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The study evaluated the convergent validity of the PEAK-E-PA and two common assessments of language development used in educational and clinical settings: the ABLLS-R and the TOLD-I:4. The PEAK-E-PA provides a measure of a participant's ability to derive arbitrary stimulus relations, and may therefore provide a more complex analysis of language functioning than traditional behavior analytic language assessments. The results of the present study support a strong, significant relationship between the PEAK-E-PA and the ABLLS-R (r = 0.73, p < 0.01), but the obtained coefficient falls within the lower range of prior psychometric evaluations of behavioral language assessments. The results suggest a stronger relationship between the PEAK-E-PA the TOLD-I:4 (r = 0.94, p < 0.01), supporting the use of the PEAK-E-PA with individuals with autism who have progressed beyond the elementary verbal operant skills assessed for in traditional behavioral assessments., Author(s): Jordan Belisle [sup.1], Mark R. Dixon [sup.2], Bridget E. Munoz [sup.2], Kate Fricke-Steuber [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.260126.1, 0000 0001 0745 8995, Psychology Department, Missouri State University, , Springfield, [...]

Competing viewpoints on the independency or interdependency of Skinner's verbal operants have been discussed in the literature and with empirical support for both positions generated using single-case research methods. Our study provides support for the interdependency of the verbal operants using items contained in the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program as a measure of broader skill acquisition in each verbal operant category and across skill complexity levels. The result of an exploratory factor analysis conducted across 85 participants with autism suggested that items did yield factors consistent with the verbal operants, rather items appeared to cluster in terms of skill complexity producing a best-fit 2 factor model. Together with prior research showing untrained cross-operant transfers, results fail to support Skinner's verbal behavior taxonomy distinguishing between the verbal operant categories as independent constructs, with implications for how behavior scientists and analysts describe language development and assess and treat language deficits of individuals with autism., Author(s): Jordan Belisle [sup.1], Mark R. Dixon [sup.2], Albert Malkin [sup.2], Joshua Hollie [sup.2], Caleb R. Stanley [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.260126.1, 0000 0001 0745 8995, Psychology Department, Missouri State [...]

The present study examined the content of applied behavior analytic therapy (ABA therapy) on skill acquisition and intelligence test scores of twenty-eight children with autism and related disabilities. Using a randomized controlled trial, we compared (a) traditional ABA consisting of verbal behavior techniques developed by Skinner (Verbal behavior, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1957 (See CR61)), (b) comprehensive ABA which added techniques post-Skinner's theory of language, and (c) waitlist control. Results obtained indicated that even though skill acquisition improved equally across both intervention groups compared to the control, highest intelligence score changes were shown for participants in the comprehensive ABA group (F: 2, 24 = 9.198, p = 0.001). With increasing emphasis on client outcomes, the present data suggest that when hours of intervention are kept constant, ABA service providers may be at an advantage by incorporating techniques that are typically considered beyond the traditional ABA ideas of Skinner's account of language development., Author(s): Mark R. Dixon [sup.1], Dana Paliliunas [sup.1], Becky F. Barron [sup.1], Ayla M. Schmick [sup.1], Caleb R. Stanley [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.411026.0, 0000 0001 1090 2313, Behavior Analysis [...]

Infants show shifting patterns of visual engagement to faces over the first years of life. To explore the adaptive implications of this engagement, we collected eye-tracking measures on cross-sectional samples of 10-25-month-old typically developing toddlers (TD;N = 28) and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD;N = 54). Concurrent language assessments were conducted and relationships between visual engagement and expressive and receptive language were analyzed between groups, and within ASD subgroups. TD and ASD toddlers exhibited greater mouth- than eye-looking, with TD exhibiting higher levels of mouth-looking than ASD. Mouth-looking was positively associated with expressive language in TD toddlers, and in ASD toddlers who had acquired first words. Mouth-looking was unrelated to expressive language in ASD toddlers who had not yet acquired first words., Author(s): Serene Habayeb [sup.3] , Tawny Tsang [sup.4] , Celine Saulnier [sup.2] [sup.5] , Cheryl Klaiman [sup.1] [sup.2] , Warren Jones [sup.1] [sup.2] , Ami Klin [sup.1] [sup.2] , Laura [...]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to conceptualize the subtle balancing act between language input and prediction (cognitive priming of future input) to achieve understanding of communicated content. When understanding fails, reconstructive postdiction is initiated. Three memory systems play important roles: working memory (WM), episodic long-term memory (ELTM), and semantic long-term memory (SLTM). The axiom of the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model is that explicit WM resources are invoked by a mismatch between language input--in the form of rapid automatic multimodal binding of phonology--and multimodal phonological and lexical representations in SLTM. However, if there is a match between rapid automatic multimodal binding of phonology output and SLTM/ELTM representations, language processing continues rapidly and implicitly. Method and Results: In our first ELU approach, we focused on experimental manipulations of signal processing in hearing aids and background noise to cause a mismatch with LTM representations; both resulted in increased dependence on WM. Our second--and main approach relevant for this review article--focuses on the relative effects of age-related hearing loss on the three memory systems. According to the ELU, WM is predicted to be frequently occupied with reconstruction of what was actually heard, resulting in a relative disuse of phonological/ lexical representations in the ELTM and SLTM systems. The prediction and results do not depend on test modality per se but rather on the particular memory system. This will be further discussed. Conclusions: Related to the literature on ELTM decline as precursors of dementia and the fact that the risk for Alzheimer's disease increases substantially over time due to hearing loss, there is a possibility that lowered ELTM due to hearing loss and disuse may be part of the causal chain linking hearing loss and dementia. Future ELU research will focus on this possibility., Over the last 2 decades, the hearing research community has increasingly accepted that cognitive factors play an important role in models of hearing and language processing, all the way from [...]

Through the Ministry of Education program Programme des Ecoles Integrees (PEI) in Cote d'lvoire, 26 rural public primary schools may use one of 10 local languages as the language of instruction in Grades 13 prior to switching to a French-only system. The purpose of a PEI school is to support basic academic skills development and French language acquisition for students who enter primary school with limited exposure to French. Students from PEI schools demonstrate stronger academic and French language outcomes compared to students from traditional French-only schools. However, neither the PEI program nor traditional schools account for multilingualism in the communities they serve nor do they provide language support to non-native students. In this exploratory study, I seek to understand how academic and learning outcomes for refugees and immigrants are supported in different school settings in Cote d'lvoire. I observe three classrooms and interview three teachers, one stateless migrant parent, and two refugee parents about PEI and traditional schools. While teachers expressed mixed opinions about the benefits of PEI schools for non-native students, parents expressed positive opinions despite their limited knowledge of local languages and the lack of local language learning support. Observational and narrative analysis reveal that teacher strategies to support students who do not understand the language of instruction vary based upon teaching experience rather than training or available resources. Pedagogical techniques include ignoring students, call-response, and individual attention. Keywords Language teaching, refugee parent preferences, Cote d'lvoire, Introduction Cote d'lvoire is home to 60+ local languages yet French, the nonlocal language imposed by the former colonial power, is the language of instruction (Brou-Diallo, 2011; Djite, 2000). Despite [...]

Purpose: Phonological awareness (PA) skills are critical for spoken language acquisition and literacy. PA manifests in various skills that can be identified based on task performance and speech sound unit size. This study compared the PA skills of children with early cochlear implantation (E-CI), children with late cochlear implantation (L-CI), and children with typical hearing (TH) in relation to task and phonological unit. It also attempted to identify the significant predictors of PA skills in each CI and TH group. Method: Twenty children with E-CI, 20 children with L-CI, and 20 children with TH participated in this study. PA skills were assessed using elision, blending, and segmenting tasks at both the syllabic and phonemic levels. Results: The E-CI and L-CI groups performed significantly less well than the TH group on the elision and blending tasks at the syllabic level. However, the E-CI group performed at a similar level as the TH group in the segmenting tasks at both the syllabic and phonemic levels. The regression analysis identified age at implantation and receptive vocabulary scores as significant predictors of PA skills in children with CIs. Conclusions: Although all the children with CIs had ageappropriate receptive vocabulary skills, the PA skills of both the E-CI and L-CI groups tended to lag behind those of the TH group in the elision and blending tasks at the syllabic level. Age at implantation and receptive vocabulary skills affected the development of PA skills in children with CIs., Phonological awareness (PA) is a broad skill that encompasses the identification, discrimination, and manipulation of segments of spoken language (Stahl & Murray, 1994). Previous studies have linked PA to vocabulary [...]

Purpose: This study investigated component skills in oral language development utilizing and validating a new assessment battery in a large (N = 800) and representative sample of Greek students 4-7 years of age. Method: All participants enrolled in public schools from four geographical regions (Attica, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Crete) that varied demographically (urban, semiurban, and rural). For the individualized language assessments, we utilized mobile devices (tablet PC) to ensure children's interest and joyful participation as well as reliable administration procedures across sites. Results by confirmatory factor analyses specified and validated five different models in each grade to identify the best conceptualization of language dimensionality in the respective age groups. Results: Four-dimensional model provided a slightly better discriminant validity in language data of the preschool group. However, in kindergarten and first grades, the fivedimensional model had the best fit to the data to the fourdimensional. Conclusion: These findings support the multidimensionality of oral language ability at this phase of development and increase of factor distinctiveness as children grow. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha. 12649214, Language development in early childhood has been studied extensively in an effort to explain observed variations in both oral language and emerging literacy skills. The search for contributing factors is [...]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of preschoolers with speech sound disorder (SSD) and with typical speech and language development (TD) to understand foreign-accented words, providing a window into the quality of their underlying phonological representations. We also investigated the relationship between vocabulary skills and the ability to identify words that are frequent and have few neighbors (lexically easy words) and words that are less frequent and have many neighbors (lexically hard words). Method: Thirty-two monolingual English-speaking children (16 with SSD, 16 with TD), ages 4 and 5 years, completed standardized speech and language tests and a two-alternative forced-choice word identification task of English words produced by a native English speaker and a native Korean speaker. Results: Children with SSD had more difficulty identifying words produced by both talkers than children with TD and showed a larger difficulty identifying Korean-accented words. Both groups of children identified lexically easy words more accurately than lexically hard words, although this difference was not significant when including receptive vocabulary skills in the analysis. Identification of lexically hard words, both those produced by the native English speaker and the nonnative English speaker, increased with vocabulary size. Conclusion: Considering the performance of the children with SSD under ideal listening conditions in this study, we can assume that, as a group, children with SSD may experience greater difficulty identifying foreign-accented words in environments with background noise., Children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) produce more speech errors than expected for their age and are less intelligible than their peers with typical speech and language development (TD). SSD [...]

Purpose: Auditory deprivation has downstream effects on the development of language and executive functioning (EF) in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs), but little is known about the very early development of EF during preschool ages in children with CIs. This study investigated the longitudinal development of EF and spoken language skills in samples of children with normal hearing (NH; N = 40) or CIs (N = 41) during preschool ages. Method: Participants were enrolled in the study between ages 3 and 6 years and evaluated annually up to the age of 7 years. Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate and predict growth of spoken language and EF skills over time. Results: Children with CIs scored lower than NH peers on language measures but improved significantly over time. On performance-based neurocognitive measures of controlled attention, inhibition, and working memory, children with CIs scored more poorly than the sample of Nh peers but comparable to norms, whereas on a parent report behavior checklist, children with CIs scored more poorly than both NH peers and norms on inhibition and working memory. Children with CIs had poorer EF than the sample of NH peers in most domains even after accounting for language effects, and language predicted only the verbal working memory domain of EF. In contrast, EF skills consistently predicted language skills at subsequent visits. Conclusions: Findings demonstrate that, despite significant improvement over time, some domains of EF (particularly parent-reported EF) and language skills in children with CIs lag behind those of children with NH during preschool ages. Language delays do not fully explain differences in EF development between children with CIs and NH peers during preschool ages, but EF skills predict subsequent language development in children with CIs., Cochlear implantation in childhood results in significant improvement in spoken language skills, particularly when implantation occurs at very young ages (Geers, Nicholas, & Sedey, 2003; Niparko et al., 2010). Longitudinal [...]

Purpose: The study sought to determine whether the onset of canonical vocalizations in children with cochlear implants (CIs) is related to speech perception skills and spoken vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Method: The vocal development in 13 young CI recipients (implanted by their third birthdays; mean age at activation = 20.62 months, SD = 8.92 months) was examined at every 3-month interval during the first 2 years of CI use. All children were enrolled in auditory-oral intervention programs. Families of these children used spoken English only. To determine the onset of canonical syllables, the first 50 utterances from 20-min adult-child interactions were analyzed during each session. The onset timing was determined when at least 20% of utterances included canonical syllables. As children's outcomes, we examined their Lexical Neighborhood Test scores and vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Results: Pearson correlation analysis showed that the onset timing of canonical syllables is significantly correlated with phonemic recognition skills and spoken vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Regression analyses also indicated that the onset timing of canonical syllables predicted phonemic recognition skills and spoken vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Conclusion: Monitoring vocal advancement during the earliest periods following cochlear implantation could be valuable as an early indicator of auditory-driven language development in young children with CIs. It remains to be studied which factors improve vocal development for young CI recipients., Cochlear implants (CIs) provide deaf children robust access to sound, but even after consistent use, children continue to exhibit variability in spoken language skills (Niparko et al., 2010). Therefore, identifying [...]

Purpose: Parental language input (PLI) has reliably been found to influence child language development for children at risk of language delay, but previous work has generally restricted observations to the preschool years. The current study examined whether PLI during the early years explains variability in the spoken language abilities of children with hearing loss at those young ages, as well as later in childhood. Participants: One hundred children participated: 34 with normal hearing, 24 with moderate losses who used hearing aids (HAs), and 42 with severe-to-profound losses who used cochlear implants (CIs). Mean socioeconomic status was middle class for all groups. Children with CIs generally received them early. Method: Samples of parent-child interactions were analyzed to characterize PLI during the preschool years. Child language abilities (CLAs) were assessed at 48 months and 10 years of age. Results: No differences were observed across groups in how parents interacted with their children. Nonetheless, strong differences across groups were observed in the effects of PLI on CLAs at 48 months of age: Children with normal hearing were largely resilient to their parents' language styles. Children with HAs were most influenced by the amount of PLI. Children with CIs were most influenced by PLI that evoked child language and modeled more complex versions. When potential influences of preschool PLI on CLAs at 10 years of age were examined, those effects at preschool were replicated. When mediation analyses were performed, however, it was found that the influences of preschool PLI on CLAs at 10 years of age were partially mediated by CLAs at preschool. Conclusion: PLI is critical to the long-term spoken language abilities of children with hearing loss, but the style of input that is most effective varies depending on the severity of risk for delay., Language acquisition is one of the most spectacular achievements of childhood. Mastery of the skills that permit a child to understand others when they talk, produce language oneself, read, and [...]

Purpose: Many preschoolers, especially those from low-income households, would benefit from instruction to enrich their vocabulary and language repertoires. Yet, explicit instruction of vocabulary and language skills generally occurs infrequently in early childhood education settings. This study investigated the additive effects of teacher-led, classwide review strategies to a previously studied small-group intervention on children's learning of academic vocabulary. Method: Participants included 23 children with limited oral language skills at risk for reading difficulties enrolled in single-case experimental designs. Effects of the classroom strategies alone also were examined in 10 children with above-average language abilities from 2 classrooms. Results: Visual analyses of the adapted alternating treatments designs showed consistent learning improvements when vocabulary instruction was extended into the classroom for 12 children, ceiling effects were evident for 3 participants regardless of condition, and inconsistent or minimal effects were demonstrated by 8 participants. Multilevel modeling used to evaluate the effects statistically revealed strong treatment effects. In addition, the 10 children with above-average language showed impressive learning of vocabulary words from books subject to teacher review strategies in comparison to words from books to which they were not exposed. Teachers varied in the extent to which they implemented review strategies in their classrooms. Nevertheless, their responses to social validity assessments were positive, supporting the feasibility of this intervention. Conclusions: The addition of classwide review and practice opportunities is an effective means of enhancing the effects of an easy-to-implement small-group intervention that teaches challenging vocabulary words within prerecorded stories. This approach holds promise as a way to shrink the pervasive word gap that typically exists when children in high-poverty communities enter school., Development of oral language is critical during early childhood, providing a foundation for literacy and nearly all other academic performance (Roth, Speece, & Cooper, 2002; Walker, Greenwood, Hart, & Carta, [...]

Objective: The aim of the study was to conduct a meta-analysis of research examining the early speech and language functioning of young children, birth to age 8;11 (years; months), with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P) compared to their peers without NSCL/P. Method: We conducted a random-effects metaregression using 241 effect sizes from 31 studies comparing 955 young children with NSCL/P to 938 typically developing peers on measures of speech and language functioning. Moderators were sample characteristics (i.e., age, cleft type, publication year, and study location) and measurement characteristics (i.e., speech sample material, language modality and domain, and assessment type). Results: Young children with NSCL/P scored significantly lower on measures of speech and language compared to children without NSCL/P. Children with NSCL/P had smaller consonant inventories (standardized mean difference effect size [E[S.sub.g]] = -1.24), less accurate articulation (E[S.sub.g] = -1.13), and more speech errors (E[S.sub.g] = 0.93) than their peers. Additionally, children with NSCL/P had poorer expressive (E[S.sub.g] = -0.57) and receptive (E[S.sub.g] = -0.59) language skills than their peers. Age and assessment type moderated effect sizes for expressive language. As children with NSCL/P aged, their expressive language performance became more similar to their peers. Expressive language effect sizes from parent reports and observational language measures (estimated effect size = -0.74) were significantly lower than those from standardized norm-referenced tests (estimated effect size = -0.45). Conclusions: These findings suggest that young children with NSCL/P experience delays relative to their peers across multiple speech and language constructs. Differences between children with NSCL/P and their typically developing peers appear to decrease with age. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha. 11356904, Nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P) affects the development of speech mechanism, and children with NSCL/P are at risk for speech and language delays (Chapman, 2011; Scherer, Williams, & Proctor-Williams, [...]

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to identify and evaluate the available scientific evidence on the effectiveness of rehabilitation approaches proposed to children with severe-to-profound prelinguistic deafness on the hearing, speech, and language skills development. Method: Databases (PubMed, CINHAL, PsycInfo, Cochrane, ERIC, and EMBASE) were searched with relevant key words (children, deafness, rehabilitation approach, auditory, speech, and language). Studies published between 2000 and 2017 were included. The methodological quality of the studies was evaluated with the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies, and the level of evidence was evaluated with the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine Levels of Evidence. Every step of the selection and analysis was made by 2 independent judges. Results: Of 1,739 articles listed in different databases, 38 met the inclusion criteria and were selected for analysis. The majority of included articles present a relatively low level of evidence. Rehabilitation approaches that do not include signs appear more frequently associated with a better auditory, speech, and language development, except for receptive language, than approaches that included any form of signs. Conclusion: More robust studies are needed to decide on the approach to prioritize with severe-to-profound deaf children., Hearing loss affects two to six children out of 1,000 children (Fortnum, Summerfield, Marshall, Davis, & Bamford, 2001; Hyde, 2005; Ministry of Health and Social Services, 2012), making it one [...]

Purpose: This study reports validity evidence for an English translation of the LittIEARS Early Speech Production Questionnaire (LEESPQ). The LEESPQ was designed to support early spoken language outcome monitoring in young children who are deaf/hard of hearing. Methods: Data from 90 children with normal hearing, ages 0-18 months, are reported. Parents completed the LEESPQ in addition to a concurrent measure of spoken language development, the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test-Third Edition. Normal hearing status and development were confirmed. Results: Traditional scale analyses, in addition to item parameters, are reported. The LEESPQ was highly correlated with the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test-Third Edition (r = .92) and age (r = .90) and had high internal consistency ([OMEGA] = 0.92). Common factor analysis revealed 2 underlying factors conceptually mapping onto items measuring vocal and symbolic development. A latent traits model was the best fit to the data, and item difficulty broadly conformed to theoretical expectations. Conclusions: The present work demonstrates that the LEESPQ accurately captures early spoken language development in a typically developing group of young children. The LEESPQ holds promise as a clinically feasible, spoken language outcome monitoring tool. Future work to identify differences in performance characteristics between typically developing children and clinical populations is warranted., Interest in the early spoken language productions of children who are deaf/hard of hearing (CDHH) has increased in recent years, given the implementation of early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) [...]

Purpose: The overall goal of the current study was to identify an optimal level and duration of acoustic experience that facilitates language development for pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients--specifically, to determine whether there is an optimal duration of hearing aid (HA) use and unaided threshold levels that should be considered before proceeding to bilateral CIs. Method: A total of 117 pediatric CI recipients (ages 5-9 years) were given speech perception and standardized tests of receptive vocabulary and language. The speech perception battery included tests of segmental perception (e.g., word recognition in quiet and noise, and vowels and consonants in quiet) and of suprasegmental perception (e.g., talker and stress discrimination, and emotion identification). Hierarchical regression analyses were used to determine the effects of speech perception on language scores, and the effects of residual hearing level (unaided puretone average [PTA]) and duration of HA use on speech perception. Results: A continuum of residual hearing levels and the length of HA use were represented by calculating the unaided PTA of the ear with the longest duration of HA use for each child. All children wore 2 devices: Some wore bimodal devices, while others received their 2nd CI either simultaneously or sequentially, representing a wide range of HA use (0.03-9.05 years). Regression analyses indicate that suprasegmental perception contributes unique variance to receptive language scores and that both segmental and suprasegmental skills each contribute independently to receptive vocabulary scores. Also, analyses revealed an optimal duration of HA use for each of 3 ranges of hearing loss severity (with mean PTAs of 73, 92, and 111 dB HL) that maximizes suprasegmental perception. Conclusions: For children with the most profound losses, early bilateral CIs provide the greatest opportunity for developing good spoken language skills. For those with moderate-to-severe losses, however, a prescribed period of bimodal use may be more advantageous for developing good spoken language skills., For young children with severe-to-profound hearing loss (HL), there is a general consensus that maximizing hearing at each ear is best, that is, two ears/ devices are better than one. [...]

Purpose: To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Polish-speaking children. This study aimed to adapt to Polish a standardized parent report measure, the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009, in order to enable cross-cultural comparisons and to use the LUI-Polish to screen for pragmatic development in children 18-47 months of age. We concentrated on the sociocultural and functional adaptation of LUI and aimed to demonstrate its reliability, developmental sensitivity, and concurrent validity. Method: Parents completed an online version of LUI-Polish, longitudinally at 3 time points (when the child was 20, 32, and 44 months old). In addition, parents completed the Polish adaptations of the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months and the Language Development Survey at 24 months. Children's spontaneous speech was assessed at 24 months, and their expressive and receptive vocabulary was assessed at 36 months. Results: All 3 parts of the LUI-Polish (Gestures, Words, and Sentences) showed very good levels of internal consistency at each time point. Significant correlations were observed between all parts of the LUI-Polish at all 3 measurement time points. The expected developmental trajectory was observed for boys and girls providing evidence of its developmental sensitivity for children between the ages of 2 and 4 years: an increase with age in the total score (due to an increase in Words and Sentences) and a decrease in Gestures. Supporting concurrent validity, significant correlations were found between children's performance on (a) the LUI-Polish at 20 months and the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months as well as the Language Development Survey and spontaneous speech measures at 24 months and (b) the LUI-Polish at 32 months and the 2 measures of vocabulary comprehension and production at 36 months. Conclusion: The Polish adaptation of the LUI demonstrated good psychometric properties that provide a sound basis for cross-cultural comparisons and further research toward norming of the LUI-Polish. Moreover, the expected developmental trajectory in the pragmatic development of Polish children was observed., There are at least three reasons for conducting research aimed at providing valid adaptations of measures of language development in children whose first and/or only language is not English. First, [...]

Purpose: Many language tests use different versions that are not statistically linked or do not have a developmental scaled score. The current article illustrates the problems of scores that are not linked or equated, followed by a statistical model to derive a developmental scaled score. Method: Using an accelerated cohort design of 890 students in Grades 1-5, a confirmatory factor model was fit to 6 subtests of the Test of Language Development-Primary and Intermediate: Fourth Edition (Hammill & Newcomer, 2008a, 2008b). The model allowed for linking the subtests to a general factor of language and equating their measurement characteristics across grades and cohorts of children. A sequence of models was fit to evaluate the appropriateness of the linking assumptions. Results: The models fit well, with reasonable support for the validity of the tests to measure a general factor of language on a longitudinally consistent scale. Conclusion: Although total and standard scores were problematic for longitudinal relations, the results of the model suggest that language grows in a relatively linear manner among these children, regardless of which set of subtests they received. Researchers and clinicians interested in longitudinal inferences are advised to design research or choose tests that can provide a developmental scaled score., One of the key challenges in studying the development of language among children is designing tasks that are appropriate to the capabilities of children at different ages. Because the tasks [...]

Purpose: Frequent sounds and frequent words are both acquired at an earlier age and are produced by children more accurately. Recent research suggests that frequency is not always a facilitative concept, however. Interactions between input frequency in perception and practice frequency in production may limit or inhibit growth. In this study, we consider how a range of input frequencies affect production accuracy and referent identification.Method: Thirty-three typically developing 3- and 4-year-olds participated in a novel word-learning task. In the initial test block, participants heard nonwords 1, 3, 6, or 10 times-produced either by a single talker or by multiple talkers--and then produced them immediately. In a posttest, participants heard all nonwords just once and then produced them. Referent identification was probed in between the test and posttest.Results: Production accuracy was most clearly facilitated by an input frequency of 3 during the test block. Input frequency interacted with production practice, and the facilitative effect of input frequency did not carry over to the posttest. Talker variability did not affect accuracy, regardless of input frequency. The referent identification results did not favor talker variability or a particular input frequency value, but participants were able to learn the words at better than chance levels.Conclusions: The results confirm that the input can be facilitative, but input frequency and production practice interact in ways that limit input-based learning, and more input is not always better. Future research on this interaction may allow clinicians to optimize various types of frequency commonly used during therapy., Frequency is an important concept across all aspects of language acquisition (Ambridge, Kidd, Rowland, & Theakston, 2015). At the same time, given its sundry applications, 'frequency' can mean so many [...]

Purpose: The study aims to describe receptive language skills in children with intellectual disability (ID) and to contribute to the debate on deviant versus delayed language development. This is the 1st study of receptive skills in children with ID who speak a Slavic language, providing insight into how language development is affected by disability and also language typology. Method: Twenty-eight Slovak-speaking children participated in the study (14 children with ID and 14 typically developing [TD] children matched on nonverbal reasoning abilities). The children were assessed by receptive language tasks targeting words, sentences, and stories, and the groups were compared quantitatively and qualitatively. Results: The groups showed similar language profiles, with a better understanding of words, followed by sentences, with the poorest comprehension for stories. Nouns were comprehended better than verbs; sentence constructions also showed a qualitatively similar picture, although some dissimilarities emerged. Verb comprehension was strongly related to sentence comprehension in both groups and related to story comprehension in the TD group only. Conclusion: The findings appear to support the view that receptive language skills follow the same developmental route in children with ID as seen in younger TD children, suggesting that language development is a robust process and does not seem to be differentially affected by ID even when delayed., Language is a fundamental skill that influences various aspects of cognitive development and social interaction. Children with intellectual disability (ID) often experience severe language learning difficulties (Facon, Facon-Bollengier, & Grubar, [...]

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON research examining children's use of language in dramatic play and play with construction materials in kindergarten classrooms within three Indigenous and two non-Indigenous northern Canadian rural communities. Underpinned by sociolinguistic theory, the research involves inductive analysis of video-recorded interactions of five-year-old children during play. Participating children used language for 36 different purposes. Children's construction play talk often involved purposes within the categories of Language for learning and Language for own needs. Children often used language for purposes associated with the Language for learning and Language for imagining categories in dramatic play. As part of collaborative action research, teachers and researchers used these findings to develop a formative oral language observation tool. Using the tool, information gathered can inform practice and communication with parents and speech-language pathologists working with identified children., Introduction Teachers' concerns about the oral language development of young children entering kindergarten in northern Canadian rural and Indigenous communities were the impetus for our six-year collaborative action research project. [...]

El presente artículo pretende contribuir al debate sobre el estatus sintáctico que se atribuye a las construcciones ditransitivas--es decir, las construcciones de doble objeto (CDO) y las estructuras de dativo con to/for--respecto a qué tipo de estructura deriva sintácticamente por un proceso análogo a las construcciones pasivas. Para ello el estudio se centra en el análisis de las construcciones ditransitivas y pasivas en inglés que aparecen en la producción de dos gemelos bilingües simultáneos inglés-español. Nuestros resultados muestran que las CDOs comienzan a producirse antes que las estructuras de dativo. Sin embargo, la edad de inicio de producción de las construcciones pasivas difiere entre los dos niños aunque éstas se producen más tarde que las ditransitivas. Asimismo, existe una correlación directa con el input del adulto en la producción de ditransitivas y pasivas ya que la alta frecuencia de las CDOs en él mismo, a diferencia de la baja frecuencia de las estructuras de dativo y pasivas, se refleja en la producción de los niños. Por tanto, estos hallazgos sugieren que las estructuras de dativo pueden verse como estructuras que derivan de las CDOs aunque, dada la adquisición posterior de las pasivas, no se pueden extraer concusiones sólidas sobre si esta derivación se lleva a cabo por un proceso análogo a las pasivas. Palabras clave: ditransitivas; construcciones de doble objeto; estructuras de dativo con to/for; pasivas; adquisición bilingüe; input This article aims to shed light on the syntactic status attributed to ditransitive constructions--double object construction (DOC) and to/for-dative--with respect to which type of structure is syntactically transformed through a process analogous to that of passives. We will do so by providing an analysis of the ditransitives and passives that appear in the English production of a set of English/Spanish simultaneous bilingual twins. Our results show that DOCs start being produced earlier than to/for-datives. However, the age of onset of passives differs in the children though it is consistently produced later than ditransitives. Likewise, adult input goes hand in hand with the children's production of ditransitives and passives since the high frequency of DOCs in this input, as opposed to the low frequency of to/for- datives and passives, is reflected in child output. These findings thus suggest that to/for- datives could be said to be derived from DOCs although, given the later acquisition of passives, no firm conclusions can be drawn as to whether this is done via a passive-like process. Keywords: ditransitives; double object constructions; to/for-dative structures; passives; bilingual acquisition; input, 'Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?' Ditransitive and Passive Constructions in the English Production of Simultaneous Bilingual English Children 1. INTRODUCTION The possibility of ditransitive verbs to project [...]

s Using augmented input might be an effective means for supplementing spoken language for children with autism who have difficulties following spoken directives. This study aimed to (a) explore whether JIT-delivered scene cues (photos, video clips) via the Apple Watch.sup.® enable children with autism to carry out directives they were unable to implement with speech alone, and (b) test the feasibility of the Apple Watch.sup.® (with a focus on display size). Results indicated that the hierarchical JIT supports enabled five children with autism to carry out the majority of directives. Hence, the relatively small display size of the Apple Watch does not seem to hinder children with autism to glean critical information from visual supports., Author(s): Amanda O'Brien[sup.1] , Ralf W. Schlosser[sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Howard C. Shane[sup.1] [sup.4] , Jennifer Abramson[sup.1] , Anna A. Allen[sup.4] , Suzanne Flynn[sup.5] , Christina Yu[sup.4] , Katherine Dimery[sup.1] [...]

Purpose: This study explored associations between working memory and language in children aged 2-4 years. Method: Seventy-seven children aged 24-30 months were assessed on tests measuring language, visual cognition, verbal working memory (VWM), phonological short-term memory (PSTM), and processing speed. A standardized test of receptive and expressive language was used as the outcomes measure 18 months later. Results: There were moderate-to-strong longitudinal bivariate relationships between the 3 processing measures and language outcomes. Early VWM showed the strongest bivariate relationship with both later expressive (r = .71) and receptive language (r = .72). In a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, adding early VWM, PSTM, and processing speed improved prediction of receptive and expressive language outcomes (12%-13% additional variance) compared with models consisting only of early receptive or expressive language, parent education, and age. Conclusions: Unique associations in hierarchical regression analyses were demonstrated between VWM at age two years and receptive and expressive language skills at age four, and between early processing speed and later receptive language. However, early PSTM did not predict unique variance in language outcomes, as it shared variance with other measures., Patterns of growth in children's language development between the ages of 2 and 4 years show great variation. Some children have an initially slow start to language learning but then [...]