Biomedical subjects

S Ellis Weismer

Publications and source records attributed to S Ellis Weismer.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1997

The influence of peer models on the play scripts of children with specific language impairment.

This investigation included two phases of inquiry that examined the effects of peer modeling upon the play scripts of children with specific language impairment (SLI). The first study employed a pretest-posttest control group design involving two groups of children with SLI (10 who participated in the experimental treatment and 10 controls) and a group of peer models (10 children with normal language development). The treatment involved dyadic play sessions in which children with SLI were paired with a normal language peer model. Significant differences were found between the play script reports of the experimental (SLI-E) and control groups (SLI-C) of children with specific language impairment. The second study, utilizing single-case methodology, involved 6 children with SLI who participated in the control group of Study 1, plus 2 peer models. Play dyads consisted of either two children with SLI or one child with SLI and a normal language peer. Results of this study provided support for the contention that play interactions with normal language peers facilitates increases in the play-script reports of children with SLI.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1996

Lexical learning by children with specific language impairment: effects of linguistic input presented at varying speaking rates.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of speaking rate variations in the linguistic input provided to children during a novel word learning task. Thirty-two school-age children participated in this investigation, including 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 normal language (NL) controls matched on mental age (MA). The younger half of the NL group also served as a vocabulary level comparison for the older half of the children with SLI. No significant rate effects were found for comprehension of novel words, with all children performing at relatively high levels of accuracy. The group with SLI demonstrated the same recognition accuracy pattern as MA matched controls for target labels versus phonetically similar/dissimilar foils only for words trained at slow rate. Rate effects were most pronounced for items with the highest difficulty level, namely production of novel words. Children with SLI produced significantly fewer words that had been presented at fast rate during training than NL children matched on mental age or vocabulary level. Individual differences and production error patterns on fast rate items were examined. The finding that variations in speaking rate had a disproportionate impact upon word learning for children with SLI was interpreted within a framework of limited processing capacity.

Child↗

PubMed1985

Constructive comprehension abilities exhibited by language-disordered children.

Constructive comprehension abilities were compared in a group of 12 language-disordered children (second graders) and two groups of children acquiring language normally (12 second graders matched to the language-disordered subjects on nonverbal cognitive skills and 12 kindergartners matched on language comprehension). Differences were examined in proficiency of the children in constructing spatial and causal inferences associated with short stories presented in a Verbal Task and Picture Task. The language-disordered group scored significantly lower on inference items than the cognitively matched control group of second graders on both tasks. A conditional analysis indicated that even when the language-disordered subjects appropriately answered the relevant premise items, they were significantly less likely than the second-grade controls to correctly respond to inference items on both tasks. There was no significant difference between the language-disordered and kindergarten children for either the overall or conditional analysis. The finding that language-disordered children evidenced difficulty in inference construction for both verbal and pictorial material was interpreted as being indicative of a cognitive deficit.

Child↗