Eileen Haebig

Distance Video-Teleconferencing in Early Intervention: Pilot Study of a Naturalistic Parent-Implemented Language Intervention

Maternal verbal responsiveness in naturally occurring interactions is known to facilitate language development for children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The present study used a series of A-B replications to examine proximal effects of a naturalistic language intervention on the use of specific language support strategies by mothers of eight young children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Distal effects on child communication also were examined. The intervention consisted of four monthly parent education lessons, each paired with face-to-face clinician coaching of a play-based parent–child interaction. In addition, 12 distance coaching sessions were implemented via desktop video-teleconferencing (VTC). Parents increased their use of verbal responses that followed into their child’s focus of attention and responded to child communication acts. Parents also increased the frequency with which they prompted child communication. Increases in parent strategy use were observed during both on-site and distance coaching sessions. Implications for future research are discussed.

Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive vocabulary. Children completed a lexical decision task, involving words with high and low semantic network sizes and nonwords. Children also completed nonverbal updating and shifting tasks. Children responded more accurately to words from high than from low semantic networks; however, follow-up analyses identified weaker semantic network effects in the SLI group. Additionally, updating and shifting abilities predicted lexical processing, demonstrating similarity in the mechanisms which underlie semantic processing in children with ASD, SLI, and typical development.

Sentence Comprehension in Boys With Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE Previous research has suggested that language comprehension might be particularly impaired in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but this profile has been only broadly characterized. In the current study, the authors examined sentence comprehension in school-age boys with ASD, including a subgroup with intellectual disability (ID), with particular attention paid to errors that might differentiate between lexically and syntactically based difficulties. METHOD Participants were boys with ASD (n = 45, ages 4-11 years) and younger typically developing boys (n = 45, ages 2-6 years). Comprehension was assessed with the Test for Reception of Grammar-Version 2 (TROG-2; Bishop, 2003). Error types were analyzed for a subset of items. RESULTS Boys with ASD did not differ from younger typically developing boys matched on receptive vocabulary in overall sentence comprehension on the TROG-2 or the number of lexical errors committed. In contrast, the subgroup of boys with ASD and ID (n = 16) had poorer overall performance and committed more lexical errors than younger typically developing boys matched on nonverbal cognition. CONCLUSIONS On average, comprehension was delayed in school-age boys with ASD but not beyond receptive vocabulary expectations. Boys with ASD and ID, however, had a weakness in sentence comprehension beyond nonverbal cognitive expectations.

Statistical word learning in children with autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment

BACKGROUND Word learning is an important component of language development that influences child outcomes across multiple domains. Despite the importance of word knowledge, word-learning mechanisms are poorly understood in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined underlying mechanisms of word learning, specifically, statistical learning and fast-mapping, in school-aged children with typical and atypical development. METHODS Statistical learning was assessed through a word segmentation task and fast-mapping was examined in an object-label association task. We also examined childrens ability to map meaning onto newly segmented words in a third task that combined exposure to an artificial language and a fast-mapping task. RESULTS Children with SLI had poorer performance on the word segmentation and fast-mapping tasks relative to the typically developing and ASD groups, who did not differ from one another. However, when children with SLI were exposed to an artificial language with phonemes used in the subsequent fast-mapping task, they successfully learned more words than in the isolated fast-mapping task. There was some evidence that word segmentation abilities are associated with word learning in school-aged children with typical development and ASD, but not SLI. Follow-up analyses also examined performance in children with ASD who did and did not have a language impairment. Children with ASD with language impairment evidenced intact statistical learning abilities, but subtle weaknesses in fast-mapping abilities. CONCLUSIONS As the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) predicts, children with SLI have impairments in statistical learning. However, children with SLI also have impairments in fast-mapping. Nonetheless, they are able to take advantage of additional phonological exposure to boost subsequent word-learning performance. In contrast to the PDH, children with ASD appear to have intact statistical learning, regardless of language status; however, fast-mapping abilities differ according to broader language skills.

Investigating the Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Profile in Children with Idiopathic ASD and Comorbid ASD and Fragile X Syndrome

Previous work has noted that some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display weaknesses in receptive vocabulary relative to expressive vocabulary abilities. The current study extended previous work by examining the receptive-expressive vocabulary profile in boys with idiopathic ASD and boys with concomitant ASD and fragile X syndrome (ASD + FXS). On average, boys with ASD + FXS did not display the same atypical receptive-expressive profile as boys with idiopathic ASD. Notably, there was variation in vocabulary abilities and profiles in both groups. Although we did not identify predictors of receptive-expressive differences, we demonstrated that nonverbal IQ and expressive vocabulary positively predicted concurrent receptive vocabulary knowledge and receptive vocabulary predicted expressive vocabulary. We discuss areas of overlap and divergence in subgroups of ASD.

Examining the Language Phenotype in Children with Typical Development, Specific Language Impairment, and Fragile X Syndrome.

Purpose One aspect of morphosyntax, finiteness marking, was compared in children with fragile X syndrome (FXS), specific language impairment (SLI), and typical development matched on mean length of utterance (MLU). Method Nineteen children with typical development (mean age = 3.3 years), 20 children with SLI (mean age = 4.9 years), and 17 boys with FXS (mean age = 11.9 years) completed the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI; Rice & Wexler, 2001), and other cognitive and language assessments. Quantitative comparisons on finiteness marking and qualitative comparisons of unscorable (i.e., nontarget) TEGI responses were conducted. Results Children with typical development and FXS performed better on finiteness marking than children with SLI. Although unscorable responses were infrequent, boys with FXS produced more unscorable responses than children with typical development and SLI. Conclusions Although boys with FXS have language deficits, they performed similarly to MLU-matched typically developing children on finiteness marking. This language profile differs from children with SLI, who present with a delay-within-a-delay profile with finiteness marking delays that exceed delays in MLU. Unscorable responses produced by the boys with FXS may reflect pragmatic deficits, which are prominent in this population. Assessment procedures should be carefully considered when examining language in boys with FXS.

Tracking the Growth of Tense and Agreement in Children With Specific Language Impairment: Differences Between Measures of Accuracy, Diversity, and Productivity

Purpose Composite measures of childrens use of tense and agreement morphology differ in their emphasis on accuracy, diversity, or productivity, yet little is known about how these different measures change over time. An understanding of these differences is especially important for the study of children with specific language impairment, given these childrens extraordinary difficulty with this aspect of grammar. Method We computed 3 types of composite scores from spontaneous speech samples obtained from 17 preschoolers with specific language impairment before, during, and after their participation in a language intervention study. These measures were the Finite Verb Morphology Composite (a measure of accuracy), the Tense Marker Total (a measure of diversity), and the Productivity Score (a measure of productivity). Results The 3 measures differed in their growth trajectories. Sample size did not alter the linear or quadratic nature of growth of any composite, although it did affect the absolute values found for the Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score. Conclusion Even when sample size is controlled, early growth can be seen in tense and agreement accuracy with relatively limited diversity and productivity, whereas later growth in diversity and productivity can occur with very little change in accuracy.

Neural patterns elicited by sentence processing uniquely characterize typical development, SLI recovery, and SLI persistence

BackgroundA substantial amount of work has examined language abilities in young children with specific language impairment (SLI); however, our understanding of the developmental trajectory of language impairment is limited. Along with studying the behavioral changes that occur across development, it is important to examine the neural indices of language processing for children with different language trajectories. The current study sought to examine behavioral and neural bases of language processing in adolescents showing three different trajectories: those with normal language development (NL), those exhibiting persistent SLI (SLI-Persistent), and those with a history of SLI who appear to have recovered (SLI-Recovered).MethodsThrough a sentence judgment task, we examined semantic and syntactic processing. Adolescents judged whether or not each sentence was semantically and syntactically correct. Stimuli consisted of naturally spoken sentences that were either correct, contained a semantic verb error, or contained a syntactic verb agreement error. Verb agreement errors consisted of omission and commission violations of the third-person singular -s. Behavioral button-press responses and electroencephalographic recordings were collected. Behavioral judgments and mean amplitude of the N400 and P600 components were examined.ResultsAdolescents in the SLI-Persistent group had lower sentence judgment accuracy overall, relative to the NL and SLI-Recovered groups. Accuracy in judging omission and commission syntactic errors were marginally different, with marginally lower accuracy for commission errors. All groups demonstrated an N400 component elicited by semantic violations. However, adolescents in the SLI-Persistent group demonstrated a less robust P600 component for syntactic violations. Furthermore, adolescents in the SLI-Recovered group exhibited a similar neural profile to the NL group for the semantic and syntactic omission violations. However, a unique profile with initial negativity was observed in the SLI-Recovered group in the commission violation condition.ConclusionsAdolescents with persistent language impairment continue to demonstrate delays in language processing at the behavioral and neural levels. Conversely, the adolescents in the SLI-Recovered group appear to have made gains in language processing skills to overcome their initial impairments. However, our findings suggest that the adolescents in the SLI-Recovered group may have compensatory processing strategies for some aspects of language, as evidenced by a unique event-related potential profile.