Stacy A. Wagovich

Relationships among linguistic processing speed, phonological working memory, and attention in children who stutter.

UNLABELLED Relatively recently, experimental studies of linguistic processing speed in children who stutter (CWS) have emerged, some of which suggest differences in performance among CWS compared to children who do not stutter (CWNS). What is not yet well understood is the extent to which underlying cognitive skills may impact performance on timed tasks of linguistic performance. The purpose of this study was to explore possible relationships between measures of linguistic processing speed and two aspects of cognition: phonological working memory and attention. Participants were 9 CWS and 14 CWNS between the ages of 3;6 and 5;2. Children participated in a computerized picture naming task (an index of linguistic processing speed) and a nonword repetition task (an index of phonological working memory). Parents completed a temperament behavior questionnaire, from which information about the childrens attentional skills was collected. Findings revealed that the groups did not differ from each other on speed of picture naming or attention; however, the CWS performed significantly worse in nonword repetition. In addition, after partialling out the effects of age, (a) for CWS only, there was a significant negative relationship between picture naming speed and nonword repetition; (b) there were no significant relationships for either group between aspects of attention and picture naming speed; and (c) only the CWNS showed a significant relationship between nonword repetition and focused attentional skills. These results underscore the need to consider the underlying skills associated with lexically related aspects of language production when examining the task performances of CWS and CWNS. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to: (a) summarize findings from previous studies examining the speech and language performance of children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS); (b) describe findings of previous studies related to nonword repetition and attention in CWS; (c) compare the results of the present study with previous work in this area; and (d) discuss speculations concerning the relationship between linguistic processing speed, phonological working memory, and attention in CWS and CWNS.

Development and reliability of a quantitative measure of adults' narratives

Background: Assessing narrative discourse production in persons with aphasia has long challenged clinicians seeking to improve functional outcomes. Fortunately, the development of single picture or picture sequence stimuli has enabled clinicians to quantify aspects of elicited narrative discourse production in a clinical context. However, also needed for the analysis of the narrative discourse of individuals with aphasia are performance data for adults without brain damage. Such comparative data of both younger and older adults would considerably extend the clinical usefulness of discourse tasks that incorporate picture stimuli. However, elicited narrative discourse samples are only valuable as assessment tasks if the procedure yields samples of similar quality for an individual over time.Aims: The main objectives of this investigation were (a) to characterise the quality of the discourse narratives of non-brain-damaged (NBD) adults, examining the effects of stimulus types on their performance; (b) to compare the proportion of main events conveyed by younger and older NBD adults on the elicited narrative task, and (c) to estimate the test–retest reliability of these tasks with each group of participants.Methods & Procedures: A total of 40 neurologically intact adults were divided into younger (YG; N = 21) and older (OD; N = 19) groups. Participants attended two sessions, 10–20 days apart. Each time, participants viewed two pictures and two picture sequences (Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993) and told what was going on in the pictures. The language samples of each participant were then evaluated for the proportion of main events included, and test–retest reliability was assessed.Outcomes & Results: The YG group conveyed a significantly larger proportion of main events than the OD group. The main effect for picture stimulus was also significant; participants told significantly more main events in response to sequential versus single picture stimuli, regardless of age. Test–retest results yielded strong, positive correlations between sessions for both groups.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that age does influence performance in elicited narrative discourse. The YG group conveyed more causal links and relationships between the events depicted in the pictures than the OD group. Test–retest results indicate that the measure is stable over time for younger and older adults without brain damage.

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.

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.

Executive function and childhood stuttering: Parent ratings and evidence from a behavioral task

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the executive function (EF) abilities of preschool children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) using a parent-report questionnaire and a behavioral task. METHOD Participants were 75 CWS and 75 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years; months). Parents rated their childrens EF abilities using the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P; Gioia, Espy, & Isquith, 2003). Childrens ability to integrate cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory was measured using a behavioral task, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS; Cameron Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009). RESULTS The CWS were judged by their parents as being less proficient in working memory, shift/flexibility, and overall EF than the parents of the CWNS. Children in the CWS group were also 2½ to 7 times more likely than children in the CWNS group to exhibit clinically significant difficulties with EF. Behavioral task findings revealed that 3-year old CWS performed more poorly than their peers on the HTKS. Parental ratings of executive function and working memory were significantly and moderately correlated with receptive and expressive vocabulary skills only for the CWNS group. CONCLUSION CWS have more difficulty with EF in everyday life and may experience early delays in their ability to integrate aspects of attention and EF compared to CWNS.

Semantic-Syntactic Partial Word Knowledge Growth Through Reading

PURPOSE Incidental reading provides a powerful opportunity for partial word knowledge growth in the school-age years. The extent to which children of differing language abilities can use reading experiences to glean partial knowledge of words is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to compare semantic-syntactic partial word knowledge growth of children with higher language skills (HL group; overall language standard scores of 85 or higher) to that of children with relatively lower language skills (LL group; overall receptive or expressive standard score below 85). METHOD Thirty-two children, 16 per group, silently read stories containing unfamiliar nouns and verbs 3 times over a 1-week period. Semantic-syntactic partial word knowledge growth was assessed after each reading and 2-3 days later to assess retention. RESULTS Over time, both groups showed significant partial word knowledge growth, with the HL group showing significantly more growth. In addition, both groups retained knowledge several days later. CONCLUSION Regardless of language skill level, children benefit from multiple exposures to unfamiliar words in reading in their development and retention of semantic-syntactic partial word knowledge growth.

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.

Word Learning during Reading: Effects of Language Ability in School-Age Children.

Most vocabulary growth during the school-age years occurs incidentally. However, little is understood about the influence of language skills on word knowledge growth during reading. Using a pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design, we examined incidental word learning through reading, considering the presence/absence of supportive context and the role of language ability. Children with a range of language abilities (N = 32), aged 10 years, 6 months to 16 years, 5 months, were exposed three times to rare nouns and verbs within stories or in isolation. Small but significant knowledge gains were found for rare words encountered in context, but not for words in isolation. Language skill predicted overall word knowledge but not rate of word knowledge growth. Findings suggest children with low oral language ability are at a disadvantage in acquiring vocabulary through reading; however, the word learning process may be qualitatively similar for children with varying language skill levels.