences. Hui-Mei Liu is the associate professor of the International Study School at Zhejiang University. The topics of their numerous works cover the issues of speech development, communication on the early stages of life and some other neuroscientific aspects. The intended audience of the article comprises scholars and students, who are interested in the researches on the given topic and familiar with the scientific terms having some general background in language development. The article is credible and peer-reviewed. It consists of the introduction, methodology, results, discussion, reference parts, tables and graphs as well as other scholarly articles. The study presented in this work is focused on the correlation between speech perception and further language formation. Therefore, it gives tested scientific evidence that the phonetic perception is closely connected with the language acquisition. In such a way, the article can provide relevant and reliable information regarding the chosen topic as it provides arguments in favor of talking with children during the first five years of life to improve the cognitive and language development.

• Cherry, K. (2014). Language development in early childhood. About.com Psychology. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/ss/early-childhood-development_4.htm

The About.com Psychology website deals with a variety of topics that can be interesting for any educated person or parents, who tend to pay more attention to their children’s development and education. The articles represented on the site are written and edited by the experienced authors, who have the scientific degrees in the relevant spheres. Kendra Cherry is one of the leading writers of the articles on the developmental psychology. She has a bachelor degree in psychology. As a writer, she tries to make the issue of human development from the earliest stages of life easier to understand by the wider public. Being the author of the psychology book, she touches the issues of social behavior, child therapy, cognitive, socialization and rehabilitation strategies. Her articles are reliable, but easy to comprehend owing to different examples and appropriate explanations. Numerous articles including the above mentioned one are useful for the analysis of the correlation between communication with young children and their language development. The website includes no expired links or irrelevant references. It is current and marked with copyright of 2014. Not many citations are used in the text, but the article is error free and logically divided into sections, followed by the proper referencing.

• Howard, M. (2004). How babies learn to talk. Parenting. Retrieved from http://www.parenting.com/article/how-babies-learn-to-talk

The Internet site Parenting is aimed at helping and supporting modern families. It answers the timely and popular questions about the children’s development and upbringing. Although the name of the site manager is not available, the readers can easily find the names of the authors of the articles. The simple division of the articles according to the categories allows the parents or other readers, who for some reasons are interested in the tendencies of children’s upbringing, to easily find the necessary topic and information. At the same time, the authors of the articles are mainly the writers, who have faced the issues of children’s development in their own life. Regardless of their education or institutional affiliation, they share their experience regarding the issue. However, the editors, who have degrees in the relevant spheres, check the articles before publishing. With regard to the article by Melanie Howard, it is important to emphasize the simple language of the writer, but the relevant referencing to scholarly evidence. In addition, the experience of Melanie Howard is supported by a number of the relevant articles for the same site. The text of the article is unbiased and provides no advertisements. At the same time, it offers some books and gives scholars’ surnames for the further studies. The website is current, marked with copyright 2014 and is not overloaded with full citations. Although the structure of the article is logical and the sentences are free from errors, the article has no proper referencing.