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PubMed2002

Profiles of grammatical morphology and sentence imitation in children with specific language impairment and Down syndrome.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the grammatical morphology and sentence imitation performance of two different groups of children with language impairment and to compare their performance with that of children learning language typically. Expressive use of tense-bearing and non-tense-related grammatical morphemes was explored. Children with specific language impairment (SLI), with Down syndrome (DS), and with typical language development (TL) were matched on mean length of utterance (MW). Performance was compared primarily on composite measures of tense, tense inflections, and non-tense morphemes, as well as on the Sentences subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R; D. Wechsler, 1989). Exploratory analyses were completed on a set of 11 individual grammatical morphemes as a follow-up to the principal analyses. As predicted, the children with SLI performed significantly more poorly than the children with TL on all three composite measures. In addition, the DS group exhibited significantly weaker performance than did the TL group on the tense inflections and non-tense morpheme composites. Although there were no statistically reliable differences between the SLI and DS groups on any morpheme measure, the groups were not comparably weak in their use of the regular post, -ed; the irregular third person singular morphemes (e.g., has, does); the present progressive, -ing; or the use of modals. The SLI and DS groups both performed more poorly than did the TL group on the sentence imitation task.

Child↗
PubMed2003

Parent-reported language skills in relation to otitis media during the first 3 years of life.

As part of a larger study of the potential impact of early-life otitis media (OM) on speech, language, cognition, and behavior, we studied the degree of association between parent-reported language scores at ages 1, 2, and 3 years and the cumulative duration of middle-ear effusion (MEE) during the first 3 years of life in a demographically diverse sample of 621 children. We estimated the cumulative percentage of days with MEE from prospective monthly observations of middle-ear status and interpolations for periods between visits. For each child, parents completed the appropriate inventory of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; L. Fenson et al., 1993) at ages 1, 2, and 3 years. We also evaluated the contribution of maternal education, as a proxy for socioeconomic status, to scores on the parent reports. Scores on the new CDI-III (B. Oliver et al., in press) varied positively with sociodemographic variables and were significantly correlated with scores from the CDI used when the children were younger. Unadjusted correlations between scores at ages 1 and 2 years and the percentages of days with MEE in the respective antecedent periods were statistically nonsignificant or of questionable clinical importance. The correlations between parent-reported scores at age 3 years and children's cumulative percentage of days with MEE in Years 1, 2, and 3 combined ranged from -.187 to -.248 (all p values < .001). The percentage of days with MEE and maternal education each contributed independently to scores at age 3 years. In the light of other findings from the larger study, we think it likely that the negative associations between language measures and MEE reflect confounding factors that contribute, on the one hand, to the duration of OM in young children and, on the other hand, to slow development of their language skills.

Audiometry↗
PubMed2004

The efficacy of treatment for children with developmental speech and language delay/disorder: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis was carried out of interventions for children with primary developmental speech and language delays/disorders. The data were categorized depending on the control group used in the study (no treatment, general stimulation, or routine speech and language therapy) and were considered in terms of the effects of intervention on expressive and receptive phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. The outcomes used in the analysis were dependent on the aims of the study; only the primary effects of intervention are considered in this review. These were investigated at the level of the target of therapy, measures of overall linguistic development, and broader measures of linguistic functioning taken from parent report or language samples. Thirty-six articles reporting 33 different trials were found. Of these articles, 25 provided sufficient information for use in the meta-analyses; however, only 13 of these, spanning 25 years, were considered to be sufficiently similar to be combined. The results indicated that speech and language therapy might be effective for children with phonological or expressive vocabulary difficulties. There was mixed evidence concerning the effectiveness of intervention for children with expressive syntax difficulties and little evidence available considering the effectiveness of intervention for children with receptive language difficulties. No significant differences were found between interventions administered by trained parents and those administered by clinicians. The review identified longer duration (>8 weeks) of therapy as being a potential factor in good clinical outcomes. A number of gaps in the evidence base are identified.

Child↗
PubMed2004

Present tense be use in young children with specific language impairment: less is more.

A well-known characteristic of children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a significant deficit in grammatical morphology production compared with younger, language-matched, typically developing children. This is true for present tense be (am, is, are), as well as other inflectional morphemes. However, grammatical morpheme learning by children with SLI may vary depending on developmental stage. Participants were 8 boys with SLI (42 to 58 months old with mean length of utterances [MLUs] < or = 3.0 morphemes) and 14 MLU-matched controls (girls and boys; mean age of 27 months). These groups were younger and had lower MLUs than groups from oft-cited studies (e.g., Cleave and Rice, 1997; Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor, and Sabbadini, 1992; Leonard, Eyer, Bedore, and Grela, 1997; Rice, Wexler, and Hershberger, 1998). The SLI group had a significantly higher percentage of be use in obligatory contexts (46%) than did the younger, typically developing children (27%). This pattern of better performance in grammatical morphology by SLI groups than controls has been reported. Ingram (1972) and Morehead and Ingram (1973) found similar results for children with language impairment in early-MLU stages. Although findings are presented with caution, they afford an opportunity to consider the nature of SLI. If SLI represents a general processing limitation, then that limitation might enable the language learner with SLI to acquire some initial morphological mappings with relative success. This apparent paradox, which also is evident in normal language acquisition, has been termed less is more by Newport (1990). Limited perception and memory force attention to smaller pieces of the input, and these constraints simplify the task for the language learner. SLI is compared with a chronically constrained system that initially assists the learner to achieve basic form-function mappings but ultimately hinders mastery of English morphology.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2004

Oral and written story composition skills of children with language impairment.

In this study 538 children composed 1 oral and 1 written fictional story in both 2nd and 4th grades. Each child represented 1 of 4 diagnostic groups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), or low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). The stories of the TL group had more different words, more grammatical complexity, fewer errors, and more overall quality than either language-impaired group at either grade. Stories of the SLI and LNIQ groups were consistently stronger than were those of the NLI group. Kindergarten children with language impairment (LI) whose standardized test performance suggested normalization by 2nd grade also appeared to have recovered in storytelling abilities at that point. By 4th grade, however, these children's stories were less like the children with TL and more like those of children with persistent LI than they had been in 2nd grade. Oral stories were better than written stories in both grades, although the greatest gains from 2nd to 4th grade were generally made on written stories. Girls told stronger stories than did boys at both grades, regardless of group placement. It is concluded that story composition tasks are educationally relevant and should play a significant role in the evaluation of children with developmental LI.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed2005

Differences at 17 months: productive language patterns in infants at familial risk for dyslexia and typically developing infants.

Productive vocabulary composition is investigated in 17-month-old children who are participating in an ongoing longitudinal dyslexia research project in the Netherlands. The project is searching for early precursors for dyslexia and follows a group of children who are genetically at risk for dyslexia and a control group during the first 10 years of their lives. Among other measures, the Dutch version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (N-CDI) is used to investigate early vocabulary development. In this article, the first N-CDI results from the 2 groups of 17-month-old children are compared with each other, with other cross-sectional, cross-linguistic studies, and with a similar Finnish longitudinal dyslexia project. The Dutch children show the same general acquisition pattern as documented for other languages, but there are significant differences between the two groups of 17-month-old children in total number of words produced and in the linguistic composition of their productive vocabulary.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed2005

Age 13 language and reading outcomes in late-talking toddlers.

Language and reading outcomes at 13 years of age were examined in 28 children identified at 24 to 31 months as late talkers, all of whom came from middle- to upper-class socioeconomic status (SES) families and had normal nonverbal ability and age-adequate receptive language at intake. Late talkers were compared with a group of 25 typically developing children matched at intake on age, SES, and nonverbal ability. As a group, late talkers performed in the average range on all standardized language and reading tasks at age 13. However, they scored significantly lower than SES-matched peers on aggregate measures of vocabulary, grammar, and verbal memory, as well as on reading comprehension. They were similar to comparison peers in reading mechanics and writing aggregates. Intercorrelations between outcome measures were moderately high, suggesting considerable shared variance. Regression analyses indicated that age 2 Language Development Survey vocabulary score was a significant predictor of age 13 vocabulary, grammar, verbal memory, and reading comprehension. Findings suggest that slow language development at age 2-2 1/2 is associated with a weakness in language-related skills into adolescence relative to typically developing peers.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Frequency discrimination and literacy skills in children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss.

It has been suggested that specific reading disability (SRD) may be attributable to an impaired ability to perceive spectral differences between sounds that leads to a deficit in frequency discrimination and subsequent problems with language and literacy. The objective of the present study was three-fold. We aimed to (a) determine whether children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss were impaired in their ability to discriminate frequency, (b) assess the extent to which any such deficits may be due to an inability to use information derived from phase locking, and (c) examine whether frequency discrimination abilities were predictive of measures of word and nonword reading and nonword repetition. Difference limens for frequency (DLFs) were obtained for 22 children with mild to moderate hearing loss (SNH group) and 22 age-matched controls (CA group) at central frequencies of 1 kHz, where phase-locking information is available, and 6 kHz, where it is not. A battery of standardized tests of language and literacy was also administered. The SNH group exhibited significantly elevated DLFs at both 1 and 6 kHz relative to controls, despite considerable variability of thresholds in both groups. Although no group differences were found for receptive and expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and nonword reading, the SNH group performed worse than controls on word reading and nonword repetition, even though word reading scores were age-appropriate. Frequency discrimination abilities were associated with reading and nonword repetition across groups, but these correlations largely disappeared when the two groups were analyzed separately. Together, these results provide evidence for a dissociation between impaired frequency discrimination and relatively "spared" language and literacy in children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. These results cast doubt on the assertion that a deficit in frequency discrimination necessarily leads to marked deficits in the development of language and literacy.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Nonword repetition and language development in 4-year-old children with and without a history of early language delay.

PURPOSE: This study examined the usefulness of the Nonword Repetition Test (NRT; C. Dollaghan & T. F. Campbell, 1998) with 4-year-old children and the relationship among the NRT, language, and other aspects of mental processing. METHOD: The NRT was administered to 64 children at 4 years of age; 44 had a history of typical language development (HTD), and 20 had a history of language delay (HLD) at 16 months of age. Study 1 compared methods of scoring phoneme errors to determine whether the NRT was appropriate for this age group. Study 2 examined whether the NRT differentiated HTD from HLD. Study 3 examined the relations among scores on the NRT and standardized tests of language and mental processing. RESULTS: The NRT was found to be appropriate for 4-year-old children. Although all children had normal language abilities at the time of the study, the NRT (and several aspects of language and mental processing) differentiated between HTD and HLD. Relations among the NRT and other measures of language and mental processing were different from those previously reported, an unexpected finding that is inconsistent with traditional accounts of working memory and its relation to language development. Potential explanations are explored, and some directions for future research are suggested.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2006

Can severely language delayed 3-year-olds be identified at 18 months? Evaluation of a screening version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the effectiveness of a screening instrument (the Swedish Communication Screening at 18 months of age; SCS18), derived from the Swedish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, in identification of 18-month-old children who will be severely language disabled by 3 years of age, the authors (a) analyzed which SCS18's component yielded the best prediction, (b) compared the productivity figures of the SCS18 with those of the traditional method of identification, and (c) tried different cutoff criteria of the SCS18. METHOD: Half of the child health care (CHC) centers in a Swedish county were randomly selected to use the SCS18 (e.g., a checklist supporting parents in assessing their child's word production, word comprehension, and communicative gestures). Remaining CHC centers used an informal assessment. Expressive and receptive language was subsequently judged with an observation for 3-year-olds that is routine in the county. An unselected population of 2,080 children participated at 18 months of age and again at 3 years of age. RESULT: Number of spoken words yielded the best prediction, and SCS18 was superior to the traditional method. A sensitivity of 50%, however, was not enough, and a stricter criterion resulted in too many false positives to be acceptable as routine. CONCLUSION: Although the SCS18 has strength, the age of 18 months seems to be too early for identification of severe language disability.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed2006

Visuospatial immediate memory in specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: Investigations of the cognitive processes underlying specific language impairment (SLI) have implicated deficits in verbal short-term and working memory and in particular the storage and processing of phonological information. This study investigated short-term and working memory for visuospatial material for a group of children with SLI, to test whether the verbal memory impairments already established extend to the visuospatial domain. METHOD: Fifteen children with SLI and control groups of children matched on chronological age and language age completed tests of visuospatial short-term and working memory. RESULTS: The SLI group performed comparably with age-matched control children on all measures and at a higher level than the language-age control group on several measures. CONCLUSIONS: The visuospatial short-term and working memory abilities were at age-appropriate levels in this SLI group. This contrasts markedly with their impairments on tests of verbal short-term and working memory.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed2006

Children's naming and word-finding difficulties: descriptions and explanations.

PURPOSE: There is a substantial minority of children for whom lexical retrieval problems impede the normal pattern of language development and use. These problems include accurately producing the correct word even when the word's meaning is understood. Such problems are often referred to as word-finding difficulties (WFDs). This article examines the nature of naming and lexical retrieval difficulties in these and other groups of children. METHOD: A review of the relevant literature on lexical access difficulties in children with word-finding difficulties was conducted. Studies were examined in the terms of population parameters and comparison groups included in the study. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Most discussions of the cognitive processes causing lexical retrieval difficulties refer to semantics, phonology, and processing speed. The authors propose that understanding of these topics will be further advanced by the use of appropriate methodology to test developmental models. In this way it will be possible to identify the processes that contribute to successful lexical retrieval and the processes that result in retrieval difficulties.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Dynamic assessment of school-age children's narrative ability: an experimental investigation of classification accuracy.

UNLABELLED: Two experiments examined reliability and classification accuracy of a narration-based dynamic assessment task. PURPOSE: The first experiment evaluated whether parallel results were obtained from stories created in response to 2 different wordless picture books. If so, the tasks and measures would be appropriate for assessing pretest and posttest change within a dynamic assessment format. The second experiment evaluated the extent to which children with language impairments performed differently than typically developing controls on dynamic assessment of narrative language. METHOD: In the first experiment, 58 1st- and 2nd-grade children told 2 stories about wordless picture books. Stories were rated on macrostructural and microstructural aspects of language form and content, and the ratings were subjected to reliability analyses. In the second experiment, 71 children participated in dynamic assessment. There were 3 phases: a pretest phase, in which children created a story that corresponded to 1 of the wordless picture books from Experiment 1; a teaching phase, in which children attended 2 short mediation sessions that focused on storytelling ability; and a posttest phase, in which children created a story that corresponded to a second wordless picture book from Experiment 1. Analyses compared the pretest and posttest stories that were told by 2 groups of children who received mediated learning (typical and language impaired groups) and a no-treatment control group of typically developing children from Experiment 1. RESULTS: The results of the first experiment indicated that the narrative measures applied to stories about 2 different wordless picture books had good internal consistency. In Experiment 2, typically developing children who received mediated learning demonstrated a greater amount of pretest to posttest change than children in the language impaired and control groups. Classification analysis indicated better specificity and sensitivity values for measures of response to intervention (modifiability) and posttest storytelling than for measures of pretest storytelling. Observation of modifiability was the single best indicator of language impairment. Posttest measures and modifiability together yielded no misclassifications. CONCLUSION: The first experiment supported the use of 2 wordless picture books as stimulus materials for collecting narratives before and after mediation within a dynamic assessment paradigm. The second experiment supported the use of dynamic assessment for accurately identifying language impairments in school-age children.

Abstracting and Indexing↗
PubMed1980

An operant procedure for improving vocabulary definition performances in developmentally delayed children.

This report describes a training program in which operant procedures were used to improve the identification and definition of selected vocabulary words in three developmentally delayed children. Generalization from the training words was well established, as determined by responses to untrained vocabulary performance words. The results of this procedure suggest its application with other developmentally delayed children.

Child↗
PubMed1980

The elicited language inventory and the influence of contextual cues.

The Elicited Language Inventory (ELI) (Carrow, 1974b) was administered in standardized fashion and in a modified procedure with contextually supported cues to eight language-delayed and eight normal-speaking children in Brown's (1973) Stage II of morphological development. Additionally, grammatical morpheme use under the two ELI presentation conditions was compared with use of the same morphemes in spontaneous speech for two language-delayed and two normal-speaking subjects. Results of both comparisons favored modified use of the ELI with contextually cued items when sampling children's expressive speech. A significantly greater number of morphemes was imitated and provided in obligatory contexts under modified ELI conditions. Significantly fewer total errors were produced by all subjects when ELI items were presented with contextual cues. Moreover, children's performance on contextually cued ELI items was a significantly better predictor of their grammatical morpheme use in spontaneous speech than performance on the standard version of the ELI. Except for total errors, subject group differences were not significant; however, the older language-delayed children performed consistently better than the stage-matched normal-speaking children on all imitative response measures.

Child↗
PubMed1981

Language evaluation: science of art?

This study was designed to determine the degree of agreement between standardized tests of language development and clinical judgment. The Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL), the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory (CELI), and the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD) were used. Three-year-old white preschool children were tested individually by experienced speech-language pathologists in day-care centers. Each examiner also made a clinical judgment of normal or impaired language behavior, based on observations during the testing. The results indicated that the CELI agreed the most with the clinical judgment of the examiners, followed by the SICD and TACL. The clinical significance of these results is discussed.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1981

Performance of children with normal and impaired oral language production on a set of auditory comprehension tests.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the comprehension abilities of children with impaired expressive language and to obtain information on the interrelationships among tests of comprehension. Forty preschool children, 20 with normal language and 20 with impaired expressive language, were given a set of auditory comprehension tests. As a group, the language-impaired children demonstrated deficits in comprehension when compared to the normal-language children. However, both groups scored near the ceiling on several tests, and on most tests that did differentiate the two groups, the mean scores of both groups when applied to performances of middle-class white children. An analysis of responses to selected groupings of analogous items revealed that a preschool child's correct response to a linguistic stimulus in one instance provides no assurance that the child will respond similarly to the stimulus in another linguistic environment with different task demands and different foil alternatives. In addition, the large majority of correlations among the test were nonsignificant, indicating that it is not clinically appropriate to regard these measures of language comprehension as equivalent.

Child↗