Factors affecting accuracy of past tense production in children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers: the influence of verb transitivity, clause location, and sentence type

The Effect of Sampling Context on Preschoolers' Finite Verb Morphology Composite Scores

PURPOSE

The finite verb morphology composite (FVMC) is a valid measure for charting children's tense development and for differentiating children with and without language impairment during preschool and early elementary years. However, it is unclear whether FVMC scores vary as a function of language sample elicitation contexts. The current study evaluated the performance on FVMC in preschool-aged children across different language sampling contexts.

METHOD

Participants were 38 English-speaking children who were between the ages of 3 and 4 years and below the mastery level of tense usage in three language sampling contexts, including conversation (free-play), picture description, and narratives (story retell). FVMC from each sampling context was computed by calculating the overall accuracy of copula be, auxiliary be, third-person singular present -s, and past tense -ed combined. A linear mixed-effects model comparison was carried out to determine the effect of sampling context on FVMC scores.

RESULTS

After controlling for child age, mean length of utterance, and the number of obligatory contexts for FVMC scoring, FVMC scores were significantly higher in conversation than in picture description and narratives. In addition, FVMC scores across the three sampling contexts were significantly correlated (rs ≥ .62, p < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

Although children's performance on FVMC relative to each other was quite stable across sampling contexts, FVMC scores may vary with sampling contexts. As compared to picture description and narratives, conversation may not adequately capture the limitation in preschoolers' tense development that is important for therapeutic planning.

The Complex Role of Utterance Length on Grammaticality: Multivariate Multilevel Analysis of English and Spanish Utterances of First-Grade English Learners

PURPOSE

This study examined the relationship between utterance length, syntactic complexity, and the probability of making an error at the utterance level.

METHOD

The participants in this study included 830 Spanish-speaking first graders who were learning English at school. Story retells in both Spanish and English were collected from all children. Generalized mixed linear models were used to examine within-child and between-children effects of utterance length and subordination on the probability of making an error at the utterance level.

RESULTS

The relationship between utterance length and grammaticality was found to differ by error type (omission vs. commission), language (Spanish vs. English), and level of analysis (within-child vs. between-children). For errors of commission, the probability of making an error increased as a child produced utterances that were longer relative to their average utterance length (within-child effect). Contrastively, for errors of omission, the probability of making an error decreased when a child produced utterances that were longer relative to their average utterance length (within-child effect). In English, a child who produced utterances that were, on average, longer than the average utterance length for all children produced more errors of commission and fewer errors of omission (between-children effect). This between-children effect was similar in Spanish for errors of commission but nonsignificant for errors of omission. For both error types, the within-child effects of utterance length were moderated by the use of subordination.

CONCLUSION

The relationship between utterance length and grammaticality is complex and varies by error type, language, and whether the frame of reference is the child's own language (within-child effect) or the language of other children (between-children effect).

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17035916.

Use of Recast Intervention to Teach Causal Adverbials to Young Children With Developmental Language Disorder Within a Science Curriculum: A Single Case Design Study

Purpose Language serves as an essential resource to learn about cause and effect throughout childhood. Causal adverbial sentences use causal conjunctions (e.g., because, so) to join 2 clauses to express cause-effect relationships ( Diessel & Hetterle, 2011 ). Causal adverbial sentences are frequently used to explain causal relationships in academic contexts, such as elementary school science and social studies classes ( Kinzie et al., 2014 ; J. Williams et al., 2014 ). Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at risk for failure in these academically relevant language skills. Here, we investigated the effect of language intervention focused on causal adverbials on both causal adverbials and acquisition of science content in young children with DLD. Method A multiple-probe design was used to examine the effect of language intervention using recasts on production of causal adverbials and acquisition of science content for 7 preschool/kindergarten children with DLD. Child production of causal adverbials and an untreated control structure were analyzed. Results Six of 7 participants exhibited gains in production of causal adverbials containing because, with effect sizes ranging from small to large. Performances on daily probes of science content learning and science unit tests indicate that participants are able to learn science content, but the magnitude of gains may not relate to skill in causal adverbial production. Conclusion Language intervention for young children with DLD can effectively treat complex syntactic targets such as causal adverbials in the context of science instruction, but it is unclear whether this can affect science content learning.

Realisation of grammatical morphemes by children with phonological impairment

The aim of this research was to explore how preschool-aged children with phonological impairment (PI) realise grammatical morphemes across different phonological contexts (i.e. singleton consonant, consonant cluster, syllable), conditions of finiteness and individual morpheme types. Factors accounting for children's realisation of grammatical morphemes were also examined. Eighty-seven Australian English-speaking preschoolers (aged 4-5 years) with PI completed the Children's Assessment of Morphophonology (CHAMP)-an elicited response task-in addition to standardised tests of speech and receptive language. The most challenging grammatical morphemes were finite morphemes (particularly past tense) and grammatical morphemes realised in consonant clusters. The ability to produce consonant clusters in single words significantly accounted for children's ability to realise grammatical morphemes, regardless of whether grammatical morphemes were realised in singleton, consonant cluster or syllable contexts. Realisation of grammatical morphemes by preschoolers with PI is influenced by phonological and morphological factors. The findings have implications regarding the assessment and differential diagnosis of preschoolers with concomitant phonological and language difficulties.

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study

Purpose

This study investigated the effects of a complex sentence treatment at 2 dosage levels on language performance of 30 school-age children ages 10-14 years with specific language impairment.

Method

Three types of complex sentences (adverbial, object complement, relative) were taught in sequence in once or twice weekly dosage conditions. Outcome measures included sentence probes administered at baseline, treatment, and posttreatment phases and comparisons of pre-post performance on oral and written language tests and tasks. Relationships between pretest variables and treatment outcomes were also explored.

Results

Treatment was effective at improving performance on the sentence probes for the majority of participants; however, results differed by sentence type, with the largest effect sizes for adverbial and relative clauses. Significant and clinically meaningful pre-post treatment gains were found on a comprehensive oral language test, but not on reading and writing measures. There was no treatment advantage for the higher dosage group. Several significant correlations indicated a relationship between lower pretest scores and higher outcome measures.

Conclusions

Results suggest that a focused intervention can produce improvements in complex sentence productions of older school children with language impairment. Future research should explore ways to maximize gains and extend impact to natural language contexts.

Supplemental Material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5923318.

The Production of Complement Clauses in Children With Language Impairment

PURPOSE

The purpose of this research was to provide a comprehensive description of complement-clause production in children with language impairment. Complement clauses were examined with respect to types of complement structure produced, verb use, and both semantic and syntactic accuracy.

METHOD

A group of 17 children with language impairment (mean age = 6;10 [years; months]) was compared with a group of 17 younger children with typical language development (mean age = 4;6). Examples of both nonfinite complements with different subjects and sentential complements involving a range of complement-taking verbs were collected using specially designed elicitation tasks.

RESULTS

The children with language impairment were able to construct both types of complement clauses, had access to a range of verbs that are utilized within these constructions, and had knowledge of the grammatical constraints imposed by these verbs. However, they were more restricted in their production of sentential complements and produced significantly fewer semantically accurate complements (both finite and nonfinite) than the children with typical language development.

CONCLUSION

Children with language impairment evidenced deviant rather than merely delayed development in the area of complement-clause production. Complex sentences such as complement clauses need to be targeted in language intervention programs.

Quantifying the relative contributions of lexical and phonological factors to regular past tense accuracy

PURPOSE

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) frequently have difficulty producing the past tense. This study aimed to quantify the relative influence of telicity (i.e. the completedness of an event), verb frequency and stem final phonemes on the production of past tense by school-age children with SLI and their typically-developing (TD) peers.

METHOD

Archival elicited production data from children with SLI between the ages of 6-9 and TD peers aged 4-8 were re-analysed. Past tense accuracy was predicted using measures of telicity, verb frequency measures and properties of the final consonant of the verb stem.

RESULT

All children were highly accurate when verbs were telic, the inflected form was frequently heard in the past tense and the word ended in a sonorant/non-alveolar consonant. All children were less accurate when verbs were atelic, rarely heard in the past tense or ended in a word final obstruent or alveolar consonant. SLI status depressed overall accuracy rates, but did not influence how facilitative a given factor was.

CONCLUSION

Some factors that have been believed to be useful only when children are first discovering past tense, such as telicity, appear to be influential in later years as well.

Evidence of compensatory processing in adults with developmental language impairment: testing the predictions of the procedural deficit hypothesis

BACKGROUND

The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) proposes that individuals with primary developmental language impairment (DLI) have a deficient procedural memory, compromising their syntactic abilities. Individuals with DLI may compensate for procedural memory deficits by engaging declarative memory for syntactic tasks. Arguments are part of the lexicon whereas adjuncts rely on syntactic processing. As a result, individuals with DLI may have unusual difficulty processing adjuncts. Alternatively, processing for adjuncts may be typical for individuals with DLI but show frequency effects, indicating compensatory use of declarative memory.

AIMS

Our goal was to test the predictions of the PDH by comparing argument and adjunct processing times for adults with and without DLI, and to seek evidence of compensatory use of declarative memory for adjunct processing. We further evaluated group performance on measures of visual procedural and declarative memory.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Forty-four adults, 21 with DLI, completed a self-paced listening task, a procedural memory task, and a declarative memory task. The self-paced listening task tracked the word-by-word processing time for sentences that included prepositional phrases acting as arguments or adjuncts. We used regression analysis to determine effects of group membership and argument or adjunct status on processing times. Correlation analyses evaluated relationships between argument and adjunct frequency on processing times by group.

RESULTS AND OUTCOMES

We found no effect of group membership on the processing time for arguments and adjuncts in the self-paced listening task. Argument phrases were processed more easily by both groups. There were frequency effects for adjunct processing for the group with DLI, but not the group with typical language. We did not find the expected frequency effects for argument processing. The group with DLI also performed more poorly in both the procedural and declarative memory tasks. Secondary analyses found that non-verbal intelligence was related to outcomes on the declarative memory but not the procedural memory task.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

We found mixed evidence on the predictions of the PDH. Adults with DLI may compensate for procedural memory deficits but it is unclear whether this depends on declarative memory or language processing experience. Compensatory processing is an important element of the language profile for adults with DLI.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The readers will be able to describe how processing arguments and adjuncts in sentences may depend on different memory systems, and how adults with developmental language impairment may compensate for syntactic processing deficits.

One Size Does Not Fit All: Improving Clinical Practice in Older Children and Adolescents With Language and Learning Disorders

Purpose

In the lead article for this clinical forum, Kamhi (2014) suggests ways that current knowledge on instructional practices in learning and language can be applied to clinical practice in language disorders. I propose that Kamhi's suggestions are in need of fine-tuning for older children and adolescents with language disorders. A one-size-fits-all approach to language intervention across a broad age range is untenable due to unique needs and capabilities of this older population.

Method

Three intervention goal priorities for older students are presented with supporting research: complex (multiclausal) sentences, verb structure, and expository text. Methodologies for teaching complex sentences are discussed next, including topics of content/form balance and treatment intensity. These goals and methods are designed to assist students with language disorders in the comprehension and production of complex language they encounter in school.

Conclusion

Guidance for high-priority language intervention goals with older students comes from a consideration of language needs in academic settings and language weaknesses that persist in this population. Although current research offers support for these goals, less is known about methodological variables such as treatment intensity.

Toward improved spectral measures of /s/: results from adolescents

PURPOSE

This article introduces theoretically driven acoustic measures of /s/ that reflect aerodynamic and articulatory conditions. The measures were evaluated by assessing whether they revealed expected changes over time and labiality effects, along with possible gender differences suggested by past work.

METHOD

Productions of /s/ were extracted from various speaking tasks from typically speaking adolescents (6 boys, 6 girls). Measures were made of relative spectral energies in low- (550-3000 Hz), mid- (3000-7000 Hz), and high-frequency regions (7000-11025 Hz); the mid-frequency amplitude peak; and temporal changes in these parameters. Spectral moments were also obtained to permit comparison with existing work.

RESULTS

Spectral balance measures in low-mid and mid-high frequency bands varied over the time course of /s/, capturing the development of sibilance at mid-fricative along with showing some effects of gender and labiality. The mid-frequency spectral peak was significantly higher in nonlabial contexts, and in girls. Temporal variation in the mid-frequency peak differentiated ±labial contexts while normalizing over gender.

CONCLUSIONS

The measures showed expected patterns, supporting their validity. Comparison of these data with studies of adults suggests some developmental patterns that call for further study. The measures may also serve to differentiate some cases of typical and misarticulated /s/.

Content and form in the narratives of children with specific language impairment

PURPOSE

This project investigated the relationship of content and form in the narratives of school-age children.

METHOD

Two samples of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their age-matched peers (British Columbia sample, M age = 9;0 [years;months], N = 26; Texas/Kansas sample, M age = 7;6, N = 40) completed the Test of Narrative Language (TNL; Gillam & Pearson, 2004). The relative strength of content elaboration and grammatical accuracy were measured for each child using variables derived from the TNL scoring system (Study 1) and from analysis of the story texts (Study 2).

RESULTS

Both studies indicated that, compared with age peers, the children with SLI were more likely to produce stories of uneven strength--either stories with poor content that were grammatically quite accurate or stories with elaborated content that were less grammatical.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that school-age children with SLI may struggle with the cumulative load of creating a story that is both elaborate and grammatical. They also show that the absence of errors is not necessarily a sign of strength. Finally, they underscore the value of comparing individual differences in multiple linguistic domains, including the elaboration of content, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity.

The role of developmental levels in examining the effect of subject types on the production of auxiliary is in young english-speaking children

PURPOSE

Prior work (Guo, Owen, & Tomblin, 2010) has shown that at the group level, auxiliary is production by young English-speaking children was symmetrical across lexical noun and pronominal subjects. Individual data did not uniformly reflect these patterns. On the basis of the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning (GML) hypothesis, the authors tested whether the addition of a theoretically motivated developmental measure, tense productivity (TP), could assist in explaining these individual differences.

METHOD

Using archival data from 20 children between age 2;8 and 3;4 (years;months), the authors tested the ability of 3 developmental measures (TP; finite verb morphology composite, FVMC; mean length of utterance, MLU) to predict use of auxiliary is with different subject types.

RESULTS

TP, but not MLU or FVMC, significantly improved model fit. Children with low TP scores produced auxiliary is more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical subjects. The facilitative effect of pronominal subjects on the production of auxiliary is, however, was not found in children with high TP scores.

CONCLUSION

The finding that the effect of subject types on the production accuracy of auxiliary is changed with children's TP is consistent with the GML hypothesis.

Cognitive state verbs and complement clauses in children with SLI and their typically developing peers

This study investigated the use of cognitive state verbs (CSVs) and complement clauses in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing (TD) peers. In Study 1, conversational samples from 23 children with SLI (M = 6;2), 24 age-matched TD children (M = 6;2) and 21 vocabulary-matched TD children (M = 4;9) were analysed for the proportional use of CSVs, verb types, co-occurrence with complement clauses and syntactic frame types. Children in all three groups had similar performance in all measures. Study 2 compared a subset of children on CSV use in conversational and narrative/expository samples. Conversation elicited more high-frequency verbs, whereas narrative/expository samples elicited more low-frequency verbs. Children with SLI used fewer different verbs and were less likely to combine low-frequency verbs with a complement clause than their TD peers. We conclude that these observed deficits can be attributed to limitations in lexical knowledge rather than a syntactic deficit.

Proficiency with tense and aspect concordance: children with SLI and their typically developing peers

Children with SLI have difficulty with tense and agreement morphology. This study examined the proficiency of these children and their typically developing peers with the coordination of tense and aspect markers in two-clause sentences. Scenarios designed to elicit past tense were presented to five- to eight-year-old children with SLI (n=14) and their normally developing age- and MLU-matched peers (n=24) to examine the omission of tense markers in complex sentences (Owen, 2010). Responses with overt tense/aspect morphology in both clauses were recoded for how similar the use of tense and aspect was across the two clauses. Tense and aspect concordance was high across both sentence types, but aspect-only mismatches were more common than tense mismatches. The three groups of children did not differ from each other on any comparisons. Coordination of temporal information in sentences with more than one time marker does not appear to be especially difficult for these children.