Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to L B Olswang.
Approaches to the management of individuals with aphasia are numerous, heterogeneous, and individualized. Treatment varies with the unique constellation of symptoms, goals, and residual abilities of each patient. This article considers aphasia management within the context of the World Health Organization model of disablements.
Young children with specific expressive language impairment (SELI) are typically first identified by their delay in initial vocabulary learning. When their language difficulties persist they often have problems with verb constructions. The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of lexical development in children with SELI who were moving from the single-word to the multi-word stage of language production, with particular attention to verbs. The research examined the nature of the developing lexicon (lexicon size and composition) and realisation of lexical categories and their combinatorial properties transitivity of verbs) as the children began producing word combinations during a nine-week period of observation, three weeks of which involved treatment. Results indicated a moderate correlation between the developing lexicon, both in size and composition of vocabulary, and the emergence of word combinations as measured by mean length of utterance. Further, the data revealed the importance of intransitive and ditransitive verbs for children who demonstrated the greatest change in their language production. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and clinical importance.
Initial language assessments are used not only to determine the presence of a language problem and establish eligibility for intervention, but also to provide information about a child's readiness for immediate change in language growth. This study explored static assessment profiling (specific variables and discrepancies in performance) and dynamic assessment results to determine their relative effectiveness for predicting immediate change. Correlation data were used to examine how well each assessment measure predicted upcoming language production changes for children with specific expressive language impairment. Results indicated that dynamic assessment outcomes were most highly correlated with immediate language growth, followed by discrepancy in receptive and expressive language age. Findings are discussed in terms of their clinical and theoretical importance.
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A structured discourse strategy, employing child echoic imitations and adult expansion, was used to teach 5 autistic children two-term semantic relations. The 5 male preschoolers in late Stage I of linguistic development were exposed systematically to two-term semantic relations in a structured dialogue with a clinician. A combined multiple baseline and AB(A) design was used to examine the relationship between the clinician expansions and the children's subsequent spontaneous imitations and spontaneous productions. The results showed that an increase in modeling and expansion was related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term relations. Further, following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.
This longitudinal study examines the effectiveness of two different assessment methodologies, low structured observation and structured elicitation tasks, to obtain communicative intents from 35 sensorimotor children. The subjects, 9 months of age at the onset of the study, were observed under the two experimental conditions every 3 months, for a 15-month period. The results reveal differences between the two approaches that vary according to the age of the child and eliciting context. The implications of the findings are examined.
This study examined the extent to which generalization of correct phoneme production occurred in various speaking environments and across word positions without direct training. Three preschool children with articulation disorders received treatment in a clinic setting. Treatment targets consisted of specific phonemes restricted to particular word positions. Data were collected on the children's productions of the target phonemes in treated and untreated word positions. In addition, the children's productions were monitored with different adults in the clinic and at home. The results indicated that generalization occurred in the two speaking environments without direct training. The extent to which generalization occurred across word position varied and seemed to be related to specific phonemes. The practical implications of the results and methodology are discussed.
Mothers' expansions were examined for their role in structuring conversational contributions and facilitating spontaneous imitations and productions of two-term semantic relations not previously used by their children. The subjects were four 2-year-old boys in late Stage 1 of linguistic development and their mothers. The investigation consisted of two studies. Study 1, a descriptive analysis of mother-child conversation, showed a contingent relationship between mothers' expansions and their children's use of spontaneous imitations. Study 2, an experimental procedure using a multiple baseline treatment design, showed that an increase in the mothers' expansions was systematically related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term semantic relations. Results also indicated that following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.
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Children's early 1- and 2-word utterances appear to encode the concept of agent, thus suggesting that this semantic notion has its origin in prior sensorimotor development. Specifically, the nonverbal concept of agent has been alluded to in research regarding young children's development of the cognitive notion of causality and the pragmatic category of requests for action. In this study children's awareness of the nonverbal agent concept was defined by gestural behaviors--that is, actions on objects and other people--occurring during request interactions with their mothers and the investigator. Three children were observed in their homes approximately once a month for 1 year, from their 11th through 22nd months of life. During each hour-long visit, the children were engaged in free play and in tasks designed to result in the children's requesting help from an adult. Based on the observation of the children's changing nonverbal behaviors over the 12 months, a 5-level developmental sequence documenting the evolution of the cognitive notion of agent is presented.
Three children were followed longitudinally for 12 months, between their 11th and 22nd months of life, to document their development of the linguistic expression of the agent concept. The children were observed approximately once a month in play and structured activities designed to elicit nonverbal and linguistic behaviors indicative of the children's awareness of the agent concept. This study describes how the linguistic behaviors (i.e., vocalizations, single-word utterances, and multiword utterances) were paired with emerging nonverbal agentive behaviors over the 12-month period. The children's first vocalizations were consistently paired with directive nonverbal agentive behaviors. With the emergence of the mature cognitive notion of agent, the children produced single-word utterances coding the agent in agent-action-recipient events. And finally, for two of the children, multiword utterances coding two aspects of agent-action-recipient events were produced. The evolution of paired nonverbal agentive behaviors and different utterance types has provided evidence supporting the linguistic expression of an underlying cognitive notion.
Language samples are typically obtained during speech and language evaluations by the speech-language pathologist to assess the level of expressive language development of young children. These samples are assumed to be accurate representations of the children's language skills. This study examines the effects of the elicitor on the language obtained from three- to six-year-old language-impaired children in a clinical setting. A corpus of nonimitated utterances was collected in 25 min from each of the nine subjects under two conditions: mother as elicitor and clinician as elicitor. The corpus of language collected under each condition was examined using the following measures: (1) numeric-number of utterances; (2) lexical-vocabulary type-token ratio: (3) grammatic-mean length of utterance, (4) percentage of one-morpheme utterances, (5) percentage of two-morpheme utterances, (6) percentage of three- or more morpheme utterances, (7) proportion of grammatical morphemes per utterance (8) semantic-percentage occurrence of semantic categories, and (9) type-token ratio for each of the 13 semantic categories. The data analysis revealed that the elicitor affected the number of utterances collected in a specific time period, but neither the lexical, grammatic, nor semantic aspects of the utterances were affected. The results state practical implications for evaluation procedures used in a clinical setting.
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