Sandra Laing Gillam

Emerging Procedures in Narrative Assessment: The Index of Narrative Complexity.

This article summarizes norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measures of narration and introduces a new criterion-referenced narrative scoring system called the Index of Narrative Complexity (INC). The INC was designed to be used as a progress-monitoring tool. A preliminary study of the use of this scoring system is reported that yielded evidence suggesting that the INC can be scored consistently, yields similar scores across five elicitation formats, is sensitive to change after intervention, and correlates highly with the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004). These results support the use of the INC as a clinical tool for evaluating the outcomes of narrative intervention.

Classroom-Based Narrative and Vocabulary Instruction: Results of an Early-Stage, Nonrandomized Comparison Study

PURPOSE This nonrandomized feasibility study was designed to provide a preliminary assessment of the impact of a narrative and vocabulary instruction program provided by a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in a regular classroom setting. METHOD Forty-three children attending 2 first-grade classrooms participated in the study. Children in each classroom were divided into high- and low-risk subgroups on the basis of their performance on a narrative test. Narrative and vocabulary instruction was provided by an SLP in 1 classroom for three 30-min periods per week for 6 weeks. RESULTS The children in the experimental classroom made clinically significant improvements on narrative and vocabulary measures; children in the comparison classroom did not. Within the experimental classroom, children in the high-risk subgroup demonstrated greater gains in narration and fewer gains in vocabulary than children in the low-risk subgroup. There were no subgroup differences in the comparison classroom. CONCLUSION These preliminary results provide early evidence of the feasibility of implementing a narrative instruction program in a classroom setting. Children at a high risk for language difficulties appeared to profit more from the narrative instruction than from the embedded vocabulary instruction. More extensive research on this instructional program is warranted.

Narrative Intervention for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

PURPOSE This study was conducted to determine whether a narrative intervention program that targeted the use of mental state and causal language resulted in positive gains in narrative production for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHOD Five children (2 girls and 3 boys) who had been diagnosed with ASD participated in the study. Children ranged in age from 8 to 12 years and were recruited through an autism clinic. Intervention was provided for two 50-min individual sessions per week for a total of 21-33 sessions (depending on the student). Childrens spontaneous stories, collected weekly, were analyzed for overall story complexity, story structure, and the use of mental state and causal language. Following a multiple-baseline across-participants design, data were collected for lagged baseline and intervention phases over a 6-month period. RESULTS All of the children made gains on all 3 measures of narration after participating in the instruction, with clear changes in level for all 5 children and changes in trend for 4 of the 5 children. The gains were maintained after intervention was discontinued. CONCLUSION The results demonstrate the efficacy of the 3-phase narrative instruction program for improving the fictional narration abilities of children with ASD.

An examination of language input and vocabulary development of young Latino dual language learners living in poverty

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the language status of 120 young, Latino dual language learners living in poverty in the United States. Maternal language input and home language and literacy environments were examined with regard to language development at 24 and 36 months. Results suggested that even when combining English and Spanish language knowledge scores, the children in this sample still performed below, albeit closer to, age level. The home language and literacy environments were significantly related to and predicted child language status at 24 and 36 months. The article discusses the implications of these findings with regard to the focus of early intervention efforts.

Narrative Discourse Intervention for School-Aged Children with Language Impairment: Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy.

Narrative language proficiency is a critical contributor to academic success for school-aged students. This article presents a narrative language intervention, Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy (SKILL), that is based on research in the fields of developmental psycholinguistics and discourse processing. SKILL was designed to provide school-age children with language learning difficulties with the cognitive and linguistic skills that underlie narrative comprehension and composition. A comprehensive description of the intervention program is presented first, followed by a summary of the qualitative and quantitative evidence supporting its use. Quantitative results from summarized studies show that SKILL is associated with consistently moderate to large effect sizes for improving narrative proficiency, ranging from 0.66 to 2.54 for students with language learning difficulties aged 5–11 years, and from 1.63 to 5.11 for students with autism spectrum disorders aged 8–12 years. Narrative intervention has the potential to have lasting effects that generalize to new stories and new story comprehension and production contexts (such as reading and writing) if children attain the critical cognitive and linguistic skills that support narration.

Teaching Graduate Students to Make Evidence-Based Intervention Decisions: Application of a Seven-Step Process Within an Authentic Learning Context

Clinical education provides an authentic context for teaching graduate students how to make evidence-based clinical decisions. We present a seven-step evidence-based practice decision-making process that supervisors can teach graduate students who are enrolled in clinical practicum experiences. Clinical supervisors can teach students to ask appropriate clinical questions, to conduct literature reviews, to critically appraise research evidence, and to systematically integrate external and internal evidence in ways that lead to effective assessment and treatment decisions. The article explains how supervisors can teach the steps in the evidence-based practice decision-making process to students as they answer clinical questions about clients they are serving.

Dynamic Assessment of Phonological Awareness for Children with Speech Sound Disorders.

The current study was designed to examine the relationships between performance on a nonverbal phoneme deletion task administered in a dynamic assessment format with performance on measures of phoneme deletion, word-level reading, and speech sound production that required verbal responses for school-age children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). The study adds to existing literature by administering the nonverbal task to children with SSDs, and by incorporating the use of an error-specific prompting system in a dynamic assessment format to inform instructional decisions. Ten school-age children with various degrees of speech sound disorders participated in the study. Speech production, phonological awareness, and word-level reading skills were examined. Performance on measures of verbal and nonverbal phoneme deletion were significantly correlated; however, the measure of nonverbal phoneme deletion was not related to performance on measures of speech sound production. Both measures were related to word-level reading.

Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language: A Progress-Monitoring Instrument for Measuring Narrative Discourse Skills

The purpose of this study was to assess the basic psychometric properties of a progress-monitoring tool designed to measure narrative discourse skills in school-age children with language impairments (LI). A sample of 109 children with LI between the ages of 5 years 7 months and 9 years 9 months completed the Test of Narrative Language (TNL). The stories told in response to the alien picture prompt were transcribed and scored according to the TNL manual criteria and the criteria established for scoring the progress-monitoring tool, Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language (MISL). The MISL total score demonstrated acceptable levels of internal consistency reliability, inter-rater reliability, and construct validity for use as a progress-monitoring tool for specific aspects of narrative proficiency. The MISL holds promise as a tool for tracking growth in narrative language proficiency that may be taught as part of an intervention program to support the Common Core Standards related to literacy.

Improving Clinical Services: Be Aware of Fuzzy Connections Between Principles and Strategies

PURPOSE This article is a response to Alan Kamhis treatise on improving clinical practices for children with language and learning disorders by focusing on what is known about learning (see Kamhi, 2014, article in this issue). METHOD Descriptive methods are used to discuss general learning principles and the fact that they do not always translate readily into effective language intervention practices. The authors give examples of 2 instances in which popular intervention strategies should have worked but did not. The authors also summarize what they learned about their own approach to contextualized language intervention for teaching priority goals related to narration and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). CONCLUSION Even theoretically sound, well-intentioned, and carefully implemented interventions can result in equivocal outcomes. When they do, careful attention to the evidence and willingness to rethink strategy often serves to right the course.

Specific language impairment.

The acquisition of language is one of the most important achievements in young children, in part because most children appear to acquire language with little effort. Some children are not so fortunate, however. There is a large group of children who also have difficulty learning language, but do not have obvious neurological, cognitive, sensory, emotional, or environmental deficits. Clinicians often refer to these children as language disordered or language impaired. Researchers tend to refer to these children as specific language impaired (SLI). Children with SLI have intrigued researchers for many years because there is no obvious reason for their language learning difficulties. SLI has been found to be an enduring condition that begins in early childhood and often persists into adolescence and adulthood. The language problems of children with SLI are not limited to spoken language; they also affect reading and writing and thus much of academic learning. Knowledge of the characteristics of SLI should aid physicians, pediatricians, and early childhood specialists to identify these children during the preschool years and ensure that they receive appropriate services. With high-quality language intervention and literacy instruction, most children with SLI should be able to perform and function adequately in school and beyond.