C. Melanie Schuele

Omissions of obligatory relative markers in children with specific language impairment

Although the morphological difficulties of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been documented extensively, performance on complex syntax production has been explored to a far lesser degree. Leonards (1995) functional categories account of SLI suggests that syntactic structures involving the embedding of complementizer phrases may be problematic for SLI children. In a follow up to Schuele (1995) and Schuele and Nicholls (2000), this study explored the inclusion of obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses by children with SLI (5 to 7 years) as compared to children with typical language (3 to 5 years). Children with SLI omitted the obligatory relativizer that or WH relative pronoun in 63% of the attempted subject relative clauses. In contrast, TL children always included the obligatory relative marker. Thus, children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty in the production of subject relative clauses, complex syntactic structures which require an overt element in an embedded complementizer phrase.Although the morphological difficulties of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been documented extensively, performance on complex syntax production has been explored to a far lesser degree. Leonards (1995) functional categories account of SLI suggests that syntactic structures involving the embedding of complementizer phrases may be problematic for SLI children. In a follow up to Schuele (1995) and Schuele and Nicholls (2000), this study explored the inclusion of obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses by children with SLI (5 to 7 years) as compared to children with typical language (3 to 5 years). Children with SLI omitted the obligatory relativizer that or WH relative pronoun in 63% of the attempted subject relative clauses. In contrast, TL children always included the obligatory relative marker. Thus, children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty in the production of subject relative clauses, complex syntactic structures which require an overt element in an em...

Complex Syntax Acquisition: A Longitudinal Case Study of a Child with Specific Language Impairment.

Although there is extensive documentation of the morphological limitations of children with specific language impairment (SLI), few studies have reported on complex syntax acquisition in children with SLI. This case study examined the development of complex syntax in a child with SLI between 3 and 7 years. Twelve conversational samples were analysed to describe emergence of complex syntax types, proportional use of complex syntax, and complex syntax production errors. Earliest emerging complex syntax types were catenatives and lets clauses, not always considered true complex syntax, as well as simple infinitives. These three types accounted for 88% of complex syntax tokens through age 4;8 (MLU = 3.12). A diverse range of complex syntax types was produced consistently at age 5;9 (MLU = 4.27), including wh clausal complements, relative clauses, and full propositional clauses. Production errors on complex syntax included omissions of infinitival to, omissions of wh pronouns in wh clausal complements, omissions of obligatory relative markers, and an omission of a complementizer. Production errors continued to be prevalent even in the last language sample at 7;10 (MLU = 5.46). Documentation of complex syntax development in children with SLI is critical to the clarification of linguistic deficiencies that characterize specific language impairment.

Facilitating Peer InteractionSocially Relevant Objectives for Preschool Language Intervention

Research over the past decade has provided the rationale to target the peer-related social-communicative competence of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Yet our clinical experiences...

Learning nonnative names: The effect of poor native phonological awareness

This research investigates the influence of phonological awareness on the learning of vocabulary in a foreign language. Thirty-seven Chinese-speaking third graders with high phonological awareness and 37 with low phonological awareness participated in multitrial word learning tasks involving nonnative sounding (English) new names paired with novel referents. The children also participated in three additional associative learning tasks: learning to associate novel native sounding names, familiar native names, and unfamiliar visual shapes with unfamiliar referents. Results indicated that children with lower phonological awareness learned both the novel nonnative names and the novel native names less accurately than children with higher phonological awareness and required more learning trials. However, these two groups did not differ in learning to associate familiar names or unfamiliar visual shapes with novel referents. The findings suggest that poor phonological awareness might slow nonnative acquisition of vocabulary via difficulty in constructing new phonological representations for new words.

Perspectives on the rhythm–grammar link and its implications for typical and atypical language development

This paper reviews the mounting evidence for shared cognitive mechanisms and neural resources for rhythm and grammar. Evidence for a role of rhythm skills in language development and language comprehension is reviewed here in three lines of research: (1) behavioral and brain data from adults and children, showing that prosody and other aspects of timing of sentences influence online morpho‐syntactic processing; (2) comorbidity of impaired rhythm with grammatical deficits in children with language impairment; and (3) our recent work showing a strong positive association between rhythm perception skills and expressive grammatical skills in young school‐age children with typical development. Our preliminary follow‐up study presented here revealed that musical rhythm perception predicted variance in 6‐year‐old childrens production of complex syntax, as well as online reorganization of grammatical information (transformation); these data provide an additional perspective on the hierarchical relations potentially shared by rhythm and grammar. A theoretical framework for shared cognitive resources for the role of rhythm in perceiving and learning grammatical structure is elaborated on in light of potential implications for using rhythm‐emphasized musical training to improve language skills in children.

Field-Based Evaluation of Two-Tiered Instruction for Enhancing Kindergarten Phonological Awareness

Research Findings: This study reports on the outcomes of a multisite, two-tiered, response-to-intervention instructional model for delivering phonological awareness instruction and intervention to kindergartners. Fifty-seven kindergartners from 3 classrooms participated in a supplemental phonological awareness program, and 56 kindergartners from 3 classrooms received the prevailing school-adopted literacy curriculum. All children in the supplemental condition received supplemental classroom-based phonological awareness instruction in addition to the adopted literacy curriculum. At mid-year, 6 low literacy achievers were identified in each supplemental classroom (n = 18) to participate in an additional 12-week small-group intervention. The classroom-based supplemental curriculum did not produce statistically significant gains for typically achieving children on measures of letter–sound knowledge, word recognition, or developmental spelling. However, an add-on tier of supplemental instruction exerted a substantial advantage for low-achieving children on a measure of developmental spelling. Practice or Policy: Results suggest that a 2-tiered intervention model provides an effective means for improving the literacy outcomes of low-achieving kindergarten children.

Production of infinitival complements by children with specific language impairment.

The purpose of this study was to explore the production of infinitival complements by children with specific language impairment (SLI) as compared with mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children in an effort to clarify inconsistencies in the literature. Spontaneous language samples were analysed for infinitival complements (reduced infinitives and true infinitives). Participants included children with SLI (n = 19; 5;2–7;10) and children with typical language (n = 19; MLU; 3;0–5;9). There was no group difference in the number of infinitival complements and the number of different complement-taking verbs. However, the SLI group produced more true infinitives than the MLU group. The SLI group was less accurate than the MLU group on inclusion of obligatory infinitival to, with 80.21% accuracy (SD = 29.42) and 99.81% accuracy (SD = 0.85), respectively. As a group, children with SLI did not have problems with the clausal structure of infinitives. However, they had difficulty with the specific grammatical requirement of infinitival clauses, that is, the inclusion of the infinitival marker.

Phonological Awareness and Vocabulary Performance of Monolingual and Bilingual Preschool Children with Hearing Loss.

This pilot study compared the phonological awareness skills and vocabulary performance of English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children with and without hearing loss. Preschool children with varying degrees of hearing loss (n = 18) and preschool children without hearing loss (n = 19) completed measures of phonological awareness and receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge. On phonological awareness tasks, the performance of bilingual children with hearing loss was significantly higher than bilingual children with normal hearing, but not higher than either monolingual group of children. On norm-referenced vocabulary knowledge measures, the performance of monolingual and bilingual children with hearing loss was significantly lower than monolingual and bilingual children with normal hearing. Correlations for phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were found for both groups of children with normal hearing, but not children with hearing loss. This study represents preliminary evidence that children with hearing loss may develop phonological awareness differently than children with normal hearing and that language and educational experience are critical to understanding the phonological awareness performance in children with hearing loss.

Potential Advantages of Introducing Specific Language Impairment to Families

Children with language delays 1 can be divided broadly into two groups, those with secondary and those with primary language difficulties. Children with secondary language difficulties have language difficulties that are associated with or predicted by sensory, biological, neurological, cognitive, or socioemotional deficits (e.g., hearing impairment, Down syndrome, autism). In contrast, children with primary language difficulties present with typical development with the exception of language (and in some cases concomitant speech problems). Over the years, children with primary language difficulties have been referred to in the literature and in clinical practice by a number of terms, including speech/language delay, speech/language disorder, speech/language impairment, childhood aphasia, developmental dysphasia, developmental language disorder, language learning disability, and specific language impairment (SLI). Some of these terms have been used for children with secondary language difficulties as well. There has been much discussion from a professional perspective as to the usefulness of these terms and how these terms should be applied in clinical as well as research practices (e.g., Kamhi, 1991, 1998; Lahey, 1990; Plante, 1998). There has been less discussion as to how these terms influence families’ understanding of their children’s difficulties. The purpose of this article is to advocate for the usefulness, primarily from the perspective of families, of SLI as a diagnostic category. Specific language impairment or SLI is the most prevalent term used in the research literature over the past decade to describe children with primary language difficulties (cf. Leonard, 1998), yet there does not appear to be widespread clinical use of SLI, as a label or as a diagnostic category (cf. Kamhi, 1998). Our clinical interactions led us to question why there was this disparity between research and clinical practice (cf. Wilcox & Ingram, 1998). In the course of evaluating preschool and earlyschool-age children with primary language difficulties and developing ongoing clinical relationships with families, we found that most families showed little interest in our efforts to describe their children’s language difficulties (cf. Aram, 1991). Consistent with Tomblin’s (1991) observations, families were far more interested in knowing why their children were having difficulty learning to talk, what they could do about it (beyond simply taking the child to treatment), and what to expect with regard to long-term outcomes. Time and again, families were perplexed that their children seemed quite normal or typical in many respects, yet had such pronounced language difficulties. For families who had accessed services through local school districts, the IDEA eligibility categories of “developmental delay” and “speech/language impaired” often were confusing. The parents reported that these terms did not help them understand what was wrong with their child. To adequately address families’ concerns, we found it necessary to differentiate clearly between groups of children who might have language disorders. That is, we had to clarify that their children’s language difficulties were not attributable to autism, hearing impairment, mental retardation, and so on and to establish that there exists a group of children who are typical in all respects with the exception of language. One parent in particular made us realize how important it was to have a label for her child’s condition. This mother returned to the clinic with a child development trade book in hand, opened it to the chapter on special needs, and asked “Which one of these does he have?” She wanted a label because she wanted independently to find out more about her child’s difficulties. Further, she needed to share this label with family and friends to help them understand her child. Interestingly, broad-based terms such as language delay or language disorder did not suffice, perhaps because these terms can be (and frequently are) applied to all children with language difficulties. As a result In this article, the terms “language delay” and “language difficulty” are employed as generic terms to describe all children who evidence language deficits as compared to their same-age peers, regardless of the etiology.

An examination of fast mapping skills in preschool children from families with low socioeconomic status

Researchers consistently report that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families have, on average, smaller vocabularies as assessed by measures of existing vocabulary knowledge than children from higher SES families. Yet, few studies have examined the word-learning process of children from low SES families. The present study was an examination of fast mapping by preschoolers from low SES families. The study also examined the relation between measures of existing vocabulary and performance on the fast mapping task. Forty-six preschoolers (mean age: 4;6, range: 3;11–5;3) from low SES families completed a part-term fast mapping task and two measures of existing vocabulary knowledge. On the fast mapping task, children demonstrated the use of three sources of information (familiar whole objects, possessive syntax and whole-part juxtaposition). Measures of existing vocabulary did not correlate with performance on the fast mapping task. Findings suggest that children from low SES families use multiple sources of information in linguistic input to learn words.