The Diagnostic Accuracy of Four Vocabulary Tests Administered to Preschool-Age Children

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelley Gray ◽  
Elena Plante ◽  
Rebecca Vance ◽  
Mary Henrichsen
Keyword(s):  
Construct Validity ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Test Validity ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Preschool Age Children

This study examined the empirical evidence for using four vocabulary tests (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III [Dunn & Dunn, 1997], Receptive One-Word Vocabulary Test [Gardner, 1985], Expressive Vocabulary Test [Williams, 1997], Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test-Revised [Gardner, 1990]) to screen or identify specific language impairment (SLI) in preschool-age children. Tests were administered to 31 4- and 5-year-old children with SLI and 31 age-matched controls with normal language (NL). All children spoke General American English. Despite moderate to strong inter-test correlations, no test was a strong identifier of SLI. The group with SLI scored lower than the NL group on each test; however, the individual scores of children with SLI typically fell within the normal range. Vocabulary tests are frequently administered to determine whether a child’s language skills require further evaluation (screening), as a method of identifying SLI in children, or simply to describe aspects of language functioning. These purposes for administering a vocabulary test require various forms of empirical evidence in support of their use. Our data support construct validity for the four vocabulary tests examined, but do not support their use for identification purposes. Clinicians must apply a degree of sophistication in evaluating the evidence presented for test validity relative to the purposes for which the test will be administered. Unfortunately, although many test manuals offer inter-test correlations or statistically significant group differences as evidence of construct validity, they often omit data that would support common clinical uses, such as screening or identification.

scholarly journals Alternative Tense and Agreement Morpheme Measures for Assessing Grammatical Deficits During the Preschool Period

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 542-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Gladfelter ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Sensitivity And Specificity ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Composite Measure ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Preschool Period ◽  
Preschool Age Children

Purpose P. A. Hadley and H. Short (2005) developed a set of measures designed to assess the emerging diversity and productivity of tense and agreement (T/A) morpheme use by 2-year-olds. The authors extended 2 of these measures to the preschool years to evaluate their utility in distinguishing children with specific language impairment (SLI) from their typically developing (TD) peers. Method Spontaneous speech samples from 55 children (25 with SLI, 30 TD) at 2 different age levels (4;0–4;6 [years;months] and 5;0–5;6) were analyzed, using a traditional T/A morphology composite that assessed accuracy, and the Hadley and Short measures of Tense Marker Total (assessing diversity of T/A morpheme use) and Productivity Score (assessing productivity of major T/A categories). Results All 3 measures showed acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, similar differences in levels of productivity across T/A categories were seen in the TD and SLI groups. Conclusion The Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score measures seem to have considerable utility for preschool-age children, in that they provide information about specific T/A morphemes and major T/A categories that are not distinguished using the traditional composite measure. The findings are discussed within the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning account.

Emergent literacy profiles of preschool-age children with Specific Language Impairment

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 472-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Q. Cabell ◽  
Richard G. Lomax ◽  
Laura M. Justice ◽  
Allison Breit-Smith ◽  
Lori E. Skibbe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emergent Literacy ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Preschool Age Children ◽  
Literacy Profiles

scholarly journals Noun phrase morphology in Swedish-speaking children with specific language impairment

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
EVA-KRISTINA SALAMEH ◽  
KRISTINA HANSSON
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Preschool Age Children ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are often described as having great difficulty with grammatical morphology, but most studies have focused only on these children's use of verb morphology. In this study, we examined the use of noun phrase (NP) morphology by preschool-age children with SLI who are acquiring Swedish. Relative to typically developing same-age peers and younger peers matched according to mean length of utterance, the children with SLI had greater difficulty in the use of genitive inflections, indefinite articles, and article + adjective + noun constructions. Their difficulties were evidenced in omissions as well as substitutions. Furthermore, article omissions were more frequent in NPs containing an adjective and a noun than in NPs with only a noun. These findings indicate that in languages such as Swedish, NP morphology as well as verb morphology can be quite problematic for children with SLI. Factors that might have contributed to these children's difficulties are the lack of transparency of the gender of Swedish nouns, the morphological complexity of NPs containing adjectives in Swedish, the weak syllable status of articles, and the consonantal nature of some of the inflections.

Learning and Generalization Components of Morphological Acquisition by Children With Specific Language Impairment

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 1406-1413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Swisher ◽  
David Snow
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Rule Induction ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Skills Acquisition ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Chi Square Analysis

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular difficulty acquiring bound morphemes. To determine whether these morphological deficits spring from impairments of rule-induction or memory (storage/access) skills, 25 preschool-age children with normal language (NL) and 25 age-matched children with SLI were presented with a novel vocabulary and novel bound-morpheme learning task. A chi square analysis revealed that the children with SLI had significantly lower vocabulary learning levels than NL children. In addition, there was tentative evidence that a dependency relationship existed in some children between success in vocabulary learning and proficiency in generalizing a trained bound morpheme to untrained vocabulary stems. These findings are predicted by the storage/access but not the rule-induction theory of specific language impairment. They suggest that intervention targeting bound-morpheme skills acquisition in children with SLI might include attention to vocabulary development.

scholarly journals Complex sentence profiles in children with Specific Language Impairment: Are they really atypical?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK G. RICHES
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Unknown Origin ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Complex Sentence ◽  
Unequal Variance ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Difficulties ◽  
Analyze Data

AbstractChildren with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have language difficulties of unknown origin. Syntactic profiles are atypical, with poor performance on non-canonical structures, e.g. object relatives, suggesting a localized deficit. However, existing analyses using ANOVAs are problematic because they do not systematically address unequal variance, or fully model random effects. Consequently, a Generalised Linear Model (GLM) was used to analyze data from a Sentence Repetition (SR) task involving relative clauses. seventeen children with SLI (mean age 6;7), twenty-one Language Matched (LM) children (mean age 4;8), and seventeen Age Matched (AM) children (mean age 6;5) repeated 100 canonical and non-canonical sentences. ANOVAs found a significant Group by Canonicity interaction for the SLI versus AM contrast only. However, the GLM found no significant interaction. Consequently, arguments for a localized deficit may depend on statistical methods which are prone to exaggerate profile differences. Nonetheless, a subgroup of SLI exhibited particularly severe structural language difficulties.

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