Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research current issue

Word Learning Processes in Children With Cochlear Implants [Article]

Walker, E. A., McGregor, K. K. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

To determine whether 3 aspects of the word learning process—fast mapping, retention, and extension—are problematic for children with cochlear implants (CIs).

Method

The authors compared responses of 24 children with CIs, 24 age-matched hearing children, and 23 vocabulary-matched hearing children to a novel object noun training episode. Comprehension and production were measured immediately following training (fast mapping) as well as 1 day later (retention). Extension was measured in terms of the ability of the participants to identify new (untrained) exemplars.

Results

Compared with their hearing age-mates, children with CIs performed marginally more poorly on fast mapping as measured by the comprehension probe and more poorly on retention as measured by comprehension and production probes. The age-mates improved over the retention interval, but the children with CIs did not. Most of the children with CIs performed similarly to their age-mates on extension, but 2 children underextended, and 5 children failed to understand the task. Compared with younger vocabulary-matched peers, children with CIs did not differ at fast mapping, retention, or extension.

Conclusions

Children with CIs demonstrated deficits in word learning, with retention being especially problematic. Their learning did not differ from that of younger children with similarly sized vocabularies.

Effect of Perceptual Load on Semantic Access by Speech in Children [Article]

Jerger, S., Damian, M. F., Mills, C., Bartlett, J., Tye-Murray, N., Abdi, H. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

To examine whether semantic access by speech requires attention in children.

Method

Children (N = 200) named pictures and ignored distractors on a cross-modal (distractors: auditory–no face) or multimodal (distractors: auditory–static face and audiovisual–dynamic face) picture word task. The cross-modal task had a low load, and the multimodal task had a high load (i.e., respectively naming pictures displayed on a blank screen vs. below the talker's face on his T-shirt). Semantic content of distractors was manipulated to be related vs. unrelated to the picture (e.g., picture "dog" with distractors "bear" vs. "cheese"). If irrelevant semantic content manipulation influences naming times on both tasks despite variations in loads, Lavie's (2005) perceptual load model proposes that semantic access is independent of capacity-limited attentional resources; if, however, irrelevant content influences naming only on the cross-modal task (low load), the perceptual load model proposes that semantic access is dependent on attentional resources exhausted by the higher load task.

Results

Irrelevant semantic content affected performance for both tasks in 6- to 9-year-olds but only on the cross-modal task in 4- to 5-year-olds. The addition of visual speech did not influence results on the multimodal task.

Conclusion

Younger and older children differ in dependence on attentional resources for semantic access by speech.

Effects of Noise Suppression on Intelligibility: Experts' Opinions and Naive Normal-Hearing Listeners' Performance [Article]

Hilkhuysen, G. L. M., Gaubitch, N., Huckvale, M. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors investigated how well experts can adjust the settings of a commercial noise-reduction system to optimize the intelligibility for naive normal-hearing listeners.

Method

In Experiment 1, 5 experts adjusted parameters for a noise-reduction system while aiming to optimize intelligibility. The stimuli consisted of speech presented in car-cabin noise or babble at 5 different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In Experiment 2, the effects of processing with these settings were measured with 10 listeners undertaking an intelligibility test. In Experiment 3, the intelligibility of a broad range of settings was investigated with another 10 listeners to determine whether the experts' chosen settings could have been improved.

Results

Low Cronbach's alphas indicated that parameter settings varied considerably within and across experts. For very low SNRs, mean proposed settings differed from those for higher SNRs. The different settings had no significant effects on intelligibility for naive normal-hearing listeners. At high SNRs, the settings proposed by experts were found to deteriorate intelligibility. Superior intelligibility for naive normal-hearing listeners was achievable from settings other than the ones proposed by the experts.

Conclusion

While attempting to enhance noisy speech, experts may propose settings that deteriorate intelligibility for naive normal-hearing listeners.

Speechreading Development in Deaf and Hearing Children: Introducing the Test of Child Speechreading [Article]

Kyle, F. E., Campbell, R., Mohammed, T., Coleman, M., MacSweeney, M. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this article, the authors describe the development of a new instrument, the Test of Child Speechreading (ToCS), which was specifically designed for use with deaf and hearing children. Speechreading is a skill that is required for deaf children to access the language of the hearing community. ToCS is a deaf-friendly, computer-based test that measures child speechreading (silent lipreading) at 3 psycholinguistic levels: (a) Words, (b) Sentences, and (c) Short Stories. The aims of the study were to standardize the ToCS with deaf and hearing children and to investigate the effects of hearing status, age, and linguistic complexity on speechreading ability.

Method

Eighty-six severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated. All children were between the ages of 5 and 14 years. The deaf children were from a range of language and communication backgrounds, and their preferred mode of communication varied.

Results

Speechreading skills significantly improved with age for both groups of children. There was no effect of hearing status on speechreading ability, and children from both groups showed similar performance across all subtests of the ToCS.

Conclusion

The ToCS is a valid and reliable assessment of speechreading ability in school-age children that can be used to measure individual differences in performance in speechreading ability.

Amplitude Rise Time Does Not Cue the /ba/-/wa/ Contrast for Adults or Children [Article]

Nittrouer, S., Lowenstein, J. H., Tarr, E. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

Previous research has demonstrated that children weight the acoustic cues to many phonemic decisions differently than do adults and gradually shift those strategies as they gain language experience. However, that research has focused on spectral and duration cues rather than on amplitude cues. In the current study, the authors examined amplitude rise time (ART; an amplitude cue) and formant rise time (FRT; a spectral cue) in the /ba/–/wa/ manner contrast for adults and children, and related those speech decisions to outcomes of nonspeech discrimination tasks.

Method

Twenty adults and 30 children (ages 4–5 years) labeled natural and synthetic speech stimuli manipulated to vary ARTs and FRTs, and discriminated nonspeech analogs that varied only by ART in an AX paradigm.

Results

Three primary results were obtained. First, listeners in both age groups based speech labeling judgments on FRT, not on ART. Second, the fundamental frequency of the natural speech samples did not influence labeling judgments. Third, discrimination performance for the nonspeech stimuli did not predict how listeners would perform with the speech stimuli.

Conclusion

Even though both adults and children are sensitive to ART, it was not weighted in phonemic judgments by these typical listeners.

The Effects of Data Reduction in Determining the Schedule of Voicing Acquisition in Young Children [Article]

Hitchcock, E. R., Koenig, L. L. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, multiple measures of voicing acquisition were used to evaluate the extent to which developmental patterns based on voice onset time (VOT) mean data differed from those based on token-by-token analyses in typically developing 2-year-olds.

Method

Multiple repetitions of words containing initial /b p d t/ were elicited from 10 English-speaking children biweekly for 4 months. VOT was measured for each stop. For each child, consonant, and recording session, means and ranges were obtained, as were measures of accuracy, discreteness, and overshoot calculated for session means and for individual tokens.

Results

The token-by-token analyses suggested lower accuracy and more category overlap than the session means and revealed an overshoot phase for all children. They also showed examples of both abrupt and gradual changes that were not always evident in the means. Measures of range, accuracy, discreteness, and overshoot all continued to change after statistically significant VOT differences were observed.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that some aspects of voicing development may not be evident in analyses that rely on VOT mean data and patterns of statistical significance. Token-by-token measures provide a more complete picture of stages of voicing development than those based solely on mean VOT values.

Effects of Prosody and Position on the Timing of Deictic Gestures [Article]

Rusiewicz, H. L., Shaiman, S., Iverson, J. M., Szuminsky, N. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors investigated the hypothesis that the perceived tight temporal synchrony of speech and gesture is evidence of an integrated spoken language and manual gesture communication system. It was hypothesized that experimental manipulations of the spoken response would affect the timing of deictic gestures.

Method

The authors manipulated syllable position and contrastive stress in compound words in multiword utterances by using a repeated-measures design to investigate the degree of synchronization of speech and pointing gestures produced by 15 American English speakers. Acoustic measures were compared with the gesture movement recorded via capacitance.

Results

Although most participants began a gesture before the target word, the temporal parameters of the gesture changed as a function of syllable position and prosody. Syllables with contrastive stress in the 2nd position of compound words were the longest in duration and also most consistently affected the timing of gestures, as measured by several dependent measures.

Conclusion

Increasing the stress of a syllable significantly affected the timing of a corresponding gesture, notably for syllables in the 2nd position of words that would not typically be stressed. The findings highlight the need to consider the interaction of gestures and spoken language production from a motor-based perspective of coordination.

Gaze Patterns and Audiovisual Speech Enhancement [Article]

Yi, A., Wong, W., Eizenman, M. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors sought to quantify the relationships between speech intelligibility (perception) and gaze patterns under different auditory–visual conditions.

Method

Eleven subjects listened to low-context sentences spoken by a single talker while viewing the face of one or more talkers on a computer display. Subjects either maintained their gaze at a specific distance (0°, 2.5°, 5°, 10°, and 15°) from the center of the talker's mouth (CTM) or moved their eyes freely on the computer display. Eye movements were monitored with an eye-tracking system, and speech intelligibility was evaluated by the mean percentage of correctly perceived words.

Results

With a single talker and a fixed point of gaze, speech intelligibility was similar for all fixations within 10° of the CTM. With visual cues from two talker faces and a speech signal from one of the talkers, speech intelligibility was similar to that of a single talker for fixations within 2.5° of the CTM. With natural viewing of a single talker, gaze strategy changed with speech-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For low speech-SNR, a strategy that brought the point of gaze directly to within 2.5° of the CTM was used in approximately 80% of trials, whereas in high speech-SNR it was used in only approximately 50% of trials.

Conclusions

With natural viewing of a single talker and high speech-SNR, subjects can shift their gaze between points on the talker's face without compromising speech intelligibility. With low-speech SNR, subjects change their gaze patterns to fixate primarily on points that are in close proximity to the talker's mouth. The latter strategy is essential to optimize speech intelligibility in situations where there are simultaneous visual cues from multiple talkers (i.e., when some of the visual cues are distracters).

Aerodynamic Profiles of Women With Muscle Tension Dysphonia/Aphonia [Article]

Gillespie, A. I., Gartner-Schmidt, J., Rubinstein, E. N., Abbott, K. V. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors aimed to (a) determine whether phonatory airflows and estimated subglottal pressures (est-P_sub) for women with primary muscle tension dysphonia/aphonia (MTD/A) differ from those for healthy speakers; (b) identify different aerodynamic profile patterns within the MTD/A subject group; and (c) determine whether results suggest new understanding of pathogenesis in MTD/A.

Method

Retrospective review of aerodynamic data collected from 90 women at the time of primary MTD/A diagnosis.

Results

Aerodynamic profiles were significantly different for women with MTD/A as compared with healthy speakers. Five distinct profiles were identified: (a) normal flow, normal est-P_sub; (b) high flow, high est-P_sub; (c) low flow, normal est-P_sub; (d) normal flow, high est-P_sub; and (e) high flow, normal est-P_sub.

Conclusions

This study is the first to identify distinct subgroups of aerodynamic profiles in women with MTD/A and to quantitatively identify a clinical phenomenon sometimes described in association with it—"breath holding"—that is shown by low airflow with normal est-P_sub. Results were consistent with clinical claims that diverse respiratory and laryngeal functions may underlie phonatory patterns associated with MTD/A. One potential mechanism, based in psychobiological theory, is introduced to explain some of the variability in aerodynamic profiles of women with MTD/A.

Individual Variability in Delayed Auditory Feedback Effects on Speech Fluency and Rate in Normally Fluent Adults [Article]

Chon, H., Kraft, S. J., Zhang, J., Loucks, T., Ambrose, N. G. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) is known to induce stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and cause speech rate reductions in normally fluent adults, but the reason for speech disruptions is not fully known, and individual variation has not been well characterized. Studying individual variation in susceptibility to DAF may identify factors that predispose an individual to be more or less dependent on auditory feedback.

Method

Participants were 62 normally fluent adults. Each participant performed a spontaneous speech task in 250-ms DAF and amplified nondelayed auditory feedback (NAF) conditions. SLDs, other disfluencies (ODs), speech errors (SEs), and articulation rate (AR) were measured under each condition.

Results

In the DAF condition, SLDs and SEs significantly increased, and AR decreased. Sex had a limited effect in that men exhibited higher rates of ODs and faster AR than women. More important, parametric cluster analysis identified that 2- and 3-subgroup solutions reveal important variation that differentiates tendencies toward disfluency changes and rate reduction under DAF, which are theoretically and empirically preferred to a single-group solution.

Conclusion

Individual variability in response to DAF may be accounted for by subgroups of individuals. This suggests that certain normally fluent individuals could be more dependent on intact feedback to maintain fluency.

A Motor Speech Assessment for Children With Severe Speech Disorders: Reliability and Validity Evidence [Article]

Strand, E. A., McCauley, R. J., Weigand, S. D., Stoeckel, R. E., Baas, B. S. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this article, the authors report reliability and validity evidence for the Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skill (DEMSS), a new test that uses dynamic assessment to aid in the differential diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).

Method

Participants were 81 children between 36 and 79 months of age who were referred to the Mayo Clinic for diagnosis of speech sound disorders. Children were given the DEMSS and a standard speech and language test battery as part of routine evaluations. Subsequently, intrajudge, interjudge, and test–retest reliability were evaluated for a subset of participants. Construct validity was explored for all 81 participants through the use of agglomerative cluster analysis, sensitivity measures, and likelihood ratios.

Results

The mean percentage of agreement for 171 judgments was 89% for test–retest reliability, 89% for intrajudge reliability, and 91% for interjudge reliability. Agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis showed that total DEMSS scores largely differentiated clusters of children with CAS vs. mild CAS vs. other speech disorders. Positive and negative likelihood ratios and measures of sensitivity and specificity suggested that the DEMSS does not overdiagnose CAS but sometimes fails to identify children with CAS.

Conclusions

The value of the DEMSS in differential diagnosis of severe speech impairments was supported on the basis of evidence of reliability and validity.

Morphological Variation in the Adult Hard Palate and Posterior Pharyngeal Wall [Article]

Lammert, A., Proctor, M., Narayanan, S. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

Adult human vocal tracts display considerable morphological variation across individuals, but the nature and extent of this variation has not been extensively studied for many vocal tract structures. There exists a need to analyze morphological variation and, even more basically, to develop a methodology for morphological analysis of the vocal tract. Such analysis will facilitate fundamental characterization of the speech production system, with broad implications from modeling to explaining interspeaker variability.

Method

A data-driven methodology to automatically analyze the extent and variety of morphological variation is proposed and applied to a diverse subject pool of 36 adults. Analysis is focused on two key aspects of vocal tract structure: the midsagittal shape of the hard palate and the posterior pharyngeal wall.

Result

Palatal morphology varies widely in its degree of concavity but also in anteriority and sharpness. Pharyngeal wall morphology, by contrast, varies mostly in terms of concavity alone. The distribution of morphological characteristics is complex, and analysis suggests that certain variations may be categorical in nature.

Conclusion

Major modes of morphological variation are identified, including their relative magnitude, distribution, and categorical nature. Implications of these findings for speech articulation strategies and speech acoustics are discussed.

The Effects of Behavioral Speech Therapy on Speech Sound Production With Adults Who Have Cochlear Implants [Research Note]

Pomaville, F. M., Kladopoulos, C. N. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors examined the treatment efficacy of a behavioral speech therapy protocol for adult cochlear implant recipients.

Method

The authors used a multiple-baseline, across-behaviors and -participants design to examine the effectiveness of a therapy program based on behavioral principles and methods to improve the production of target speech sounds in 3 adults with cochlear implants. The authors included probe items in a baseline protocol to assess generalization of target speech sounds to untrained exemplars. Pretest and posttest scores from the Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale, Third Revision (Arizona–3; Fudala, 2000) and measurement of speech errors during spontaneous speech were compared, providing additional measures of target behavior generalization.

Results

The results of this study provided preliminary evidence supporting the overall effectiveness and efficiency of a behavioral speech therapy program in increasing percent correct speech sound production in adult cochlear implant recipients. The generalization of newly trained speech skills to untrained words and to spontaneous speech was demonstrated.

Conclusion

These preliminary findings support the application of behavioral speech therapy techniques for training speech sound production in adults with cochlear implants. Implications for future research and the development of aural rehabilitation programs for adult cochlear implant recipients are discussed.

Alternative Tense and Agreement Morpheme Measures for Assessing Grammatical Deficits During the Preschool Period [Article]

Gladfelter, A., Leonard, L. B. — 2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

P. A. Hadley and H. Short (2005) developed a set of measures designed to assess the emerging diversity and productivity of tense and agreement (T/A) morpheme use by 2-year-olds. The authors extended 2 of these measures to the preschool years to evaluate their utility in distinguishing children with specific language impairment (SLI) from their typically developing (TD) peers.

Method

Spontaneous speech samples from 55 children (25 with SLI, 30 TD) at 2 different age levels (4;0–4;6 [years;months] and 5;0–5;6) were analyzed, using a traditional T/A morphology composite that assessed accuracy, and the Hadley and Short measures of Tense Marker Total (assessing diversity of T/A morpheme use) and Productivity Score (assessing productivity of major T/A categories).

Results

All 3 measures showed acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, similar differences in levels of productivity across T/A categories were seen in the TD and SLI groups.

Conclusion

The Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score measures seem to have considerable utility for preschool-age children, in that they provide information about specific T/A morphemes and major T/A categories that are not distinguished using the traditional composite measure. The findings are discussed within the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning account.

Early Vocabulary Delay and Behavioral/Emotional Problems in Early Childhood: The Generation R Study [Article]

2013-05-20T06:59:30-07:00

Purpose

The authors tested associations between (a) parent-reported temporary vs. persistent vocabulary delay and (b) parent-reported behavioral/emotional problems in a sample of 5,497 young Dutch children participating in a prospective population-based study.

Method

Mothers completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory—Netherlands (Zink & Lejaegere, 2003) at age 18 months and the Language Development Survey (Rescorla, 1989) at age 30 months, with expressive vocabulary delay defined as scores in the lowest 15th age- and gender-specific percentiles. The Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) was completed by mothers when their children were age 18 months and by both parents when their children were age 36 months, from which Internalizing Problems and Externalizing Problems scores were analyzed.

Results

All analyses were adjusted for covariates. Expressive vocabulary delay at age 18 months was weakly related to Internalizing Problems scores at age 18 months as well as mother-reported Externalizing and Internalizing Problems scores at age 36 months (the latter for boys only). Expressive vocabulary delay at age 30 months was weakly associated with mother-reported Externalizing and Internalizing Problems scores (the latter for boys only) and father-reported Internalizing Problems scores. Persistent expressive vocabulary delay predicted the highest risk of mother-reported internalizing and externalizing problems at age 36 months.

Conclusion

This population-based study showed modest associations between vocabulary delay and behavioral/emotional problems detectable from 18 months onward.

Linking Infant-Directed Speech and Face Preferences to Language Outcomes in Infants at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder [Article]

Droucker, D., Curtin, S., Vouloumanos, A. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors aimed to examine whether biases for infant-directed (ID) speech and faces differ between infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (SIBS-A) and infant siblings of typically developing children (SIBS-TD), and whether speech and face biases predict language outcomes and risk group membership.

Method

Thirty-six infants were tested at ages 6, 8, 12, and 18 months. Infants heard 2 ID and 2 adult-directed (AD) speech passages paired with either a checkerboard or a face. The authors assessed expressive language at 12 and 18 months and general functioning at 12 months using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Mullen, 1995).

Results

Both infant groups preferred ID to AD speech and preferred faces to checkerboards. SIBS-TD demonstrated higher expressive language at 18 months than did SIBS-A, a finding that correlated with preferences for ID speech at 12 months. Although both groups looked longer to face stimuli than to the checkerboard, the magnitude of the preference was smaller in SIBS-A and predicted expressive vocabulary at 18 months in this group. Infants' preference for faces contributed to risk-group membership in a logistic regression analysis.

Conclusion

Infants at heightened risk of ASD differ from typically developing infants in their preferences for ID speech and faces, which may underlie deficits in later language development and social communication.

Sentence Comprehension in Specific Language Impairment: A Task Designed to Distinguish Between Cognitive Capacity and Syntactic Complexity [Article]

Leonard, L. B., Deevy, P., Fey, M. E., Bredin-Oja, S. L. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

This study examined sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI) in a manner designed to separate the contribution of cognitive capacity from the effects of syntactic structure.

Method

Nineteen children with SLI, 19 typically developing children matched for age (TD-A), and 19 younger typically developing children (TD-Y) matched according to sentence comprehension test scores responded to sentence comprehension items that varied in either length or their demands on cognitive capacity, based on the nature of the foils competing with the target picture.

Results

The TD-A children were accurate across all item types. The SLI and TD-Y groups were less accurate than the TD-A group on items with greater length and, especially, on items with the greatest demands on cognitive capacity. The types of errors were consistent with failure to retain details of the sentence apart from syntactic structure.

Conclusions

The difficulty in the more demanding conditions seemed attributable to interference. Specifically, the children with SLI and the TD-Y children appeared to have difficulty retaining details of the target sentence when the information reflected in the foils closely resembled the information in the target sentence.

Referential Communication in Children With ADHD: Challenges in the Role of a Listener [Article]

Nilsen, E. S., Mangal, L., MacDonald, K. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

Successful communication requires that listeners accurately interpret the meaning of speakers' statements. The present work examined whether children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) differ in their ability to interpret referential statements (i.e., phrases that denote objects or events) from speakers.

Method

Children (6 to 9 years old), diagnosed with ADHD (n = 27) and typically developing (n = 26), took part in an interactive task in which they were asked by an adult speaker to retrieve objects from a display case. Children interpreted the referential statements in contexts that either did or did not require perspective-taking. Children's eye movements and object choices were recorded. Parents completed questionnaires assessing their child's frequency of ADHD symptoms and pragmatic communicative abilities.

Results

Behavioral and eye movement measures revealed that children with ADHD made more interpretive errors and were less likely to consider target referents across the 2 communicative conditions. Furthermore, ADHD symptoms related to children's performance on the communicative task and to parental report of the child's pragmatic skills.

Conclusion

Children with ADHD are less accurate in their interpretations of referential statements. Such difficulties would lead to greater occurrences of miscommunication.

Rapid Naming by Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment [Article]

Coady, J. A. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

Previous studies have reported that children with specific language impairment (SLI) name pictures more slowly than do chronological age–matched (CAM) peers. Rapid naming depends on 2 factors known to be problematic for children with SLI—lexical retrieval and nonlinguistic speed of processing. Although all studies implicate a speed-of-processing deficit as a contributing factor, researchers do not agree on the influence of language factors. The purpose of the current study was to explore word frequency (WF) and phonotactic pattern frequency (PPF) as potential lexical factors contributing to the naming deficits experienced by children with SLI.

Method

Three groups of children—20 children with SLI (M_age = 9;8 [years;months]), 20 younger vocabulary-matched (VM) controls, and 20 CAM controls—named pictures whose labels varied by WF and PPF.

Results

Reaction time results revealed significant main effects of group (CAM < SLI = VM) and WF (high WF < low WF). Effects due to WF were comparable for all groups, but a significant Group x PPF interaction revealed that PPF effects were greater for children with SLI than for VM or CAM children.

Conclusion

Results replicate previous findings of a naming deficit in children with SLI. Furthermore, results suggest that children with SLI are more vulnerable to increased competition from words with frequent phonotactic patterns, which also come from dense phonological neighborhoods.

Exemplar Variability Facilitates Rapid Learning of an Otherwise Unlearnable Grammar by Individuals With Language-Based Learning Disability [Article]

von Koss Torkildsen, J., Dailey, N. S., Aguilar, J. M., Gomez, R., Plante, E. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

Even without explicit instruction, learners are able to extract information about the form of a language simply by attending to input that reflects the underlying grammar. In this study, the authors explored the role of variability in this learning by asking whether varying the number of unique exemplars heard by the learner affects learning of an artificial syntactic form.

Method

Learners with normal language (n = 16) and language-based learning disability (LLD; n = 16) were exposed to strings of nonwords that represented an underlying grammar. Half of the learners heard 3 exemplars 16 times each (low variability group), and the other half of the learners heard 24 exemplars twice each (high variability group). Learners were then tested for recognition of items heard and generalization of the grammar with new nonword strings.

Results

Only those learners with LLD who were in the high variability group were able to demonstrate generalization of the underlying grammar. For learners with normal language, both those in the high and the low variability groups showed generalization of the grammar, but relative effect sizes suggested a larger learning effect in the high variability group.

Conclusion

The results demonstrate that the structure of the learning context can determine the ability to generalize from specific training items to novel cases.

Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children With an Immigrant Background [Article]

de Abreu, P. M. J. E., Baldassi, M., Puglisi, M. L., Befi-Lopes, D. M. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children.

Method

Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning.

Results

Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered.

Conclusion

The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Enduring Advantages of Early Cochlear Implantation for Spoken Language Development [Article]

Geers, A. E., Nicholas, J. G. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this article, the authors sought to determine whether the precise age of implantation (AOI) remains an important predictor of spoken language outcomes in later childhood for those who received a cochlear implant (CI) between 12 and 38 months of age. Relative advantages of receiving a bilateral CI after age 4.5 years, better pre-CI-aided hearing, and longer CI experience were also examined.

Method

Sixty children participated in a prospective longitudinal study of outcomes at 4.5 and 10.5 years of age. Twenty-nine children received a sequential second CI. Test scores were compared with normative samples of hearing age mates, and predictors of outcomes were identified.

Results

Standard scores on language tests at 10.5 years of age remained significantly correlated with age of first cochlear implantation. Scores were not associated with receipt of a second, sequentially acquired CI. Significantly higher scores were achieved for vocabulary as compared with overall language, a finding not evident when the children were tested at younger ages.

Conclusion

Age-appropriate spoken language skills continued to be more likely with younger AOI, even after an average of 8.6 years of additional CI use. Receipt of a second implant between ages 4 and 10 years and longer duration of device use did not provide significant added benefit.

Reading Vocabulary in Children With and Without Hearing Loss: The Roles of Task and Word Type [Article]

Coppens, K. M., Tellings, A., Verhoeven, L., Schreuder, R. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

To address the problem of low reading comprehension scores among children with hearing impairment, it is necessary to have a better understanding of their reading vocabulary. In this study, the authors investigated whether task and word type differentiate the reading vocabulary knowledge of children with and without severe hearing loss.

Method

Seventy-two children with hearing loss and 72 children with normal hearing performed a lexical and a use decision task. Both tasks contained the same 180 words divided over 7 clusters, each cluster containing words with a similar pattern of scores on 8 word properties (word class, frequency, morphological family size, length, age of acquisition, mode of acquisition, imageability, and familiarity).

Results

Whereas the children with normal hearing scored better on the 2 tasks than the children with hearing loss, the size of the difference varied depending on the type of task and word.

Conclusions

Performance differences between the 2 groups increased as words and tasks became more complex. Despite delays, children with hearing loss showed a similar pattern of vocabulary acquisition as their peers with normal hearing. For the most precise assessment of reading vocabulary possible, a range of tasks and word types should be used.

Word Learning in Adults With Second-Language Experience: Effects of Phonological and Referent Familiarity [Article]

Kaushanskaya, M., Yoo, J., Van Hecke, S. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

The goal of this research was to examine whether phonological familiarity exerts different effects on novel word learning for familiar versus unfamiliar referents and whether successful word learning is associated with increased second-language experience.

Method

Eighty-one adult native English speakers with various levels of Spanish knowledge learned phonologically familiar novel words (constructed using English sounds) or phonologically unfamiliar novel words (constructed using non-English and non-Spanish sounds) in association with either familiar or unfamiliar referents. Retention was tested via a forced-choice recognition task. A median-split procedure identified high-ability and low-ability word learners in each condition, and the two groups were compared on measures of second-language experience.

Results

Findings suggest that the ability to accurately match newly learned novel names to their appropriate referents is facilitated by phonological familiarity only for familiar referents but not for unfamiliar referents. Moreover, more extensive second-language learning experience characterized superior learners primarily in one word-learning condition: in which phonologically unfamiliar novel words were paired with familiar referents.

Conclusions

Together, these findings indicate that phonological familiarity facilitates novel word learning only for familiar referents and that experience with learning a second language may have a specific impact on novel vocabulary learning in adults.

Is More Better? Milieu Communication Teaching in Toddlers With Intellectual Disabilities [Article]

Fey, M. E., Yoder, P. J., Warren, S. F., Bredin-Oja, S. L. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

The authors sought to determine whether a program of 5 weekly doses of milieu communication teaching (MCT) would yield improvements in children's communication and word use compared with a once-weekly delivery of the same treatment.

Method

Sixty-four children with intellectual and communication delay were randomly assigned to receive 60-min sessions of MCT either 1 time or 5 times per week over a 9-month treatment. Growth curves were fit to data collected at 5 points before, during, and after the MCT was delivered.

Results

With groups collapsed, significant growth across the experimental period was observed on all measures, but this was not associated unconditionally with treatment intensity. Children who played with 9 or more objects during a standard play assessment, an empirically identified cut-point, benefited more from the high- than from the low-intensity treatment on lexical measures (Hedges's g range = .49 to .65).

Conclusions

More MCT is not always better for all children. Clinicians can expect that increasing the frequency of MCT sessions will yield moderate enhancement of outcomes if the child has high interest in objects.

The Effect of Homonymy on Learning Correctly Articulated Versus Misarticulated Words [Article]

Storkel, H. L., Maekawa, J., Aschenbrenner, A. J. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

The goal of the current study was to examine the effect of homonymy (learning a second meaning for a known word form vs. learning a novel meaning and novel word form) and articulation accuracy (IN vs. OUT sounds) on word learning by preschool children. An added goal was to determine whether word frequency altered the effect of homonymy on word learning.

Method

Twenty-nine 3- to 4-year-old children were taught homonyms and novel words. Stimuli further varied in whether homonymy was present in both the adult input and the child's output (as for IN sounds) versus present only in the child's output (as for OUT sounds).

Results

For IN sounds, children learned homonyms more rapidly than novel words. Moreover, the homonym advantage was modulated by word frequency, such that children learned a new meaning for a high-frequency word more accurately than they learned a new meaning for a low-frequency word. In contrast, for OUT sounds, there was no evidence that homonymy influenced learning.

Conclusions

Homonymy in the adult input facilitates word learning by preschool children, whereas homonymy in the child's output alone does not. This effect is captured in a usage-based model of phonology and the lexicon.

Investigating the Relationship Between Nonword Repetition Performance and Syllabic Structure in Typical and Atypical Language Development [Article]

Tamburelli, M., Jones, G. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors examined the role of syllabic structure in nonword repetition performance in typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Method

Eighteen children with SLI (5;7–6;7 [years;months]) and 18 TD children matched for chronological age were tested on their ability to repeat phonemes in different positions within syllable structure (onset, nucleus, coda). The test involved 2 separate nonword repetition tasks differing in lexicality (high vs. low). High-lexicality nonwords contained subparts that are morphemes of the language (i.e., subparts were "lexical"), whereas nonlexical nonwords did not.

Results

Repetition performance across the 3 syllabic positions showed a significant effect for both populations and on both tasks. However, although on the high-lexicality task the direction of the effect revealed the onset as the most error-prone constituent (onset > coda > nucleus), on the low-lexicality task, it was the coda that attracted most errors (coda > onset > nucleus).

Conclusions

Results suggest that the procedures involved in computing syllabic structure are qualitatively similar in the 2 populations. We take these results to support the view that different syllabic positions involve different levels of phonological complexity and that tests that control for lexicality are crucial in illuminating these differences.

Vocalization Development in Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder [Article]

Plumb, A. M., Wetherby, A. M. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors aimed to examine the vocalizations of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the second year of life and their relationship to other areas of development.

Method

Vocalizations were examined in 125 children between ages 18 and 24 months: 50 later diagnosed with ASD, 25 with developmental delays (DD) in which ASD was ruled out, and 50 with typical development (TD). Precise measures of vocalizations were obtained through coding of video-recorded behavior samples from the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile (Wetherby & Prizant, 2002b).

Results

The ASD group used a significantly lower proportion of vocalizations with speech sounds and a significantly higher proportion of atypical vocalizations than children with TD. The ASD group used a significantly higher proportion of distress vocalizations than the TD and DD groups. For the ASD group, the frequency of vocalizations with speech sounds correlated significantly with developmental levels both concurrently and predictively. In the ASD group, communicative vocalizations late in the second year were found to uniquely predict expressive language outcome at age 3 years above noncommunicative vocalizations.

Conclusions

Further examination of distress vocalizations as a potential early indicator of ASD is recommended. In addition, the importance of early communicative vocalizations for later language development is highlighted.

Lexical Development in Korean: Vocabulary Size, Lexical Composition, and Late Talking [Article]

Rescorla, L., Lee, Y. M. C., Oh, K. J., Kim, Y. A. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors aimed to compare vocabulary size, lexical composition, and late talking in large samples of Korean and U.S. children ages 18–35 months.

Method

Data for 2,191 Korean children (211 children recruited "offline" through preschools, and 1,980 recruited "online" via the Internet) and 274 U.S. children were obtained using the Language Development Survey (LDS).

Results

Mean vocabulary size was slightly larger in the offline than the online group, but the groups were acquiring almost identical words. Mean vocabulary size did not differ by country; girls and older children had larger vocabularies in both countries. The Korean–U.S. Q correlations for percentage use of LDS words (.53 and .56) indicated considerable concordance across countries in lexical composition. Noun dominance was as large in Korean lexicons as in U.S. lexicons. About half of the most commonly reported words for the Korean and U.S. children were identical. Lexicons of late talkers resembled those of typically developing younger children in the same sample.

Conclusions

Despite linguistic and discourse differences between Korean and English, LDS findings indicated considerable cross-linguistic similarity with respect to vocabulary size, lexical composition, and late talking.

The Efficacy of a Vocabulary Intervention for Dual-Language Learners With Language Impairment [Article]

Restrepo, M. A., Morgan, G. P., Thompson, M. S. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

In this study, the authors evaluated the efficacy of a Spanish–English versus English-only vocabulary intervention for dual-language learners (DLLs) with language impairment compared to mathematics intervention groups and typically developing controls with no intervention. Further, in this study the authors also examined whether the language of instruction affected English, Spanish, and conceptual vocabulary differentially.

Method

The authors randomly assigned 202 preschool DLLs with language impairment to 1 of 4 conditions: bilingual vocabulary, English-only vocabulary, bilingual mathematics, or English-only mathematics. Fifty-four DLLs with typical development received no intervention. The vocabulary intervention consisted of a 12-week small-group dialogic reading and hands-on vocabulary instruction of 45 words. Postintervention group differences and linear growth rates were examined in conceptual, English, and Spanish receptive and expressive vocabulary for the 45 treatment words.

Results

Results indicate that the bilingual vocabulary intervention facilitated receptive and expressive Spanish and conceptual vocabulary gains in DLLs with language impairment compared with the English vocabulary intervention, mathematics intervention, and no-intervention groups. The English-only vocabulary intervention differed significantly from the mathematics condition and no-intervention groups on all measures but did not differ from the bilingual vocabulary intervention. Vocabulary growth rates postintervention slowed considerably. Results support the idea that bilingual interventions support native- and second-language vocabulary development.

Conclusion

English-only intervention supports only English. Use of repeated dialogic reading and hands-on activities facilitates vocabulary acquisition.

Semantic Convergence in Spanish-English Bilingual Children With Primary Language Impairment [Research Note]

Sheng, L., Bedore, L. M., Peaa, E. D., Taliancich-Klinger, C. — 2013-05-20T06:59:31-07:00

Purpose

To examine the degree of convergence in word association responses produced by bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) in relation to bilingual age peers.

Method

Thirty-seven Spanish–English bilingual children with PLI, 37 typically developing (TD) controls, and a normative sample of 112 children produced associations to 24 English and Spanish words. The 5 most frequent responses for each stimulus were identified for the normative sample; then the frequency of occurrence of these frequent normative responses was tabulated and compared between the PLI and TD groups.

Results

Children with PLI generated fewer frequent normative responses than their TD peers. Spearman rank correlations revealed that the rank frequency of responses in the normative group was significantly correlated with that of the TD and PLI groups; however, in English, the correlation was stronger for the TD cohort. Cross-language associations were also revealed in the generation of frequent norming responses.

Conclusions

Semantic convergence is determined by multiple factors. Reduced production of frequent normative responses and weakened correlation with group association behavior in English suggest that children with PLI were delayed in converging on a central core of semantic knowledge that is characteristic of bilingual children with typical language skills.