Object Transformations in the Play of Language-Impaired Children

1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Y. Terrell ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Play Behavior ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Standard Group ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Impaired Children

The play behavior of 10 language-impaired children was observed. Their performances in play were compared to those of 10 normal-language children matched for chronological age as well as to those of 10 normal-language children matched for mean length of utterance. The children were observed as they played spontaneously with a standard group of toys and as they played with objects that required object transformations for successful play. The chronological age-matched normal subjects showed a trend toward performance of more object transformations in play than either the language-impaired or younger normal-language children. Additionally, although object transformations were observed in both segments, all children performed more object transformations with objects than with toys.

Speech Style Modifications of Language-Impaired Children

1981 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc E. Fey ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Kim A. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Internal State ◽  
Dyadic Interactions ◽  
Sentence Complexity ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Interaction Studies ◽  
Sentence Form ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Impaired Children

Six language-impaired children, each having a mean length of utterance (MLU) greater than 3.0, were observed in dyadic interactions with (1) normal-language children of similar chronological ages and (2) normal-language children who were younger but exhibited similar MLUs. Eight measures analyzing overall sentence complexity, sentence form, and features of discourse were used to compare the subjects' linguistic behaviors in the two conditions. Across conditions, the subjects made changes in their speech that were consistent with the speech style modifications made by normal-language children observed in earlier interaction studies. Lower Mean Pre-Verb Length, a greater degree of conversational assertiveness, and a higher frequency of Internal-State Questions were characteristic of the subjects in the MLU-matched conditions as compared to the age-matched condition. Diagnostic and therapy considerations are discussed in view of these findings.

Remediating Humor Comprehension Deficits in Language-Impaired Students

1992 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile C. Spector
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Impaired Children

Language-impaired children and adolescents, in general, have been found to have significantly poorer comprehension of humor than their peers with normal language development. This paper discusses sources of difficulty for these students in understanding the various aspects of humor and describes general and specific techniques for remediating comprehension deficits.

Relations among verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills in normal language and specifically language-impaired children

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Adelaida Restrepo ◽  
Linda Swisher ◽  
Elena Plante ◽  
Rebecca Vance
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Impaired Children

Specific-Language-Impaired Children’s Quick Incidental Learning of Words

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 1040-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mabel L. Rice ◽  
JoAnn Buhr ◽  
Janna B. Oetting
Keyword(s):  
Incidental Learning ◽  
Word Comprehension ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Comparison Groups ◽  
Control Version ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Main Effects ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Better Than

It was hypothesized that the initial word comprehension of specific-language-impaired children would be enhanced by the insertion of a short pause just before a sentence-final novel word. Three groups of children served as subjects: twenty 5-year-old, specific-languageimpaired (SLI) children, and two comparison groups of normally developing children, 20 matched for mean length of utterance (MLU) and 32 matched for chronological age (CA). The children were randomly assigned to two conditions for viewing video programs. The programs were animated stories that featured five novel object words and five novel attribute words, presented in a voice-over narration. The experimental version introduced a pause before the targeted words; the control version was identical except for normal prosody instead of a pause. Counter to the predictions, there was no effect for condition. Insertion of a pause did not improve the SLI children’s initial comprehension of novel words. There were group main effects, with the CA matches better than either of the other two groups and no differences between the SLI children and the MLU-matched children.

Pragmatics and SLI

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Julia L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Receptive Language ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Status ◽  
Pragmatic Research ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Selected discourse behaviors of children with specific language impairment (SU) presenting expressive (E:SLI) or combined expressive-receptive deficits (E-R:SLI) were compared to each other and to chronological age-mates and younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children with normal-language skills. The two SLI subgroups varied from each other on specific measures of tum-taking and cohesion. These findings imply the need for future normative work with SLI subgroups differing in receptive skill, and indicate that, in the interim, pragmatic research with this population will need to consider potential effects of receptive language status when interpreting variations in outcomes for discourse-based variables.

Elicitor Effects on the Language Obtained from Young Language-Impaired Children

1978 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley B. Olswang ◽  
Robert L. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Setting ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Speech Language Pathologist ◽  
Evaluation Procedures ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Language Evaluations ◽  
Expressive Language Development ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Impaired Children

Language samples are typically obtained during speech and language evaluations by the speech-language pathologist to assess the level of expressive language development of young children. These samples are assumed to be accurate representations of the children’s language skills. This study examines the effects of the elicitor on the language obtained from three- to six-year-old language-impaired children in a clinical setting. A corpus of nonimitated utterances was collected in 25 min from each of the nine subjects under two conditions: mother as elicitor and clinician as elicitor. The corpus of language collected under each condition was examined using the following measures: (1) numeric-number of utterances; (2) lexical-vocabulary type-token ratio: (3) grammatic-mean length of utterance, (4) percentage of one-morpheme utterances, (5) percentage of two-morpheme utterances, (6) percentage of three- or more morpheme utterances, (7) proportion of grammatical morphemes per utterance (8) semantic-percentage occurrence of semantic categories, and (9) type-token ratio for each of the 13 semantic categories. The data analysis revealed that the elicitor affected the number of utterances collected in a specific time period, but neither the lexical, grammatic, nor semantic aspects of the utterances were affected. The results state practical implications for evaluation procedures used in a clinical setting.

Speech Perception Development in Language-Impaired Children

1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne E. Bernstein ◽  
Rachel E. Stark
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Perceptual Development ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Serial Memory ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Impaired Children

A group of specifically language-impaired (SLI) children was compared with a matched group of non-SLI children (i.e., children displaying normal language) on tests of speech perception and language ability. The tests were administered longitudinally at times separated by an interval of 4 years. Initially (i.e., Time 1), the groups differed significantly in discrimination, sequencing, and rate processing of and serial memory for synthesized /ba/ and /da/ stimuli. At Time 1, age effects were also observed among both groups of children. That is, performance improved as a function of increased age. At follow-up (i.e., Time 2), performance was at or near ceiling for subjects in both groups, indicating that perceptual development occurred in both groups of children. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that perceptual deficits play a causal role in specific language impairment.

Conversational Replies of Children with Specific Language Impairment

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Considerable Variability ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Impaired Children

Conversational replies were examined in two groups of children with comparable vocabularies and speech limited to single-word utterances: children with specific language impairment, ages 2:10 to 3:6 (years:months); and children, ages 1:5 to 1:11, who were developing language normally. In interactions with adults the language-impaired children produced a greater number and variety of replies to both questions and statements than the normal-language children. The findings suggest that language-impaired children can serve as responsive conversationalists when syntactic skill is not a factor and that comprehension, world knowledge, and/or experience with conversations permit considerable variability in conversational skill even within the same level of expressive language ability.

"Can You Give Me That One?"

1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Prinz ◽  
Linda J. Ferrier
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Experimental Assessment ◽  
Experimental Procedure ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Impaired Children

This research is an investigation of pragmatic abilities focusing on "requesting" in a group of 30 language-impaired children between the ages of 3 1/2 and 9 years. The subject's requesting abilities were examined in three situations: (a) operating in dyads in a role-playing situation; (b) production of requests in an experimental procedure involving handpuppets; and (c) perception of requests in that situation. Transcriptions were analyzed using a speech act model along the three dimensions of "purpose," "directness," and "surface form." The findings indicated there was a predominant usage of direct forms with only a slight increase of indirect ones in the older group. Regarding the experimental assessment, it was found that language-impaired children, although restricted in the range of linguistic devices at their disposal, appear to compensate by frequently using the structures that they have already acquired. In general, these subjects operated pragmatically at a level two years or more below chronological age (compared to the performance of the normally developing children studied by Bates, 1976) and it appeared that their ability to discriminate between requests on the basis of politeness did not reach an appreciable level until the age of 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 years.

Fast Mapping in Normal and Language-Impaired Children

1987 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Dollaghan
Keyword(s):  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Nonsense Word ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fast Mapping ◽  
Single Exposure ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
New Words ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Impaired Children

In this study, the fast mapping skills of a group of 11 normal children (ages 4:0–5:6) were compared to those of a group of 11 language-impaired children (ages 4:1–5:4) exhibiting expressive syntactic deficits. Fast mapping is a hypothesized process enabling children to create lexical representations for new words after as little as a single exposure. Subjects encountered a nonsense word and its novel object referent. Subsequent tasks probed the amount and kinds of information about the new word that the subjects had entered into memory. Normal and language-impaired subjects did not differ in their ability to infer a connection between the novel word and referent, to comprehend the novel word after a single exposure, and to recall some nonlinguistic information associated with the referent. However, the language-impaired subjects were less successful than the normal subjects in producing the new word, recalling significantly fewer of its three phonemes.

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