A short report: Word-level phonological and lexical characteristics interact to influence phoneme awareness

Factors that influence non-word repetition performance in children with and without persistent speech sound disorders

BACKGROUND

Nonword repetition (NWR) is a common phonological processing task that is reported to tap into many cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes. For this reason, NWR is often used in assessment batteries to aid in verifying the presence of a reading or language disorder.

AIMS

To examine the extent to which child- and item-level factors predict the probability of a correct response on a non-word repetition (NWR) task in a sample of children with persistent speech sound disorders (P-SSDs) compared with their typically developing peers.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

A total of 40 American-English-speaking children were tested on an NWR task for which the stimuli were manipulated for phonological neighbourhood density and list length. Additional measures of vocabulary and word reading were also administered.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

Children who were typically developing were 1.82 times more likely than children with P-SSD to respond correctly. The item-level factor of phonological neighbourhood density influenced performance, but only for the P-SSD group, and only at certain list lengths. Vocabulary and word-reading ability also influenced NWR task performance.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

Children with P-SSD present as a complex and heterogeneous group. Multiple factors contribute to their ability to perform phonological tasks such as NWR. As such, attention to the item-level factors in screenings and assessments is necessary to ensure that appropriate decisions are made regarding diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject? Good expressive vocabulary is important for children with speech sound disorders; it can aid in their performance on phonological processing tasks like NWR. Nonword repetition may be a helpful test/ subtest to add to assessment batteries when evaluating children with speech sound disorders. What this paper adds to existing knowledge? Vocabulary and word reading abilities must also be measured for children with SSDs, to observe the bigger picture of their linguistic abilities. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The relation between word reading and speech sound production influences performance on phonological processing tasks.

The Relation Between Vocabulary Knowledge and Phonological Awareness in Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relation between lexical knowledge and phonological awareness performance of children with cochlear implants. Method Thirty children with cochlear implants (aged 5-7 years), 30 children with normal hearing matched for age, and 30 children with normal hearing matched for vocabulary size participated in the study. Children completed a vocabulary knowledge measure and three phonological awareness tasks with words that had high and low neighborhood density. Results Children with cochlear implants performed more poorly than their age-matched peers and similarly to their vocabulary-matched peers on phonological awareness tasks. When performance was analyzed according to the neighborhood density of the target word, children with cochlear implants and age-matched children performed better with high-density words. Across all groups, vocabulary size correlated significantly with phonological awareness performance. Conclusion Children with cochlear implants demonstrate delays in both vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness performance, but children with cochlear implants appear to take advantage of lexical information similarly to their age-matched peers.

Neighborhood Density and Syntactic Class Effects on Spoken Word Recognition: Specific Language Impairment and Typical Development

PURPOSE

The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of neighborhood density and syntactic class on word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typical development (TD).

METHOD

Fifteen children with SLI (M age = 6;5 [years;months]) and 15 with TD (M age = 6;4) completed a forward gating task that presented consonant-vowel-consonant dense and sparse (neighborhood density) nouns and verbs (syntactic class).

RESULTS

On all dependent variables, the SLI group performed like the TD group. Recognition performance was highest for dense words and nouns. The majority of 1st nontarget responses shared the 1st phoneme with the target (i.e., was in the target's cohort). When considering the ranking of word types from easiest to most difficult, children showed equivalent recognition performance for dense verbs and sparse nouns, which were both easier to recognize than sparse verbs but more difficult than dense nouns.

CONCLUSION

The current study yields new insight into how children access lexical-phonological information and syntactic class during the process of spoken word recognition. Given the identical pattern of results for the SLI and TD groups, we hypothesize that accessing lexical-phonological information may be a strength for children with SLI. We also discuss implications for using the forward gating paradigm as a measure of word recognition.

School readiness of children with language impairment: predicting literacy skills from pre-literacy and social-behavioural dimensions

BACKGROUND

School readiness generally captures the notion that children do best when they arrive at formal schooling with a certain threshold of skill that will help them thrive in the classroom's academic and social milieu.

AIMS

To examine the dimensionality of the construct of school readiness among children with language impairment (LI), as well as the extent to which these dimensions relate to children's end-of-kindergarten literacy skills.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Participants were 136 preschool-aged children with LI. Children were assessed on measures of pre-literacy, social, and behavioural skills in preschool and reading and spelling in kindergarten.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that school readiness for this sample of children with LI is best characterized as two dimensions: pre-literacy and socio-emotional. Of the two dimensions, pre-literacy readiness was predictive of children's future performance in reading and spelling.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

The results further our theoretical understanding of the dimensions of school readiness, as well as our knowledge of how these skills are related among children with LI. Identifying domain-specific readiness skills that are predictive of kindergarten success can help to identify means of early assessment and targets for speech-language intervention.

Longitudinal development of speech motor control: Motor and linguistic factors

Lip shape in adult talkers is primarily driven by vertical opening; however, little is known about how children converge on this highly organized and efficient lip shape pattern. This longitudinal study investigated the development of lip shape control and its relation to speech and vocabulary acquisition in 28 typically developing children between 3 months and 5 years of age. Results suggested that during infancy lip shape was characterized by horizontal spreading of the lips, but that the contribution of vertical opening increased nonmonotonically over time. This change co-occurred with gains in expressive communication. These data suggest that lip shape may represent an important marker of normal oromotor development. Future work is required to determine the functional significance of the observed changes in lip shape control for identifying children at risk for speech and language impairments.

Phonological and lexical influences on phonological awareness in children with specific language impairment and dyslexia

Children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment have marked deficits in phonological processing, putting them at an increased risk for reading deficits. The current study sought to examine the influence of word-level phonological and lexical characteristics on phonological awareness. Children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment were tested using a phoneme deletion task in which stimuli differed orthogonally by sound similarity and neighborhood density. Phonological and lexical factors influenced performance differently across groups. Children with dyslexia appeared to have a more immature and aberrant pattern of phonological and lexical influence (e.g., favoring sparse and similar features). Children with SLI performed less well than children who were typically developing, but followed a similar pattern of performance (e.g., favoring dense and dissimilar features). Collectively, our results point to both quantitative and qualitative differences in lexical organization and phonological representations in children with SLI and in children with dyslexia.

Grammatical treatment and specific language impairment: neighbourhood density & third person singular -s

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of manipulating verb neighbourhood density in treatment targeting the third person singular lexical affix. Using a single-subject experimental design, six pre-schoolers with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) treatment with sparse verbs or (2) treatment with dense verbs in 12 sessions. The third person singular lexical affix was targeted for 12 sessions of treatment in both conditions. Treatment gain and generalization were measured as the dependent variables. Third person singular % correct change from pre-treatment to post-treatment was measured using sentence production tasks with comparisons across the two treatment conditions. Treatment gain and generalization were greater for children enrolled in the sparse condition. Preliminary clinical recommendations are made and theoretical implications are discussed relative to neighbourhood density effects on lexical activation and storage in children with SLI.

The interface between neighborhood density and optional infinitives: normal development and Specific Language Impairment

The effect of neighborhood density on optional infinitives was evaluated for typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Forty children, twenty in each group, completed two production tasks that assessed third person singular production. Half of the sentences in each task presented a dense verb, and half presented a sparse verb. Children's third person singular accuracy was compared across dense and sparse verbs. Results showed that the TD group was significantly less likely to use optional infinitives with dense, rather than sparse verbs. In contrast, the distribution of optional infinitives for the SLI group was independent of verb neighborhood density. Follow-up analyses showed that the lack of neighborhood density effect for the SLI group could not be attributed to heterogeneous neighborhood density effects or floor effects. Results were interpreted within the Optional Infinitive/Extended Optional Infinitive accounts for typical language development and SLI for English-speaking children.

Desempenho em consciência fonológica, nomeação rápida, leitura e escrita em escolares com dislexia secundária a retardo mental e com bom desempenho acadêmico

OBJETIVOS: caracterizar o desempenho em provas de consciência fonológica, de nomeação rápida e de leitura e escrita em escolares com dislexia secundária a retardo mental e com bom desempenho acadêmico. MÉTODO: participaram deste estudo 20 escolares da 1ª a 4ª séries do ensino fundamental da rede pública municipal da cidade de Marília-SP, com faixa etária de 8 a 12 anos de idade, de ambos os sexos, divididos em GI (10 escolares com o diagnóstico interdisciplinar de dislexia secundária a retardo mental leve) e GII (10 escolares com bom desempenho acadêmico, pareados segundo sexo e faixa etária com o GI). Os escolares foram submetidos à Prova de Consciência Fonológica, à Prova de Leitura e Escrita e à Prova de Nomeação Automatizada Rápida. RESULTADOS: houve diferença significante em relação ao desempenho dos escolares nas provas silábicas e fonêmicas, na prova de leitura e escrita e na prova de nomeção rápida; os escolares de GII apresentaram melhor desempenho que os escolares de GI. CONCLUSÃO: houve relação entre os achados de velocidade de nomeação, leitura oral e escrita sob ditado, sendo relacionados ao déficit fonológico, à característica cognitivo-linguística do GI e à interferência da falta de instrução direta da correspondência grafofonêmica em situação de atividades acadêmicas para ambos os grupos.