Facilitating word combination in language-impaired children through discourse structure

The influence of an adult-child discourse structure on the production of early word combinations was examined in language-impaired children. The subjects were 10 children (2:8-3:4) at the single-word utterance level. Eight of the children were engaged in 10 experimental sessions utilizing vertical structures (e.g., Adult: "Who's this?" Child: "Daddy." Adult: "What's Daddy throwing?" Child: "Ball." Adult: "Yeah, Daddy's throwing the ball."), while the remaining children, serving as controls, were engaged in an alternate activity. Examination of pretest and posttest data as well as session data revealed a substantial increase in the number of multiword productions for most of the children in the experimental group but not for the children serving as controls. These findings indicate that vertical structures have a facilitating effect on the multiword productions of language-impaired children comparable to that found in an identical procedure with normally developing children. The use of a naturally occurring adult-child discourse structure as an intervention procedure is discussed.     

Maternal recasts and other contingent replies to language-impaired children

Mothers' recasts and other contingent replies to their children's utterances were examined in two groups of mother-child dyads. In one group there were 14 dyads that contained language-impaired children; in the other there were 14 dyads that contained non-language-impaired children. Results indicated that mothers' overall use of recasts, as well as other contingent replies, was highly similar for the two groups, except that complex recasts were used more often by the mothers of non-language-impaired children. Differences in discourse functions were also observed. Mothers of language-impaired children used recasts less often than mothers of non-language-impaired children to respond to, or request clarification of, their children's utterances. Further, they more often used such replies to serve the functions of information requests, assertion, or direction. Recasts were also found to vary in relation to observed differences in children's intelligibility and in contrasting patterns of dialogue initiation for the two kinds of dyads.     

Symbolic play in normal and language-impaired children

The symbolic play of 15 normally developing (CA, 16-22 months) and 15 language-impaired children (CA, 32-49 months), whose productive language skills were at the single-word utterance level, was compared. Symbolic play was assessed formally through the Symbolic Play Test and informally through the observation of spontaneous play. The language-impaired children were found to be developmentally advanced when compared to the language-matched normal children in the level and direction of their symbolic play. Relative to age norms, however, the language-impaired children evidenced deficits in symbolic play. Thus, their linguistic and symbolic play abilities were not equally impaired. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the relationship between symbolic play and language and for the nature of specific language impairment.     

Analogical learning and transfer in language-impaired children

In this study, the trial-by-trial acquisition procedures developed by Gholson, Eymard, Morgan, and Kamhi (1987) were used to examine analogical reasoning processes in school-age language-impaired (LI) children and normal age peers. Subjects were 16 LI and 16 normally developing children between the ages 6:4 and 8:9 years. Half of the subjects heard only verbal presentations of the problems, whereas the other half heard the verbal presentations while simultaneously viewing physical demonstrations of the problems. The LI children who heard only verbal presentations of the problems took significantly longer to acquire the problem solutions than the other LI children and the normal children in both conditions. There were no differences in children's performance on the transfer task. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Lexical imitation and acquisition in language-impaired children

This investigation examined the influence of unsolicited lexical imitation on the comprehension and on the production of novel words by language-impaired children. Subjects were 13 children (2:8-3:1) exhibiting specific language impairment who were presented with 16 unfamiliar words referring to unfamiliar objects or actions over 10 experimental sessions. Unsolicited imitations appeared to facilitate subsequent production of these words on a posttest. This effect was greatest when these words were also produced spontaneously prior to the posttest. Words that were produced imitatively and spontaneously also appeared more frequently in spontaneous usage than words that were only produced spontaneously. No relationship between such imitations and comprehension was observed. These findings suggest that unsolicited imitations benefit children's lexical acquisition primarily by providing them with additional opportunities to produce words that are in the process of being established in their expressive lexicons.     

Hypothesis-testing abilities of language-impaired children.

Hypothesis-testing abilities were assessed using a modification of the discrimination-learning paradigm employed by Nelson, Kamhi, and Apel (1987) that was designed to minimize the short-term memory demands of the task. Sixteen language-impaired and 16 normal-language children in kindergarten and first and second grades participated in the study. The language-impaired children solved significantly fewer problems than normal-language controls equated on cognitive level, but the two groups used similar hypothesis types to solve the problems. Type of verbal feedback provided during the hypothesis testing task (explicit vs. nonexplicit) did not significantly affect the performance of either group. These results are interpreted as indicating that language-impaired children demonstrate inefficient use of problem-solving strategies that cannot be attributed solely to memory difficulties. Issues surrounding the investigation of language-impaired children's cognitive abilities are discussed.     

The ability of normal and language-impaired children to produce grammatical corrections

The ability of normal and language-impaired children to correct grammatical violations of word order was examined. Ten language-impaired and 10 linguistically normal subjects were sampled from the following age levels: 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years, resulting in a total of 100 subjects. Using a procedure designed to focus attention on language form, each of the children performed a task requiring the correction of 10 sentences containing word order errors. Normal 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds performed significantly better than their language-impaired age-matched peers. In addition, the performance of language-impaired 9-, and 10-year-olds was superior to that of the younger impaired groups. In the normal groups, the only age level differences were produced by the 6-year-olds, who performed significantly more poorly than two of the older (8- and 10-year-old) groups.     

Fast mapping in normal and language-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.     

Selected syntactic usage of language-impaired children

The syntactic performance of ten language-impaired and ten normal children, matched by mean length of utterance was compared. Language samples were analyzed with respect to grammatical marker need index (GMN), grammatical marker error index (GME), and GMEs for nouns (GME-N), verbs (GME-V), bound (GME-B), and unbound (GME-U) forms. The distribution of syntactic errors for nine syntactic categories was also explored. There was no significance between the groups for GMN; significant between-group differences were found for GME, GME-N versus GME-V, and GME-B versus GME-U. For all children, noun-related forms elicited fewer errors than verb-related forms; no differences were found between bound and unbound elements. The distribution of errors for the syntactic categories revealed that significant differences were not found between the groups. More errors were made with articles than pronouns and with contractible auxiliaries than contractible copulas. The results are discussed in terms of the nature of the syntactic impairments in language-impaired children and clinical implications.     

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.     

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.     

Social interactions of speech- and language-impaired children.

Social interactions among preschool children were classified into four groups according to language ability: normally developing English, specific language impairment (SLI), speech impairment (SI), and English as a second language (ESL). The children were observed in naturalistic classroom interactions on three occasions. Conversational turns were coded according to initiations and responses, and addressee. The results reveal differences across the groups of children. Normal language peers initiate interactions with each other and have a higher percentage of longer responses; normal language peers were the preferred addressee in peer initiations. In contrast, children with limited communication skills were more likely than their normal language peers to initiate with adults and to shorten their responses or use nonverbal responses. ESL children were the least likely to initiate interactions and were the most likely to be avoided as the recipient of an initiation. The findings are interpreted as evidence that preschool children are sensitive to relative communication skills and make adjustments in their social interactions accordingly. Multiple contributing factors are implicated, including intelligibility, limited linguistic flexibility, limited discourse skills, and self-consciousness about communicative competence.     

The use of stress by language-impaired children

This investigation was conducted to identify the stressing patterns of language-impaired children in the early stages of language acquisition. Based on Wieman's (1976) work with children who were acquiring language normally, it had been expected that the subjects of this study would tend to stress the new information in two-word utterances. Only one of the five preschool language-impaired children used such a pattern. Three subjects tended to stress words in the final position and one of the subjects' preference was unclear. The results, although preliminary, provide support for the contention that language-impaired children may differ from normal children in their use of stress.     

Responses to requests for clarification by linguistically normal and language-impaired children in conversation

This study compared the conversational repair strategies employed by 8 language-impaired children (mean chronological age 9:2 years) and their linguistically normal age- and language-matched peers in response to a stacked series of requests for clarification. A 30-min language sample was elicited by an adult examiner from each of the subjects. During the course of the conversation, the examiner initiated 10 stacked request for clarification sequences. Each sequence consisted of three different neutral requests for clarification (Huh?, What?, and I didn't understand that.) and the subject's response to each request. All of the subjects appeared to recognize the obligatory nature of the neutral clarification requests employed. However, there were differences noted in the performance of the three groups. These included differences related to language maturity as well as differences specific to language condition.     

Object transformations in the play of language-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.     

Comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired children

This study investigated comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. Two experiments, using different paradigms, were undertaken. In Experiment 1, 14 SLI children (aged 4:10-7:10) were compared with children matched on chronological age and language age (LA). Subjects acted out 36 semantically reversible sentences that varied in thematic content (transitives, locatives, and datives) and in the order of thematic roles (canonical and noncanonical). The SLI children performed at a significantly lower level than both control groups. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented using a picture-pointing task. A single word vocabulary test preceded the test sentences to assess semantic knowledge of the predicates. Sixteen SLI children were compared with language age controls. No significant differences were found between the performance of the two groups on the vocabulary test, and in general, the results of Experiment 2 supported those of Experiment 1. Analysis of individual children's error patterns identified qualitative differences between the SLI children and the LA controls. The majority of SLI children had a very high proportion of word order errors. The proportion of word order errors of the SLI children, unlike those of the LA controls, was unrelated to language age. These findings are considered in relation to the processes involved in sentence comprehension.     

Nonlinguistic symbolic and conceptual abilities of language-impaired and normally developing children

This study was motivated in part by the claim that language-impaired children with normal nonverbal intelligence suffer from representational and symbolization deficits (Morehead & Ingram, 1973). The study also examined the developing concepts of class, number, and order in these children to evaluate the claim that their thinking and reasoning in the nonlinguistic domain were within normal limits. Subjects were language-impaired children and two groups of normally developing children, one matched for MA and the other for MLU to the language-imparied group. Each group consisted of ten children. Each child was administered six nonstandardized cognitive tasks from the Piagetian literature. These tasks were designed to assess developing nonlinguistic symbolic abilities and conceptual knowledge of class, number, and order relations. The language-impaired children consistently performed better than MLU-matched controls but more poorly than MA-matched peers. However, only one task--Haptic Recognition--uncovered a significant difference between the language-impaired and MA-matched groups. The difficulty that language-impaired children experienced on this task was taken as evidence that they had deficient nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. Some tentative conclusions are offered concerning the role representational abilities play in language development.     

Mother-child interactions with language-impaired children and their siblings.

There are possible effects of language impairment on adult-child interaction. Previous research focused on (1) examining common features of adult-child interaction in different groups of atypical language learners and (2) examining differences between language-impaired parent-child dyads and normal control dyads. The present investigation studies language-impaired children and their mothers in comparison both to their own younger siblings of the same language stage and to normal controls of the same language stage. Consistencies within families but not across families were found. In addition, large individual differences were observed for different families. The implications of these findings for our understanding of interactive styles and language impairment are discussed.