Nancy E. Hall

Language and fluency in child language disorders: Changes over time

In a previous study of the relationship between language and fluency involving 60 preschool children with language disorders, 10 children exhibited an association between increased disfluencies and dyssynchrony in language development. The current study presents follow-up fluency and language data on nine of the 10 children. Comparisons between data points indicate improvement in fluency correlated with more synchronous language development. The data, when examined by individual subject, reveal diferring patterns among fluency characteristics and language profiles, and speculations are offered regarding the roles fluency may play in identifying dyssynchonies in language development and differentiating language impairments.

Speech disruptions in relation to language growth in children who stutter: An exploratory study

UNLABELLED Young children with typical fluency demonstrate a range of disfluencies, or speech disruptions. One type of disruption, revision, appears to increase in frequency as syntactic skills develop. To date, this phenomenon has not been studied in children who stutter (CWS). Rispoli, Hadley, and Holt (2008) suggest a schema for categorizing speech disruptions in terms of revisions and stalls. The purpose of this exploratory study was to use this schema to evaluate whether CWS show a pattern over time in their production of stuttering, revisions, and stalls. Nine CWS, ages 2;1 to 4;11, participated in the study, producing language samples each month for 10 months. MLU and vocd analyses were performed for samples across three time periods. Active declarative sentences within these samples were examined for the presence of disruptions. Results indicated that the proportion of sentences containing revisions increased over time, but proportions for stalls and stuttering did not. Visual inspection revealed that more stuttering and stalls occurred on longer utterances than on shorter utterances. Upon examination of individual childrens language, it appears two-thirds of the children showed a pattern in which, as MLU increased, revisions increased as well. Findings are similar to studies of children with typical fluency, suggesting that, despite the fact that CWS display more (and different) disfluencies relative to typically fluent peers, revisions appear to increase over time and correspond to increases in MLU, just as is the case with peers. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to: (1) describe the three types of speech disruptions assessed in this article; (2) compare present findings of disruptions in children who stutter to findings of previous research with children who are typically fluent; and (3) discuss future directions in this area of research, given the findings and implications of this study.

Exploring developmental changes in fluency as related to language acquisition: A case study

Abstract The present study traces the development of fluency in the context of language acquisition in a preschool child over the course of 1 year. Careful analyses of fluency, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and phonological behaviors were conducted on four spontaneous speech and language samples taken at approximately 4-month intervals. Documented are changes in fluency associated with changes in language behaviors. In addition to presenting reflections on the nature of language and fluency interactions during language acquisition, this study outlines innovative methodologies for examining both fluency and language. Further, recommendations for the enhancement of the study of linguistic interactions in early speech and language development are offered.

Speech disruptions in pre-school children with specific language impairment and phonological impairment

This study investigated the presence and types of fluency disruptions in the spontaneous speech of two groups of MLU-matched children with specific language impairment (SLI): those whose profiles involved impaired phonology in addition to the language impairment (SLI-Pgroup), and those whose impairments were restricted to language only (SLI group). The speech samples were analysed for disruptions using a modification of the Dollaghan and Campbell (1992) system. Comparisons between the groups revealed a significantly greater frequency of stuttering-like disruptions in the SLI-P group than in the SLI group. All other comparisons, including the total frequency of disruptions, were nonsignificant. Results are discussed with respect to existing literature and the need for further research.

Developmental Language Disorders

Developmental language disorders are among the most common disorders of childhood referred to the pediatric neurologist. This article presents an overview of developmental language disorders, a discussion of the definition of developmental language disorders, potential causal factors, and a description of possible subtypes of language disorders in children. The article concludes with a review of the pediatric neurologists role in developmental language disorders and recommendations for assessment and management.

Past tense marking in the spontaneous speech of preschool children who do and do not stutter.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to identify whether different patterns of errors exist in irregular past-tense verbs in children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS). METHOD Spontaneous language samples of thirty-one age- and gender-matched pairs of children (total N=62) between the ages of 24 months and 59 months were analyzed. RESULTS Results indicated that children who do and do not stutter over-regularize irregular past-tense verbs (i.e., saying runned for ran) with comparable frequency. However, two nonsignificant trends which suggest possible intra-group differences were noted. First, irregular past tense verbs represented a greater portion of total verbs for CWS than for CWNS. Second, CWS appeared to double-mark (i.e., say ranned for ran) more often than CWNS. Results are discussed in light of theories about the acquisition of the irregular past-tense and about differences in language skills between CWS and CWNS. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (a) summarize previous findings about connections between stuttering and language in CWS and CWNS; (b) describe similarities and differences between irregular past-tense verb use and errors in CWS and CWNS; (c) discuss possible connections between the declarative-procedural model and stuttering.

Speech timing and pausing in children with specific language impairment

Articulation rate, speaking rate, as well as the duration and location of pauses, were analysed in 10 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and a comparison group of seven younger children producing utterances of similar lengths. Children with SLI were significantly slower in articulation rate, but not speaking rate or pausing time, indicating a group difference attributable to longer syllable duration. The correlation between the duration of the pause preceding a childs speaking turn and the length of the subsequent child utterance was calculated as an indication of childrens use of the pause for planning the utterance. The correlation was not significant in either group, and not significantly different between groups. An analysis of the position of pauses within speaking turns showed more syllables following than preceding the pause, with no significant group differences. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Stuttering Frequency in Relation to Lexical Diversity, Syntactic Complexity, and Utterance Length:

Children’s frequency of stuttering can be affected by utterance length, syntactic complexity, and lexical content of language. Using a unique small-scale within-subjects design, this study explored whether language samples that contain more stuttering have (a) longer, (b) syntactically more complex, and (c) lexically more diverse utterances than samples that contain less stuttering. Children who stutter, ages 2 years 1 month to 4 years 11 months, produced 10 monthly language samples. For each child, samples were divided into the first five (early) and the last five (later). Utterance length, syntactic complexity, and lexical diversity analyses were performed on samples that contained the most and least stuttering for early and later samples. For the later samples but not the early ones, samples with the most stuttering contained longer mean lengths of utterance, more diverse vocabulary overall, and greater syntactic complexity than samples with the least stuttering. Contributions of language growth, time, and specific linguistic factors are discussed.