Effects of Imitative and Conversational Recasting Treatment on the Acquisition of Grammar in Children With Specific Language Impairment and Younger Language-Normal Children

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith E. Nelson ◽  
Stephen M. Camarata ◽  
Janet Welsh ◽  
Laura Butkovsky ◽  
Mary Camarata
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Grammatical Structures

The purpose of the study was to compare the relative effectiveness of imitative treatment and conversational recast treatment in children with language impairment and in a group of children with normal language skills. Language treatment outcomes were compared between a group of older (4.7 to 6.7) specifically-language-impaired (SLI) children and a group of younger (2.2 to 4.2) language-normal (LN) children matched on language levels and on intervention targets. The results indicated: (a) Target acquisition was more rapid under conversational recast treatment for both groups. (b) This outcome held for targets absent initially (in pretreatment sampling and probing) as well as for initially partially mastered targets. (c) SLI children sometimes can learn grammatical structures as efficiently as language-normal children if similar language input is tailored to their specific developmental language levels. Implications of these findings for language treatment strategies with SLI children are discussed. Theoretical models compatible with the data also are considered.

Symbolic Play in Normal and Language-Impaired Children

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Y. Terrell ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Patricia A. Prelock ◽  
Cheryl K. Messick
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Symbolic Play ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Age Norms ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
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.

Early Lexical Acquisition in Children with Specific Language Impairment

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 554-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Kathy Chapman ◽  
Lynne E. Rowan ◽  
Patricia A. Prelock ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Lexical Acquisition ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Similar Tendency

This study examined the characteristics of early lexical acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Sixteen unfamiliar words and referents were exposed across 10 sessions to language-impaired and normal children matched for level of linguistic development. Posttesting revealed similar comprehension-production gaps in the two groups of children. In addition, both groups showed greater comprehension and production of words referring to objects than words referring to actions. However, the language-impaired children's object word bias was not as marked as that of the normal children. For both groups, words containing initial consonants within the children's production repertoires were more likely to be acquired in production than words containing consonants absent from the children's phonologies. A similar tendency was not seen for comprehension.

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.

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.

Brain Morphology in Children With Specific Language Impairment

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1272-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie M. Gauger ◽  
Linda J. Lombardino ◽  
Christiana M. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Planum Temporale ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Pars Triangularis ◽  
The Right

The planum temporale and pars triangularis have been found to be larger in the left hemisphere than the right in individuals with normal language skills. Brain morphology studies of individuals with developmental language disorders report reversed asymmetry or symmetry of the planum, although the bulk of this research has been completed on adults with dyslexia. Pars triangularis has not been studied in the developmental language impaired population. In this study, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used for quantitative comparisons of the planum temporale (Wernicke’s area) and pars triangularis (Broca’s area) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with normal language skills. The subjects were 11 children with SLI and 19 age- and sex-matched controls between 5.6 and 13.0 years old. Each subject received a neurolinguistic battery of tests and a high resolution volumetric MRI scan. Major results were that (a) pars triangularis was significantly smaller in the left hemisphere of children with SLI, and (b) children with SLI were more likely to have rightward asymmetry of language structures. Furthermore, anomalous morphology in these language areas correlated with depressed language ability. These findings support the hypothesis that language impairment is a consequence of an underlying neurobiological defect in areas of the brain known to subserve language.

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.

Social Interactions of Speech, and Language-Impaired Children

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1299-1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mabel L. Rice ◽  
Marie A. Sell ◽  
Pamela A. Hadley
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Speech Impairment ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Conversational Turns

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.

Proportional and Functional Analogical Reasoning in Normal and Language-Impaired Children

1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn A. Nippold ◽  
Barbara J. Erskine ◽  
Donald B. Freed
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Nonverbal Intelligence ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
Impaired Children

Teachers often use analogies in classroom settings to clarify new concepts for their students. However, analogies may inadvertently confuse the youngster who has difficulty identifying the one-to-one comparisons underlying them. Although analogical reasoning has been studied extensively in normal children, no information was available concerning this construct in children having a specific language impairment. Thus, it was unknown to what extent they might be deficient in analogical reasoning. Therefore, in the present study, 20 children ages 6--8 years (mean age = 7:6) having normal nonverbal intelligence but deficits in language comprehension were administered tasks of verbal and perceptual proportional analogical reasoning and a problem-solving task of functional analogical reasoning. Compared to a normal-language control group matched on the basis of chronological age and sex, the language-impaired group was deficient in all three tasks of analogical reasoning. However, when the factor of nonverbal intelligence was controlled statistically, the differences between the groups on each of the tasks were removed. Additional findings were that verbal proportional analogical reasoning was significantly correlated to perceptual proportional analogical reasoning and to functional analogical reasoning. Implications for assessment and intervention with young school-age language-impaired children are discussed.

Early action word acquisition in normal and language-impaired children

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Nonsense Word ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Early Action ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Impaired Children

AbstractThe acquisition of words referring to three types of actions was examined in normally developing and language-impaired children using a nonsense word paradigm. Fourteen language-normal and 10 language-impaired children whose speech was limited to single-word utterances served as subjects. The children were presented with 12 experimental words in 5 sessions over a period of approximately 3 weeks. The experimental words referred to actions that were classified as intransitive, transitive and specific to a particular object, or transitive but performed on 4 different objects. The children in both groups produced few of the action words. However, the groups differed in their comprehension of the three action word types. Specifically, the language-impaired children did not exhibit differences in comprehension across the different types of actions. The language-normal children, however, comprehended fewer words for intransitive actions than for the other types. The implications of these findings for characterizations of early lexical acquisition and for the nature of specific language impairment are addressed.

Expressions of past time by normal and language-impaired children

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Evelyn Moore ◽  
Judith R. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Temporal Expressions ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Cross Sectional Design ◽  
Developmental Asynchrony ◽  
Verb Tense ◽  
Impaired Children

ABSTRACTThis study investigated possible developmental asynchrony in children with specific language impairment (SL1). This was accomplished by comparing the development of temporal expressions of past reference in two linguistic domains. Verb tense and temporal adverbs served as representatives of the morphological and lexical domains. A cross-sectional design was used with four groups of subjects (N = 48) from 3 to 5 years old. Three groups had normal language and one group had impaired language. Results indicated that the performances of SLI children were similar to those of their 3-year-old language peers on the verb tasks and similar to the 4-year-olds on the adverb tasks. Such differential delays provide direct experimental evidence for asynchronous language development in SLI children.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document