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PubMed1982

Establishing generalized, productive verb-noun phrase usage in a manual language system with moderately handicapped children.

Strategies for producing generalized language skills continue to be of considerable interest to those working with severely language-delayed children. Research on generalized instruction-following suggested that strategies employing linguistic elements (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) arranged in systematic combination matrices were successful in producing generalized and novel responses among handicapped children. The efficacy of a training matrix in the development of expressive verb-noun phrase usage was demonstrated. Two of the three students showed considerable gains in trained responses as well as predicted, novel responses, while a third who had much less training, showed some gains. Increases were also found in the overall development of expressive language tests. This approach is discussed in relation to other experimental approaches to language development.

Child↗
PubMed1983

A home-centered instructional communication strategy for severely handicapped children.

Family involvement is an essential element of language intervention with severely handicapped children for several reasons. First, the parent-child interaction is the focus of normal language development, and can be a powerful impetus in language learning for handicapped children. Second, limited generalization and maintenance of skills often occur when they are acquired in environments that do not also teach the appropriate use of skills. Third, parents can be successful intervention agents and may generalize their skills to other interactions with their child. Training conducted in the home must be compatible with that environment: it should involve only those skills that are of immediate use in the home. The Instructional Communication Strategy described herein represents such a program. It is a synthesis of training strategies used with normal and handicapped children, and is applicable regardless of child's level of functioning, age, or handicapping condition. This training model involves considerable modification in the role of speech-language pathologists dealing with the severely handicapped. The professional's skills are best utilized for assessment, program development, monitoring progress, and training specialized skills. The parents provide most of the direct training; however, professionals are also utilized for the child's maximum benefit.

Child↗
PubMed1983

Returning meaning to semantic relations: some clinical applications.

Two approaches for analyzing the meanings reflected in children's early word combinations are illustrated for possible application in the clinical setting. The first approach is interpretive in nature and involves detailed analysis of spontaneous speech. The second approach uses individualized probes that are designed to isolate the semantic factors involved in children's word combination patterns. Although both approaches have limitations, it is argued that each provides significantly more clinical information than assigning a child's utterances to predetermined semantic relation categories.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1983

"Can you give me that one?": The comprehension, production and judgment of directives in language-impaired children.

This research is an investigation of pragmatic abilities focusing on "requesting" in a group of 30 language-impaired children between the ages of 3 1/2 and 9 years. The subject's requesting abilities were examined in three situations: (a) operating in dyads in a role-playing situation; (b) production of requests in an experimental procedure involving handpuppets; and (c) perception of requests in that situation. Transcriptions were analyzed using a speech act model along the three dimensions of "purpose," "directness," and "surface form." The findings indicated there was a predominant usage of direct forms with only a slight increase of indirect ones in the older group. Regarding the experimental assessment, it was found that language-impaired children, although restricted in the range of linguistic devices at their disposal, appear to compensate by frequently using the structures that they have already acquired. In general, these subjects operated pragmatically at a level two years or more below chronological age (compared to the performance of the normally developing children studied by Bates, 1976) and it appeared that their ability to discriminate between requests on the basis of politeness did not reach an appreciable level until the age of 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 years.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1983

A longitudinal study of the development of stop consonant production in normal and Down's syndrome children.

In order to compare phonological development in normal and Down's syndrome children, longitudinal observations were made of four normal children from 18 to 36 months of age and five Down's syndrome children from 3 to 6 years of age. Singleton stops and stop clusters were analyzed to determine if the Down's syndrome children evidenced phonological processes and other sound patterns similar to those of the normal children. Although quite similar patterns were observed for the two groups, the Down's syndrome children showed considerable delay in comparison to the normally developing children.

Child↗
PubMed1983

Linguistic and nonlinguistic features of style in normal and language-impaired children.

This study explored two questions concerning the language-learning styles described in recent investigations of early child language. The first question was whether features suggestive of language-learning style, for example, extent of pronoun use, jargon-like speech, formulaic speech, and certain play behaviors occurred in clusters consistent with the specific lexical distribution patterns of young normal children delineated by Nelson (1973). The second portion of the study addressed whether language-impaired children could be characterized as reflecting the same language-learning styles attributed to normal children. Eight children, four normally-developing and four language-impaired, were classified as "referential" or "expressive" speakers on the basis of their lexical distribution. For both the normal and language-impaired children, linguistic features suggested in the literature as correlating to one or another language-learning style were found to exist in clusters consistent with the children's pattern of lexical distribution. In addition, analyses of videotaped samples coded for the focus and context of the normal and language-impaired children's play behaviors revealed object-based and social-interaction-based activities that were generally consistent with the children's lexical distribution.

Child Language↗
PubMed1983

The effect of stimulus variation on lexical learning.

At some early stage in a child's development of the comprehension and production of language, he/she must recognize that single words correspond to referents in the environment. How to best present the critical aspects of the environment to which a verbal label is attached is not entirely known. For language-impaired children it is important to know how to highlight this relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic cues so that therapy will be most effective. To examine how language-impaired children best learn single word lexical items, nouns and verbs were taught expressively through two modes of stimulus presentation thought to highlight the nonlinguistic environment: object manipulation and picture identification. The efficacy of these two treatment conditions was assessed with four children functioning at Piaget's sensorimotor period of development by using a single subject, alternating treatments design. The results indicated individual variation in learning strategies. Two of the children learned more single words (nouns and verbs) in the object manipulation condition. One child learned equally well in both conditions and the fourth child learned best in the picture identification condition. Variables accounting for the individual variation are discussed.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1983

Mothers' discourse adjustments to language-impaired and non-language-impaired children.

Mother's discourse adjustments addressed to language-impaired children and non-language-impaired children were studied. Mother-child dyads with 14 language-impaired children and 14 MLU-matched non-language-impaired children served as subjects. The mothers' discourse was compared on the following measures: meaning illocutions, cohesion ilocutions, and dialogue participation. The children's participation in dialogue was also analyzed. Results indicated that the mothers' speech addressed to the two groups of children was highly similar, but the discourse performance of the language-impaired children was not like that of the non-language-impaired children. The clinical implications of these findings for the language-impaired population are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1983

Elicited imitation and the Oral Language Sentence Imitation Screening Test (OLSIST): content or context?

Ten language-normal children, aged 2:1-3:3 (yrs:mos), and eight language-impaired children, 3:7-4:1, in Brown's (1973) Stages II or III received two subtests of the Oral Language Sentence Imitation Screening Test (OLSIST: Zachman, Huisingh, Jorgenson, & Barrett, 1978) in a contextually supported condition and in a standardized test condition. Also, children's generation of eight grammatical morphemes in a spontaneous language sample condition was compared to their imitative control of the same structures on the OLSIST. Results indicated significantly enhanced imitative performance for the language-impaired children but not for the language-normal children in the contextually cued condition. Stage III language-normal children earned significantly better imitative scores than language-impaired subjects and Stage II language-normal children, regardless of test condition, although OLSIST subtests did not differentiate performance of any group. With only one exception, morpheme difficulty orders on the OLSIST did not predict morpheme orders in spontaneous language samples. Presence of cues, moreover, did not significantly increase the OLSIST's predictive ability. With the exception of Stage III language-normal subjects, all children displayed greater productive control of most morphemes in their spontaneous speech. Conclusions were drawn relative to the clinical significance of contextual reliance as well as alternatives to imitation testing for estimating the grammatical skills of the language-impaired child.

Child Language↗
PubMed1984

The effects of mands and models on the speech of unresponsive language-delayed preschool children.

The effects of the systematic use of mands (non-yes/no questions and instructions to verbalize), models (imitative prompts), and specific consequent events on the productive verbal behavior of three unresponsive, socially isolate, language-delayed preschool children were investigated in a multiple-baseline design within a classroom free play period. Following a lengthy intervention condition, experimental procedures were systematically faded out to check for maintenance effects. The treatment resulted in increases in total verbalizations and nonobligatory speech (initiations) by the subjects. Subjects also became more responsive in obligatory speech situations. In a second free play (generalization) setting, increased rates of total child verbalizations and nonobligatory verbalizations were observed for all three subjects, and two of the three subjects were more responsive compared to their baselines in the first free play setting. Rate of total teacher verbalizations and questions were also higher in this setting. Maintenance of the treatment effects was shown during the fading condition in the intervention setting. The subjects' MLUs (mean length of utterance) increased during the intervention condition when the teacher began prompting a minimum of two-word utterances in response to a mand or model.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1984

On describing idiosyncratic phonologic systems.

A phone distribution procedure for analyzing idiosyncratic phonologic systems in children is applied to a phonologically impaired child's distribution of alveolar and velar stops. Results show that these stops occur in complementary distribution: Alveolar stops occur before high vowels and velar stops occur before nonhigh vowels. It is further demonstrated that phonologic process analysis fails to reveal this unusual distribution of alveolar and velar stops. Thus, it is argued that phonologic process analysis must necessarily be supplemented by other procedures capable of detecting and describing unusual distribution patterns in order to achieve an accurate clinical diagnosis and to select the most appropriate target for a successful clinical treatment program.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1984

Effects of speech and speech and sign instruction on oral language learning and generalization of action + object combinations by Down's syndrome children.

This study was designed to compare the effects of speech and speech-plus-sign stimulation during comprehension treatment on the oral language learning and generalization of action + object relational meanings. Ten home-reared Down's syndrome children in Early Stage 1 received concurrent comprehension treatment in Speech and Speech-Sign conditions using a miniature linguistic system. Upon attainment of criterion level performance in both conditions, generalization tasks were administered to measure the effects of the comprehension treatment on the comprehension and the production of treated and untreated action + object combinations. The results obtained from this study indicated that the two treatment conditions did not differ significantly for either learning or generalization. The data did, however, indicate that individual patterns of acquisition were evident among the children. Caution is advised concerning the automatic adoption or rejection of manual sign as part of oral language intervention programs.

Child↗
PubMed1984

Use and misuse of norm-referenced tests in clinical assessment: a hypothetical case.

The purposes of this paper are to discuss concepts that are fundamental to proper use of norm-referenced tests in clinical assessment, to consider common errors in the use of such tests, and to suggest alternatives to norm-referenced testing for certain assessment purposes. A hypothetical client is used to illustrate the following errors: the use of age-equivalent scores as the sole summary of test results, the use of individual items to formulate therapy objectives, and the failure to consider the possible effects of measurement error when difference scores are used to assess progress or to examine patterns of impairment.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

Pragmatic assessment: analysis of a highly frequent repeated utterance.

The present study examined the pragmatic role of a frequently repeated utterance, "it's gone," within the multiple context conversational interactions of a 4-year-old specifically language-impaired boy. The data indicate that the phrase was an interactive access strategy to engage his partners in a nonexistence/disappearance game, a frequent type of early mother-child interaction. The assessment and intervention implications of these data are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1984

Nature and boundaries of phonologic categories: a case study of an unusual phonologic pattern in a language-impaired child.

This paper presents a detailed examination of an unusual phonologic pattern reflected in the speech of a language-impaired child. The most salient characteristic of this child's speech was the use of [s] in final position of all words except those containing final oral or nasal bilabials. Her pattern seemed best described as reflecting only two canonical forms for word production, CVC and CVCVC, and a dominant word-final category possessing a family resemblance structure with [s] as the prototype. Training was instituted to increase the number of appropriate categories in the child's phonologic system. Training on word-final [f] and [d] was successful. However, training on [d] seemed to result in the creation of a second category with family resemblance structure. The clinical and theoretical implications of this child's phonologic pattern are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1985

Early language abilities of high-risk infants.

Ten children with a history of prematurity and respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) were matched with 10 full-term controls on the single-word stage of language. Eleven dependent variables probed for qualitative differences between the groups. Measures of receptive language were based on two assessment procedures specifically designed for this study. Expressive language measures were taken from a parent-elicited language sample. Control subjects demonstrated superior performance on all receptive language and child verbosity measures despite their younger age.

Child Language↗
PubMed1985

Using the miniature linguistic system in teaching syntax: two case studies.

Two language-delayed children received comprehension instruction on preposition-object phrases using a miniature linguistic system format to structure generalization. Results indicated generalization not only to untreated two-word combinations, but also to comprehension of four-word phrases. In addition, there was some generalization of production of two- and four-word structures.

Child, Preschool↗