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PubMed1995

Hierarchical planning abilities in children with specific language impairments.

The present study examined Cromer's (1983) claim that children with language impairments have a hierarchical planning deficit that affects language as well as performance on complex construction tasks. Subjects were 30 boys (ages 5-7 years), 15 with specific language impairments (SLI) and 15 with normally developing language. Children were asked to build four hierarchical structures: a block construction, a puzzle construction, a simple straw construction, and a complex straw construction. Children who failed to complete the complex straw construction were taught how to construct the model using a sequential strategy. The two groups tended to perform comparably on the block and complex straw construction, the easiest and hardest of the four constructions. The two groups performed least comparably on the puzzle, simple straw construction, and the training task. On the basis of these findings and recent work by Greenfield (1991), we concluded that it is time to reject the notion that a central hierarchical planning mechanism underlies language and non-language structures that contain hierarchical components. The possible exception is early in development before language and manual actions become more autonomous and modular in nature.

Child↗

PubMed1995

Redirects: a strategy to increase peer initiations.

Preschoolers' verbal abilities influence their verbal interactions with play partners. Previous research has suggested that preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) are more likely to initiate conversations with adults than with peers, as compared to their typically developing peers. This study investigated a teacher-implemented procedure, redirects, as a means to facilitate initiations to peers. A redirect occurs when a child initiates to the teacher, and the teacher then suggests the child initiate to a peer, thereby redirecting the child from an adult to a peer. Four preschool boys with SLI participated in the study. The teacher training was successful in increasing the teacher's ability to redirect the children's initiations. The children consistently responded to redirects by initiating to peers, and most redirected initiations received conversational responses from peers. Generalization effects to spontaneous peer initiations following the intervention period were demonstrated for 2 of the boys.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1995

Measuring children's lexical diversity: differentiating typical and impaired language learners.

This study evaluated the extent to which measures of lexical diversity (type-token ratio and number of different words produced) differentiated children with specific language impairment (SLI) from children whose language skills were following typical developmental expectations. Analysis of 50- and 100-utterance samples revealed that children with SLI did not significantly differ from their age- and language-equivalent peers on type-token ratio; however, children with SLI did use significantly fewer different words than their age-equivalent peers in these samples. When samples of 100 and 200 tokens were considered, the children with SLI also used significantly fewer different words than their age-equivalent counterparts. Overall, the findings of this study discourage the use of type-token ratio, as traditionally calculated, in many clinical and research activities related to children with SLI. In contrast, the number of different words produced provides a more sensitive and informative estimate of lexical diversity.

Child Language↗

PubMed1996

Lexical learning by children with specific language impairment: effects of linguistic input presented at varying speaking rates.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of speaking rate variations in the linguistic input provided to children during a novel word learning task. Thirty-two school-age children participated in this investigation, including 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 normal language (NL) controls matched on mental age (MA). The younger half of the NL group also served as a vocabulary level comparison for the older half of the children with SLI. No significant rate effects were found for comprehension of novel words, with all children performing at relatively high levels of accuracy. The group with SLI demonstrated the same recognition accuracy pattern as MA matched controls for target labels versus phonetically similar/dissimilar foils only for words trained at slow rate. Rate effects were most pronounced for items with the highest difficulty level, namely production of novel words. Children with SLI produced significantly fewer words that had been presented at fast rate during training than NL children matched on mental age or vocabulary level. Individual differences and production error patterns on fast rate items were examined. The finding that variations in speaking rate had a disproportionate impact upon word learning for children with SLI was interpreted within a framework of limited processing capacity.

Child↗

PubMed1996

Tracking children from poverty at risk for specific language impairment: a 3-year longitudinal study.

A 3-year longitudinal study of the language performance of children from poverty was designed to address the problem of separating children with a specific language impairment (SLI) from low-scoring normal children in the borderline area on the continuum of language performance where normal ends and abnormal begins. Two approaches to definition were compared: an experimental approach (using story-retelling, rote-memory ability, and invented-morpheme learning) and a traditional approach (using standardized-test discrepancy scores). Results indicated that 6 of 34 children tracked from kindergarten through second grade appeared to be SLI at the end of the study. The best kindergarten predictor for the outcome status of these 6 children was a combination of the score on the Oral Vocabulary subtest of the TOLD-2P and the score on a combination of the experimental tasks. The best single kindergarten predictor of the academic status of the 15 children in the study who received academic remediation was story-retelling. Children's scores on the experimental and standardized tests of language performance and nonverbal intelligence were profiled over the 3 years of the study, and patterns of change in many instances reveal the lifting of the early influences of poverty.

Child↗

PubMed1996

The use of spontaneous language measures as criteria for identifying children with specific language impairment: an attempt to reconcile clinical and research incongruence.

Criteria for identification of children as specifically language impaired (SLI) vary greatly among clinicians and researchers. Standardized psychometric discrepancy criteria are more restrictive and perhaps less sensitive to language impairment than is clinical judgment based on a child's language performance in naturalistic contexts. This paper examines (a) differences in groups of preschool children clinically diagnosed as SLI who were and were not identified as SLI through standard psychometric discrepancy criteria, and (b) the validity of quantitative measures of mean length of utterance (MLU), syntax, and pragmatics derived from a spontaneous language sample as criteria for discriminating clinically diagnosed preschoolers from normally developing preschoolers. Spontaneous language data indicated that children clinically identified as SLI produced a significantly higher percentage of errors in spontaneous speech than normal children whether they met psychometric discrepancy criteria or not. Logistic regression analysis indicated that a combination of MLU, percent structural errors, and chronological age was the optimal subset of variables useful for predicting a clinical diagnosis of SLI. This combined criterion captured a larger proportion of the clinically identified SLI children than even the best psychometric discrepancy criteria.

Child↗

PubMed1996

SLI subgroups: interaction between discourse constraints and morphosyntactic deficits.

A performance-based model was employed to investigate the impact of discourse demands on the pattern of morphosyntactic deficits exhibited by children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). The pattern of grammatical errors varied with respect to discourse demands for children with good receptive language abilities but remained stable and independent of changes in discourse demands for children with both expressive and receptive deficits. These findings suggest distinct deficit profiles for subgroups of children with SLI differing in receptive language abilities that are not evident when syntactic skills are investigated outside the context of ongoing spontaneous discourse.

Child↗

PubMed1996

Auditory lexical decisions of children with specific language impairment.

To determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) take longer than age peers to recognize sequences of sounds that represent words in their lexicon, we compared auditory lexical decision times of children with SLI to those of typically developing age peers. Children with SLI were significantly slower than peers, but speed of word recognition was not correlated with measures of language comprehension for children with SLI. Furthermore, time to detect an auditory signal and initiate a vocal response did not account for the differences between groups. Possible interpretations of the results are discussed with two explanations-differences between groups in task-related factors that stressed processing capacity or in the nature of phonetic/phonological representations-seeming more likely than others.

Child↗

PubMed1996

Interactive focused stimulation for toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays.

This study explores the effects of training parents to administer focused stimulation intervention to teach specific target words to their toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays. Twenty-five mothers and their late-talking toddlers were randomly assigned to treatment and delayed-treatment (control) groups. Vocabulary targets were individually selected for each toddler based on the child's phonetic repertoire and parent report of vocabulary development. Following treatment, mothers' language input was slower, less complex, and more focused than mothers in the control group. Concomitantly, their children used more target words in naturalistic probes, used more words in free-play interaction, and were reported to have larger vocabularies overall as measured by parent report. In addition, the treatment had an effect on language development-children in the experimental group used more multiword combinations and early morphemes than children in the control group. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to the role of focused stimulation intervention for children with expressive vocabulary delays.

Humans↗

PubMed1997

Two models of grammar facilitation in children with language impairments: phase 2.

Fey, Cleave, Long and Hughes (1993) demonstrated the effectiveness of two 5-month interventions for preschoolers with problems in expressive grammar. This article reports the results of an additional 5-month intervention phase for 18 of the original participants. Results indicated that although participants improved during Phase 2, improvements generally were not as strong as those noted for Phase 1. Gains were larger and more consistent for children who received the relatively costly clinician-administered approach than for those who received a less expensive parent-administered intervention. The parent intervention was successful in helping parents to use sentence recasts, and especially so for parents of children at relatively early stages of grammatical development, Finally, children who were dismissed after a highly successful treatment Phase 1 generally exhibited no gains over the no-treatment Phase 2.

Child↗

PubMed1997

The influence of peer models on the play scripts of children with specific language impairment.

This investigation included two phases of inquiry that examined the effects of peer modeling upon the play scripts of children with specific language impairment (SLI). The first study employed a pretest-posttest control group design involving two groups of children with SLI (10 who participated in the experimental treatment and 10 controls) and a group of peer models (10 children with normal language development). The treatment involved dyadic play sessions in which children with SLI were paired with a normal language peer model. Significant differences were found between the play script reports of the experimental (SLI-E) and control groups (SLI-C) of children with specific language impairment. The second study, utilizing single-case methodology, involved 6 children with SLI who participated in the control group of Study 1, plus 2 peer models. Play dyads consisted of either two children with SLI or one child with SLI and a normal language peer. Results of this study provided support for the contention that play interactions with normal language peers facilitates increases in the play-script reports of children with SLI.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1997

Past-tense marking by children with and without specific language impairment.

This study examined the productivity and representation of past-tense marking in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Participants were 11 6-year-olds with SLI, 11 age-matched controls, and 11 MLU-matched controls. Regular and irregular verbs were used to examine the productivity of regular marking. Past-tense representation was examined by asking children to inflect homophonous pairs of denominal and irregular root verbs. All three groups demonstrated productive marking of past tense, although as expected the accuracy of the impaired groups was less than that of earlier control group. Patterns of past-tense marking as a function of a word's phonological composition and inflectional frequency were the same for the SLI- and MLU-matched groups, and all children presented a past-tense system that was sensitive to grammatical structure. The findings replicate previous research of the SLI morphological system and provide additional specification of these children's morphological strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include the children's sensitivity to grammatical and phonological characteristics of the lexicon; weaknesses include limited productivity of regular past-tense marking and a greater sensitivity to frequency manipulations as compared to normally developing children. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of the SLI profile. They also are used to evaluate the theoretical model on which the study was based.

Child↗

PubMed1997

Effects of lexical intervention on the phonology of late talkers.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether a focused stimulation intervention focusing on lexical training has indirect, secondary effects on children's phonological abilities. Twenty-five toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays and their mothers were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The children were between 23 and 33 months of age at entry into the study and were at the single-word stage of language development. Parents of late talkers in the experimental group were trained to employ frequent, highly concentrated presentations of target words without requiring responses. Two measures of phonological diversity (i.e., syllable structure level and consonant inventory) and one measure of accuracy of production (i.e., percent consonants correct) were measured prior to and following intervention within the context of mother-child interactions. The toddlers who received intervention made treatment gains in two areas of phonological ability. They used a greater variety of complex syllable shapes and expanded their speech sound inventories to include more consonant sounds in both initial and final position. In contrast, there were no effects of language treatment on the accuracy of correct production when compared to the adult phonological system.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Three accounts of the grammatical morpheme difficulties of English-speaking children with specific language impairment.

Several hypotheses have been offered to explain the grammatical morpheme difficulties observed in the speech of children with specific language impairment. Three of the accounts that could be evaluated in English were the focus of this study: the extended optional infinitive account, the implicit rule deficit account, and the surface account. Preschoolers with specific language impairment, a group of age controls, and a group of younger children matched for mean length of utterance were evaluated in their use of several theory-relevant grammatical morphemes. The findings revealed advantages for both the surface and extended optional infinitive hypotheses. In contrast, a test of the predictions based on the implicit rule deficit account suggested that the children studied here were not experiencing a deficit of this type.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1997

Response latency and verbal complexity: stochastic models of individual differences in children with specific language impairments.

Within-subject statistical modeling techniques were employed to investigate individual differences in the extent to which two possible indicators of processing time predicted changes in utterance complexity during spontaneous discourse for 10 children ages 7;1 to 10;1 with specific language impairments (SLI) who differed in receptive language abilities. The two indicators of processing time that were modeled were response latency and the use of a specific discourse marker (Verbal Pause) that provided children with additional time to respond. Longer response latencies were not a strong predictor of increased utterance length for any of the children. However, results indicated that children with better receptive skills used substantially more verbal pauses than children with both expressive and receptive deficits and that the use of these pauses was a strong predictor of increased utterance length for children with better comprehension skills.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

The extent to which psychometric tests differentiate subgroups of children with SLI.

This paper reports on the results of a large project involving 7-year-old children attending language units in England. A group of 242 children with specific language impairment (SLI) were assessed on a battery of psychometric tests. In addition, teacher interviews were carried out to ascertain teachers' opinions of the children's difficulties. Cluster analysis revealed six robust subgroups of children with language difficulties. The findings are discussed in the context of other approaches to the classification of language impairment in children with special reference to the work of Rapin and Allen (1987).

Child↗

PubMed1997

Grammatical deficits in Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment.

In earlier work, Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been shown to exhibit a profile of grammatical morpheme difficulties that is quite different from the profile seen for English-speaking children with SLI. In the present study, this difference was confirmed using a wider range of grammatical morpheme types. A group of Italian-speaking children with SLI produced articles and third person plural verb inflections with lower percentages in obligatory contexts than a group of age controls and a group of younger controls matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). However, the children with SLI closely resembled the MLU controls in their production of noun plural inflections, third person copula forms, first person singular and plural verb inflections, and third person singular verb inflections. Errors on articles and copula forms were usually omissions whereas errors on verb inflections were usually productions of inappropriate finite inflections. Infinitives were seen in contexts requiring finite forms but they were not the dominant error type. Data from comprehension tasks raise the possibility that production factors were responsible for some of the differences seen. The findings of this study suggest that accounts of SLI are incomplete unless they assign a major role to the relative case of identifying and interpreting the relevant data in the ambient language. The implications of these findings for current accounts of SLI are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed1997

Cognition and communication: referential strategies used by preschoolers with specific language impairment.

Ten children with specific language impairment and 10 children with normal language development were asked to describe objects so that a listener could select them. Each trial targeted two out of a group of three toys. The targeted objects were identical or were similar in size or color. Children in the two groups did not differ in referential success, although children in both groups found the size items more difficult. Content analysis of the messages did reveal differences in the referential strategies used most frequently. Children with specific language impairment were more likely to mention the attributes of each object separately, rather than to describe the characteristics common to a pair of objects. Children in both groups talked about separate objects more often when talking about size than about color or object type. Use of this strategy could indicate the effects of attentional capacity on children's solutions to communication tasks.

Child, Preschool↗