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PubMed1982

Towards an understanding of retarded children's linguistic deficiencies.

The purpose of this study was to provide a more accurate description of the language performance of retarded children and, by doing so, to understand better how the general mental handicap affects language learning. Subjects were a group of 10 retarded children matched for MA to a group of 10 normal children and 10 language-impaired children. Various syntactic and semantic analyses were performed. The results indicated that the retarded group's language abilities were essentially comparable to those of the normal group, though differences between these groups were found. Notably, the retarded children did not demonstrate the same linguistic deficiencies as the language-impaired children. It was suggested that the MA-inconsistent language behaviors exhibited by the retarded children were quantitative in nature rather than qualitative and as such seemed to reflect deficits in adaptive (i.e., social) and motivational behaviors rather than deficits in linguistic or cognitive abilities.

Child↗
PubMed1982

Associations between phonology and syntax in speech-delayed children.

Interactions between phonology and syntax are inspected in continuous speech samples from 30 speech-delayed children. Two types of interactions are examined: The co-occurrence of speech and language delay and the effects of phonological reduction on the realization of phonetically complex morphophonemes. Four possible patterns of association between the phonological and syntactic systems are outlined, and subjects are assigned to these patterns based on their phonological and syntactic performance. Results indicate that two-thirds of the subjects display evidence of overall syntactic delay, whereas half show some limitation in the use of phonetically complex morphophonemes, their performance in that area being below the level of their syntactic production. Implications of these findings for a theory of speech delay and for management programming are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1983

Language and speech behaviors of children with undue lead absorption: a review of the literature.

This article reviews the effects of chronic undue or low lead absorption on the speech and language behavior of children. While the effects of high-level lead poisoning have been documented, the effects of chronic low-lead absorption remain controversial. It is concluded that the evidence supports the presence of speech and language problems in some low-lead level children. The severity, duration, and specific nature of the problems, however, are not clear. Pertinent research issues are addressed.

Child↗
PubMed1984

Partner age as a variable in the conversational performance of specifically language-impaired and normal-language children.

The language used by a group of 4 1/2-6-year-old specifically language-impaired (SLI) children, a group of same-aged normal-language (NL) children, and a group of younger NL children were observed in three dyadic contexts: with an adult female, with a peer, and with a toddler. Ten measures were selected to analyze the children's performance across partner contexts. The results revealed that the SLI children were as assertive in the conversations as were the children in the same-aged NL group. Further, the SLI children modified their language in the same manner and to the same extent as the same-aged NL children on all but three measures: use of internal state questions, mean length of utterance, and mean preverb length. Their ability to adapt their speech based on the age-related characteristics of the partner appeared at times to be greater than that of the younger NL children.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Symbolic play in normal and language-impaired children.

The symbolic play of 15 normally developing (CA, 16-22 months) and 15 language-impaired children (CA, 32-49 months), whose productive language skills were at the single-word utterance level, was compared. Symbolic play was assessed formally through the Symbolic Play Test and informally through the observation of spontaneous play. The language-impaired children were found to be developmentally advanced when compared to the language-matched normal children in the level and direction of their symbolic play. Relative to age norms, however, the language-impaired children evidenced deficits in symbolic play. Thus, their linguistic and symbolic play abilities were not equally impaired. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the relationship between symbolic play and language and for the nature of specific language impairment.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1986

Direct language instruction and interactive language instruction with language delayed preschool children: a comparison study.

Direct language instruction and interactive language instruction are based on highly distinct theoretical positions and incorporate very different behavioral techniques. A purpose of the present study was to evaluate the relative effectiveness of direct and interactive language instruction in promoting a variety of language skills. A second purpose was to determine if an aptitude and treatment interaction influenced the outcome of intervention. Forty-four children of preschool age were randomly assigned to classrooms using either direct instruction or interactive instruction. After 8 months, children in both settings improved significantly and substantially on syntactic and semantic measures. There were no differences between the two groups at posttest, nor were there any significant aptitude by treatment interactions for either cognitive or language pretest measures. The results of this study, and a careful examination of previously reported interactions, suggest that such an interaction has yet to be demonstrated.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1990

Development of children with early language delay.

Four children with early language delays (ELD) were compared to a control group of 12 children with respect to their preschool language abilities from age 2 1/2 to 5 years and their verbal skills at the end of Grade 2. The language-delayed children each initially showed severe and broad impairments in syntactic, phonological, and lexical production. Over time, their deficits became milder and more selective, such that normal or nearly normal speech and language proficiency was exhibited by age 60 months. Nevertheless, when followed up 3 years later, three of the four cases were severely reading disabled. These findings are discussed with respect to prior findings and hypotheses about the sequelae of early language delay and the relationship of language development to reading achievement.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1991

Stability of cohesion in the spoken narratives of language-impaired and normally developing school-aged children.

The short-term stability of the cohesion scores for the spoken narratives of language-impaired and normally developing school-aged children was investigated. Narratives were obtained from 39 language-impaired and 39 normal-language children, aged 8-10 years, at four 2-week intervals. Reliability coefficients for scores from five measures--two for cohesive adequacy and three for verbal productivity--were of adequate magnitude for analysis. Mean cohesive adequacy scores were stable across narratives, but stability coefficients were only moderately large. Stability coefficients for verbal productivity scores were sufficiently large for research purposes; mean scores were most similar between testing Times 2 and 3, indicating that stability increased after children had experience telling stories.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1991

The use of an invented language rule in the differentiation of normal and language-impaired Spanish-speaking children.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the results of a language-teaching procedure could be used to identify specific language-impaired children in a group of bilingual children with limited English proficiency (LEP). An invented morpheme was taught to two groups of LEP children who had been previously identified as normal and specific language-impaired. The language-impaired group learned the morpheme at a slower rate than the normal children, thus allowing the two groups to be differentiated. The approach promises to circumvent many of the obstacles that impede current practices for identifying language impairment in the LEP population.

Child↗
PubMed1991

Otitis media in early childhood and later language.

The relationship between early otitis media with effusion (OME) experience and later language development was examined in a prospective cohort study of 30 children from middle-class families and 33 children from low-income families. Ear status was monitored using otoscopy and tympanometry during wellness and illness periods between birth and 3 years of age. Language was assessed using standardized tests and a language sample between 4 1/2 and 6 years. Findings suggested no reliable relationship between early OME experience and later language development.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1993

Narrative skills in 4-year-olds with normal, impaired, and late-developing language.

Two groups of children who were slow in expressive language development (SELD) at age 2 and a matched group of toddlers with normal language were re-evaluated at age 4. Assessment included measures of productive syntactic skills in spontaneous speech and narrative abilities in a standard story retelling task. Four-year-olds who continued to perform below the normal range in sentence structure production scored significantly lower than their normally speaking peers on all measures of narrative skill. Children who were slow to begin talking at age 2 but who, by age 4, had moved into the normal range in basic sentence structure production showed no statistically significant differences, in terms of several of the measures of narrative ability, from either normally speaking 4-year-olds or from the group with persistent delay. The implications of these findings for the management of early language delay and its relation to school learning disability are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1993

The effects of early bilateral otitis media with effusion on language ability: a prospective cohort study.

The current study, which is a follow-up on the epidemiological Nijmegen Otitis Media study, examines the relationship between early otitis media with effusion (OME) and later language ability in a group of children with systematically documented bilateral OME. In the Nijmegen Otitis Media study, children were screened using tympanometry at regular intervals of 3 months, between their second and fourth birthdays. At age 7, three groups of children participated in language testing: 82 OME-free children, 151 children with early bilateral OME, and 37 children treated with ventilation tubes at preschool age. A history of OME, even up to nine instances, did not have negative consequences for language performance at age 7. Intermittent, as opposed to more continuous, OME was not found to affect language ability negatively. The suggested benefit of treatment with ventilation tubes was not found.

Child↗
PubMed1993

Comparison of two methods for promoting productive vocabulary in late talkers.

This investigation compared the effectiveness of two language treatment methods, modeling versus modeling plus evoked production, in promoting productive vocabulary in three toddlers identified as late talkers. A single-subject alternating treatments design was employed in this study in which different sets of words were taught under the two treatment methods during group and individual instruction. Some evidence of differential patterns of response to the treatment types was found for two subjects, but the subjects differed as to which particular treatment method was associated with better performance. Neither treatment method was effective for the third subject. Dynamic assessment measures were only marginally useful in predicting overall lexical learning potential in these subjects, and did not predict response to the two teaching methods. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to the role of language intervention for late talkers.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1993

Conversations with children who are language impaired: asking questions.

Samples of conversational language were elicited with a standardized interview protocol from 24 children, aged 2:6 to 7:8, half with specific language impairment (SLI), half with normally developing language (LN), matched for language level. Samples were analyzed to determine whether there were associations between adult questioning and children's use of ellipsis. For the SLI children, but not the LN children, increased proportions of questions were significantly correlated to increased proportions of ellipsis. This finding has implications for the use of MLU measures in clinical and research practice.

Case-Control Studies↗
PubMed1993

Children with specific language impairment: linguistic impairment or short-term memory deficit?

This study is concerned with characteristics of short-term memory (STM) in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The linguistic requirements of the test procedure, the characteristics of the test materials, and the development of linguistic representations were considered. Two experimental tasks were used: a verbal-repetition and a picture-pointing procedure. The tasks used auditory presentation and were designed to explore different underlying processes during immediate recall. The linguistic characteristics of the test materials were designed to explore the influence of semantic, lexical, and phonological factors on STM. Six SLI children (aged 6:1 to 9:6) (years:months) were individually matched on comprehension and expression of language to 17 younger children (age 3:4 to 6:5). Both groups were differentially influenced by the materials as a function of the test procedure. In general, both group and individual analyses found no significant difference between the performance of the SLI children and language-age (LA) controls. The implications of the results in relation to previous findings from investigations of STM and the underlying cause of SLI in children are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1993

Plural acquisition in children with specific language impairment.

A plural elicitation task and a nominal compounding task were administered to a group of children with SLI and two groups of normally developing children, an age-equivalent group (CA) and a language-equivalent group (MLU). Across tasks, differences between the CA and SLI groups were significant, but differences between the MLU and SLI groups were not. These findings suggest that by 5 years of age, children with SLI demonstrate a productive and differentiated plural system. However, unlike the normally developing children, the pluralization skills of the children with SLI were affected by input frequency, with nouns that are frequently pluralized in everyday conversation more readily inflected than ones that are infrequently pluralized. Three explanations within a model of linguistic normalcy are proposed to account for the frequency effect. These include (a) delayed independence of rule use, (b) linguistic vulnerability, and (c) a faulty lexicon.

Child Language↗
PubMed1993

Morphological deficits of children with SLI: evaluation of number marking and agreement.

Three accounts of the grammatical deficits of children with specific language impairment (SLI), that is, Missing Feature, Surface Account, and Missing Agreement, were evaluated by examining children with SLI and language-matched non-SLI children's acquisition of number marking and number agreement. The data consisted of spontaneous language transcripts from 108 preschool children. Number marking was evaluated using five indices of plural development: percent of use in obligatory contexts, lexical productivity, selectivity, contrastivity, and morphological productivity. Two levels of number agreement were examined: the traditional agreement between the verb and its subject, and a new measure of agreement within the noun phrase. The results indicated that children with SLI control number marking, counter to the predictions of the Missing Feature hypothesis and the Surface Account. On the other hand, as predicted, number agreement across clausal boundaries was more difficult for the children with SLI as compared to the children in the control group. A close analysis of number marking within the noun phrase revealed two distinctive contexts, determiner+noun versus quantifier+noun. Children with SLI had more difficulty with the latter than the former, whereas the two contexts were not differentiated for the control children. Syntactic and semantic explanations are discussed as interpretive options.

Child Language↗