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PubMed1985

On the subject of subjects: suggestions for describing subjects in language intervention studies.

Recent child language intervention literature was analyzed to determine the content and consistency of subject descriptions. The amount and type of descriptive information varied widely both within and among journals. In view of the potential importance of such descriptions and the apparent lack of standards for acceptability, suggestions were developed and forwarded as a working model for describing language-handicapped children in intervention studies.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1986

Evaluation of a simile recognition treatment program for hearing-impaired students.

The investigation incorporated a changing criterion design to demonstrate the effectiveness of a treatment program designed to increase recognition of similes by two hearing-impaired students. Results indicated that the treatment program increased the students' ability to correctly match similes and descriptive passages. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1986

Generalization of treatment effects by young language-delayed children: a longitudinal analysis.

This study investigated the generalized effects of a language intervention program on the structural aspects of 8 language-delayed preschool children's productive language. Subjects were observed in preschool free play for periods ranging from 12 to 24 months concurrent with receiving daily didactic language intervention. A total of 57 two-, three-, and four-word syntactic forms were taught to criterion. Generalized usage was determined from (verbatim) language samples collected during free play periods in the subjects' classroom. Forty-two (74%) of the treated forms generalized to the subjects' spontaneous language in free play. There was a relationship between the complexity and potential functions of the treated forms and their generalization to free play. This effect may have been related to the subjects' MLUs. Substantial changes also occurred in the subjects' MLUs, frequency of speaking, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores, and Houston Test for Language Development scores over the period of instruction. These measures suggested that 4 of the 8 subjects were functioning near the normal range at the conclusion of treatment. Implications of these and other results are discussed.

Child Language↗

PubMed1986

A comprehension monitoring program for language-impaired children.

Four language-impaired children (5:10-8:2) participated in an intervention program designed to improve their comprehension monitoring skills. A set of audiotaped adequate and inadequate messages was presented through the baseline and treatment phases of a multiple-baseline across subjects design, with the dependent variable being the percentage of inadequate messages that were verbally queried. Results revealed rapid increases in verbal queries of five types of inadequate messages in conjunction with progress through the comprehension monitoring treatment program. High levels of comprehension monitoring were maintained following a nontreatment interval of 3-6 weeks. Facilitation of comprehension monitoring skills appears to be a feasible and fruitful adjunct to traditional language intervention objectives.

Child↗

PubMed1986

Incidental language teaching: a critical review.

Incidental language teaching refers to interactions between an adult and a child that arise naturally in an unstructured situation and are used systematically by the adult to transmit new information or give the child practice in developing a communication skill. The purposes of this paper are to review and critique current research on incidental language teaching, briefly discuss the theoretical reasons why incidental teaching might be expected to be effective, and to discuss directions for future research on this teaching approach with children who are language impaired and mentally retarded.

Child↗

PubMed1987

Developmental influences in teaching language forms to individuals with developmental disabilities.

The purpose of this experiment was to test the assumption that the sequencing of language goals for individuals with developmental disabilities should be based on the normal developmental sequence. In a series of two studies, phonetic sounds and syntactic structures representing different levels of normal development were taught to individuals with developmental disabilities. The results showed that (a) the majority of earlier emerging forms were acquired in fewer trials, (b) there was never an instance when the later emerging form was acquired and the earlier emerging form was not, and (c) the majority of earlier emerging forms were correctly produced at higher levels than the later emerging forms during probe sessions conducted 6 months after training. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of language curricula for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1987

Effectiveness of language intervention with the language/learning disabled.

This paper uses a meta-analytic procedure to assess the effectiveness of language intervention with the language/learning disabled. A total of 43 studies were coded and analyzed for design, subject, and treatment characteristics. A mean effect size (ES) of 1.041 was achieved suggesting that the average language-disordered child moved from the 50th percentile to the 85th percentile as a result of language intervention. An analysis of the data for this study revealed several significant (p less than .05) ES differences for subject and treatment characteristics. The nature of the differences and their relationship to intervention are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Effects of imitation on language comprehension and transfer to production in children with mental retardation.

This study investigated the effects of verbal imitation on the comprehension of novel object-location responses and subsequent transfer of these responses to production. A matrix training procedure was used to teach 2 children with moderate mental retardation syntactic rules for combining known and unknown words into two-word utterances. An alternating treatments design was used with two conditions: receptive teaching with imitation of the target phrase and no imitation of the phrase. Findings suggested that the use of imitation facilitated both generalized receptive learning and transfer to production in both subjects.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Multisensory speech perception by profoundly hearing-impaired children.

Four children in Study 1 (ages 5-7 years) and 4 children in Study 2 (ages 8-11 years) received unimodal (tactual) word recognition training with tactual speech perception aids. Two of the subjects in Study 1 were trained with a 2-channel device and 2 with a 16-channel aid. All of the subjects in Study 2 used a 16-channel aid. Following training, subjects were tested on a list containing equal numbers of trained words and of tactually new words in three conditions: (a) aided hearing alone (H), (b) tactual aid alone (TA), and (c) combined (TA + H). Results indicate that subjects performed significantly better in the combined condition on both trained and tactually new words, providing evidence for significant sensory integration following unimodal training.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Facilitating word-finding skills of language-impaired children.

Two language-impaired children and their controls participated in a preliminary study designed to examine the effects of treatment on word-finding skills. The 2 children participated in activities designed to improve the elaboration and/or retrieval of the training words, whereas their controls received a therapeutic regimen that did not target word-finding skills. Treatment effects were apparent, with the greatest gains associated with activities focusing on both elaboration and retrieval. Although the findings were promising, several procedural details complicated interpretation of the data.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Modeling versus modeling plus evoked production training: a comparison of two language intervention methods.

The effectiveness of two language intervention procedures, modeling versus modeling plus evoked production, was compared using a single-subject alternating treatments design. Four language-disordered children (5:5-6:11) participated in the study, consisting of four baseline sessions and 10-14 training sessions. There was no marked difference in the effectiveness of the modeling procedure and the modeling plus evoked production procedure as measured by performance on generalization probes following each training session. In fact, the highest levels of accuracy attained under the two training procedures were quite comparable. There was a tendency, however, for the modeling plus evoked production treatment to result in a slightly more stable pattern of acquisition for 3 of the subjects. Although steps were taken to minimize multiple-treatment interference, the possibility of these effects must be considered, and caution should be taken in interpreting these findings to mean that these two intervention methods would produce equivalent results when administered independently.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1989

Using structured discourse as a language intervention technique with autistic children.

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.

Autistic Disorder↗

PubMed1989

An experimental analysis of milieu language intervention: teaching the action-object form.

The syntactic and pragmatic effects of a milieu language teaching intervention implemented to teach the action-object form were investigated. Subjects were 3 young children with borderline to moderate levels of mental retardation, all in the early stages of productive language development. After a prolonged baseline period, each subject received three to four training sessions per week in a small group interactive play situation. Experimental control was demonstrated by a multiple baseline design across subjects. Generalization was measured along a variety of dimensions. Results indicated that subjects learned to generatively produce action-object combinations. These combinations were used in nonobligatory conversational situations as requests for objects/actions and as declaratives. Subjects also began to respond correctly to probe questions. The results support the conclusion that milieu training procedures can be used to enhance the acquisition and generative use of basic syntactic-semantic forms. The results also suggest that systemic adult commenting, child conversational "scaffolding," and spontaneous imitation may play significant roles for some children in the acquisition and generalization of language taught via a milieu approach.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Outcome of intensive language treatment in aphasia.

Sixty-eight aphasic inpatients received intensive language treatment (9 hr per week over a period of 6-8 weeks). Outcome was assessed by means of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT), a standardized test battery for the German language. For patients with duration of aphasia up to 12 months, amount of improvement was corrected by the expected rate of spontaneous recovery as determined by a previous multicenter follow-up study. About two thirds of the patients showed significant improvement in AAT performance according to psychometric single case analysis procedures. A similar rate of improvement was found for individuals with chronic aphasia beyond the stage of spontaneous recovery.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Identifying stimuli in the natural environment that control verbal responses.

When a learner is taught a new response, the stimuli that influence its display often are unknown. These stimuli alter the probability of occurrence of the response. That is, when they are present, the response occurs; when they are absent, it does not occur. By identifying the stimuli that influence the probability of newly acquired responses, interventionists may program for their generalization more effectively and efficiently. In the present study, 2 students who were moderately retarded were taught to label a coin. Eight environmental stimuli that were present during training were identified. The effect of each stimulus on the occurrence of the response was assessed prior to and after training by presenting the remaining seven stimuli and altering only the target stimulus. The results demonstrated that by altering one stimulus at a time, responding continued uninterrupted. For 1 of the 2 learners, however, responding was disrupted by altering two stimuli simultaneously. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of stimulus control and generalization.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Training and generalization of agrammatic aphasic adults' wh-interrogative productions.

The stimulus and response generalization effects of training wh-interrogative production were examined in 4 agrammatic Broca's aphasic subjects using a multiple baseline design across behaviors and subjects. Throughout treatment, response generalization to untrained questions and stimulus generalization to several nontraining conditions were assessed. Variable response generalization to untrained exemplars of trained wh-interrogative forms and little generalization to grammatically different wh constructions occurred. Stimulus generalization to only one of three conditions was noted. However, generalization treatment involving sequential modification of training across conditions was found to be effective in facilitating generalization to an additional stimulus condition for 2 of the 4 subjects.

Aged↗

PubMed1990

Generalized learning of receptive and expressive action-object responses by language-delayed preschoolers.

This study examined the effectiveness of matrix-training procedures in teaching action + object utterances in both the receptive and expressive language modalities. The subjects were 4 developmentally delayed preschool boys who failed to produce spontaneous, functional two-word utterances. A multiple baseline design across responses with a multiple probe technique was employed. Subjects were taught 4-6 of 48 receptive and 48 expressive responses. Acquisition of a word combination rule was facilitated by the use of familiar lexical items, whereas subsequent acquisition of new lexical knowledge was enhanced by couching training in a previously trained word combination pattern. Although receptive knowledge was not sufficient for the demonstration of corresponding expressive performance for most of the children, only minimal expressive training was required to achieve this objective. For most matrix items, subjects responded receptively before they did so expressively. For 2 subjects, when complete receptive recombinative generalization had not been achieved, expressive training facilitated receptive responding. The results of this study elucidate benefits to training one linguistic aspect (lexical item, word combination pattern) at a time to maximize generalization in developmentally delayed preschoolers.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1979

Imitative modeling as a language intervention strategy: the effects of two mediating variables.

Previous research has indicated that language intervention strategies which stress the learning of abstract grammatical rules are more successful than those which emphasize specific stimulus-response associations. Accordingly, this study experimentally compared two such strategies (imitative modeling versus mimicry) to determine their relative effectiveness in teaching language-disordered children rules which they previously lacked. Moreover, two additional variables, reinforcement and whether the modeled examples originated with the clinician or with a separate, third-person model, were examined to determine their influence on the modeling process. The results suggest that modeling strategies were superior to mimicry, thereby replicating the earlier results of Courtright and Courtright (1976). In addition, it was found that neither reinforcement nor third-person models significantly increased the teaching effectiveness of modeling techniques. These results are discussed in terms of their pragmatic implications for practicing speech clinicians.

Child↗