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PubMed2006

Response time in 14-year-olds with language impairment.

PURPOSE: To determine whether children with language impairment were slower than typically developing peers at age 14, and whether slowing, if present, was similar across task domains; whether differences in response time (RT) across domains were the same for children with specific language impairment (SLI) and nonspecific language impairment (NLI); and whether RT performance at age 9 predicted performance at age 14. METHOD: Fourteen-year-old children with SLI (n = 20), NLI (n = 15), and typical development (NLD; n = 31) were administered several linguistic and nonlinguistic speeded tasks. The children had received the same tasks at age 9. RT performance was examined. RESULTS: Both the SLI and the NLI groups were significantly slower than the NLD group in motor, nonverbal cognitive, and language task domains, and there was no significant difference among domains. Individual analyses showed that most, but not all, children with SLI and NLI were slower than the NLD group mean. Slowing at age 9 and age 14 were moderately correlated. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that slow RT is a persistent characteristic of many children with language impairment; however, the nature of the relationship between RT and language performance requires further investigation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Tense and agreement morphemes in the speech of children with specific language impairment during intervention: phase 2.

PURPOSE: The goals of this investigation were to determine whether treatment assists children with specific language impairment (SLI) in the use of grammatical morphemes that mark tense and agreement and whether treatment gains influence the children's use of other, untreated morphemes. METHOD: Twenty-five children with SLI participated in 96 intervention sessions designed to facilitate the children's use of third-person singular -s or auxiliary is/are/was. RESULTS: The children showed significantly larger gains on the target forms than on control forms (e.g., past tense -ed) that were monitored but not included in intervention. Along with possible treatment-related generalization across morpheme types, there was also evidence of one morpheme type influencing another when neither was the target of intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Although the results provide clear evidence for intervention effects, it appeared as if maturational factors also played a role. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for treatment and for characterizing development in SLI.

Child Language↗

PubMed2006

Nonword repetition: a comparison of tests.

PURPOSE: This study compared performance of children on 2 tests of nonword repetition to investigate the factors that may contribute to the well-documented nonword repetition deficit in specific language impairment (SLI). METHOD: Twelve children with SLI age 7 to 11 years, 12 age-matched control children, and 12 control children matched for language ability completed 2 tests of nonword repetition: the Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) and the Nonword Repetition Test (NRT). RESULTS: The children with SLI performed significantly more poorly on both tests than typically developing children of the same age. The SLI group was impaired on the CNRep but not the NRT relative to younger children with similar language abilities when adjustments were made for differences in general cognitive ability. The children with SLI repeated the lengthiest nonwords and the nonwords containing consonant clusters significantly less accurately than the control groups. CONCLUSION: The evidence suggests that the nonword repetition deficit in SLI may arise from a number of factors, including verbal short-term memory, lexical knowledge, and output processes.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2006

Effects of acoustic manipulation on the real-time inflectional processing of children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: This study reports the findings of an investigation designed to examine the effects of acoustic enhancement on the processing of low-phonetic-substance inflections (e.g., 3rd-person singular -s, possessive -s) versus a high-phonetic-substance inflection (e.g., present progressive -ing) by children with specific language impairment (SLI) in a word recognition, reaction time (RT) processing task. The effects of acoustic enhancement on the processing of the same morphemes as well as an additional morpheme (comparative -er) were examined in an offline grammaticality judgment task. The grammatical function of 1 of the higher-phonetic-substance inflections, -ing, was presumed to be hypothesized relatively early by children; the function of the other, -er, was presumed to be hypothesized relatively late. METHOD: Sixteen children with SLI (age(M) = 9 years;0 months) and 16 chronological age (CA; age(M) = 8;11) children participated. For both tasks, children listened to sentences containing the target morphemes as they were produced naturally (natural condition) or with acoustic enhancement (enhanced condition). RESULTS: On the RT task, the children with SLI demonstrated RT sensitivity only to the presence of the high-substance inflection, irrespective of whether it was produced naturally or with enhancement. Acoustic enhancement had no effect on these children's processing of low-substance inflections. The CA children, by contrast, showed sensitivity to low-substance inflections when they were produced naturally and with acoustic enhancement. These children also showed sensitivity to the high-substance inflection in the natural condition, but in the enhanced condition they demonstrated significantly slower RT. On the grammaticality judgment task, the children with SLI performed worse than the CA children overall and showed especially poor performance on low-substance inflections. Acoustic enhancement had a beneficial effect on the inflectional processing of the children with SLI, but it had no effect on CA children. CONCLUSION: The findings are interpreted to suggest that the reduced language processing capacity of children with SLI constrains their ability to process low-substance grammatical material in real time. This factor should be considered along with any difficulty that might be attributable to the grammatical function of the inflection.

Child↗

PubMed1980

Test-retest reliability of the test for auditory comprehension of language when it is used with mentally retarded children.

The Carrow (1973) Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) is used frequently as part of a test battery to assess the language skills of mentally retarded children. This study determined its reliability with this population using a test-retest paradigm. Forty-four retarded children were given the test and then retested after a five-week interval. A reliability coefficient of 0.91 was obtained between pre-test and posttest administrations of the TACL. Internal stability was highest for total scores, the subtests measuring form class and function words, and grammatical categories. The low coefficients obtained for the subtests of morphological construction and syntactic suggest that these should be viewed with considerable caution when considered separately from the total test results.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Northwestern Syntax Screening Test: a short form.

The NSST was administered to 900 children aged three years to seven years, 11 months. Using a step-wise multiple regression model, the test was shortened from 20 to 11 test items receptively and expressively, while accounting for 95% of total test score variance. This shortened form, taking approximately 10 minutes to administer, was normed in six-month intervals as opposed to the one-year intervals of the original NSST. A cross validation sample of 301 children was used to demonstrate that comparable clinical decisions are made employing either form.

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

The effect of context on verbal elicited imitation.

Elicited imitation is a language sampling procedure in which a child is asked to repeat an utterance that is modeled by the examiner. In most clinical applications of this technique, the stimulus sentences are presented without any relevant context and without regard to whether the child knows the meaning of the sentences to be imitated. In the current experiment, 16 language-delayed preschool children repeated a set of 40 sentences, controlled for length, without context and with context provided by a set of pictures drawn to capture the meaning of the stimuli. For some of the children, the context had little effect. For the group as a whole, however, the number of errors was significantly reduced when the visual context was provided. These findings suggest that, for at least some children, the elicited imitation procedure is made more sensitive to the child's best grammatical performance when context is added.

Child, Preschool↗

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↗

PubMed1981

Language training: some data on response classes and generalization to an occupational setting.

The study was designed to investigate whether present plural uncontractible forms of auxiliary and copula (are) are members of a single response class. A mentally retarded adult female served as the subject. Within a behavior training, reversal, and reinstatement design, only the uncontractible auxiliary are was trained, reversed, and reinstated using operant training contingencies. On probes, however, sentences involving auxiliary as well as those involving copula were tested. It was found that training the uncontractible auxiliary are was sufficient to induce generalized production of the uncontractible copular are. Subsequently, when the auxiliary production was reversed, the copular production was also reversed. Finally, when the auxiliary production was reinstated, the copular production was automatically reinstated. The results suggest that auxiliary and copula are, although distinct grammatically and developmentally, belong to a single response class. The study also revealed that with the help of operant training and generalization strategies, the subject was able to use the trained features in conversational speech exhibited in her occupational setting.

Adult↗

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↗

PubMed1982

The potential of language tasks for identifying senile dementia.

More than two million elderly Americans suffer from senile dementia, an age-related disease affecting memory, intellect, and communication. The purpose of this study was to explore the diagnostic efficacy of language tasks for identifying senile dementia. The performance of 35 dementia patients was compared to that of 28 normal senescents on five language tasks and certain psychological measures reputed to be sensitive to the disease such as the Block Design and Similarities subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Mental Status Questionnaire (MSQ), and the Nonsense Syllable Learning Tests. Language tasks presented were: Story-retelling, Naming, Sentence Disambiguation, Verbal Expression, and Sentence Correction. A discriminant analysis found the Sentence Correction Task, the MSQ, and the Verbal Expression Test to best discriminate patients with senile dementia from normal aged subjects. Semantic functions were found to be more vulnerable than phonologic and syntactic to the effects of progressive cortical atrophy.

Aged↗

PubMed1982

Learning disabled children's syntactic proficiency on a communicative task.

Previous studies have generally examined learning disabled children's syntactic ability either on structured tasks or by analyzing oral language samples collected under conditions not typical of natural communicative settings. Thus, these studies are of limited value in exploring the impact of learning disabled children's deficits in linguistic structure on their use of language in social contexts. The purpose of this study was to investigate learning disabled children's syntactic proficiency during a task requiring them to convey information to a listener. Subjects were selected on the bases of teacher ratings, reading achievement scores, and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test IQ scores within the normal range; those children identified as learning disabled received low ratings and demonstrated underachievement (below 40th percentile for their grade) in reading. Oral language samples were collected by having learning disabled and normally achieving children in grades two, four, six, and eight participate in a referential communication task in which they described abstract shapes to an experimenter. The length and syntactic complexity of the children's descriptions were assessed. Learning disabled children in all grades were found to produce shorter mean t-units and shorter mean main clauses than nondisabled children even on this relatively simple communicative task. Although learning disabled children's linguistic problems have previously been characterized as subtle, these findings suggest that their productive language deficits may be significant enough to interfere with even the informal and elliptical conversations characteristic of communication among peers and family members.

Adolescent↗

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

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↗

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

Clinical evaluation of language functions (CELF) diagnostic battery: an analysis and critique.

To summarize, the main strengths of the CELF are the clarity with which the manual describes the subtests and the instructions provided for test administration. Major concerns center on the absence of a theoretical framework as a basis for the selection of language skills assessed, the use of only "normal" children in the standardization sample, the lack of scoring criteria for one subtest, the seemingly incorrect weighting system for another, and minimal evidence of test reliability and validity.

Adolescent↗