Constructing narratives to describe video events using aided communication

Narratives are a pervasive form of discourse and a rich source for exploring a range of language and cognitive skills. The limited research base to date suggests that narratives generated using aided communication may be structurally simple, and that features of cohesion and reference may be lacking. This study reports on the analysis of narratives generated in interactions involving aided communication in response to short, silent, video vignettes depicting events with unintended or unexpected consequences. Two measures were applied to the data: the Narrative Scoring Scheme and the Narrative Analysis Profile. A total of 15 participants who used aided communication interacted with three different communication partners (peers, parents, professionals) relaying narratives about three video events. Their narratives were evaluated with reference to narratives of 15 peers with typical development in response to the same short videos and to the narratives that were interpreted by their communication partners. Overall, the narratives generated using aided communication were shorter and less complete than those of the speaking peers, but they incorporated many similar elements. Topic maintenance and inclusion of scene-setting elements were consistent strengths. Communication partners offered rich interpretations of aided narratives. Relative to the aided narratives, these interpreted narratives were typically structurally more complete and cohesive and many incorporated more elaborated semantic content. The data reinforce the robust value of narratives in interaction and their potential for showcasing language and communication achievements in aided communication.Peer reviewe

Aided communication, mind understanding and co-construction of meaning

Mind understanding allows for the adaptation of expressive language to a listener and is a core element when communicating new information to a communication partner. There is limited knowledge about the relationship between aided language and mind understanding. This study investigates this relationship using a communication task. The participants were 71 aided communicators using graphic symbols or spelling for expression (38/33 girls/boys) and a reference group of 40 speaking children (21/19 girls/boys), aged 5;0-15;11 years. The task was to describe, but not name, drawings to a communication partner. The partner could not see the drawing and had to infer what was depicted from the child's explanation. Dyads with aided communicators solved fewer items than reference dyads (64% vs 93%). The aided spellers presented more precise details than the symbol users (46% vs 38%). In the aided group, number of correct items correlated with verbal comprehension and age.Peer reviewe

Inferential ability in children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment.

The aim of the study was to investigate and compare the ability to make inferences in three groups of children ranging from 5;2 to 10;9 years: 10 children with cerebral palsy (CP), 10 children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH) and 10 children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI). The relationship between inferential and literal comprehension was investigated by analysing atypical responses. For this analysis an analytic framework was developed. The PLI group performed significantly worse on inferential questions than the CP group. It was only in the PLI group that problems with inferential questions exceeded the problems with literal questions, and the CP group even performed significantly better in this condition. Inferential comprehension was found to be related to language comprehension in the CP group, but was more related to the ability to predict future developments in the SBH- and PLI-groups. The PLI group relied more on world knowledge and associations than on text-related factors when delivering an atypical response compared to the CP group. The analysis of atypical responses proved to be a promising tool for the planning of an adequate intervention

Children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment: Differences and similarities in pragmatic ability.

Pragmatically related abilities were studied in three clinical groups of children from 5 to 11 years of age; children with cerebral palsy (CP; n=10), children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH; n=10) and children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI; n=10), in order to explore pragmatic abilities within each group. A range of pragmatic, linguistic and cognitive assessments were performed, and comparisons between the groups were made. In addition, connections between variables were studied. The most salient result was the many similarities and the lack of clear boundaries between the groups. The only significant differences found concerned short-term memory and inference ability, where all three groups experienced problems but to varying extent. Different patterns of variance were found in the groups, indicating that different underlying abilities such as reception of grammar, inferential comprehension and lexical comprehension seem to affect pragmatic ability in somewhat different ways. The results suggest that the children with CP and SBH in this study shared a number of pragmatically related traits, being more similar than would be expected according to earlier research. Finally, it is suggested that pragmatic assessment is further subdivided into a socially versus a linguistically related assessment

Literacy abilities in nonvocal children with cerebral palsy /

Diss. Dokt

Interaction during intervention: conversations between professionals and children with cerebral palsy.

To develop interactional ability, conversation with both peers and adults is vital. However, for children with physical impairments, like cerebral palsy, interactions with adults often dominate. In this study, interaction between eight Swedish children with cerebral palsy, mean age 8.6 years, and their physiotherapists (PTs) and speech-language therapists (SLTs) was analysed during intervention across 16 dyads. The analysis of data focused on how quantitative, interactional and topical dominance was manifested by the PTs and the SLTs. In addition, mitigating strategies and use of feedback was investigated. Surprisingly, the only significant finding was in topic maintenance, where the PTs' conversations were more directed towards topics unrelated to the intervention context when compared to the conversations of the SLTs. Although not significant, the PTs tended to dominate by having a greater amount of talk, and the SLTs by asking many questions. It is discussed how the two professions may contribute to the development of interactional skills and pragmatic ability among children with cerebral palsy, given their professional training and focus of intervention

Narrative ability in children with cerebral palsy.

In a previous study a group of children with cerebral palsy (CP) were found to have considerable difficulties with narratives, performing several standard deviations below the criteria for the Information score of the Bus Story Test (BST). To examine in depth the performance of children with CP and a control group with typically developing (TD) children on a narrative task, in order to search for possible underlying causes to the problems in the CP group. The results of the BST for 10 children with CP, mean age 7;11 years, were investigated. The analysis of the BST was supplemented with the use of the Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP) and quantitative analyses of number of words, mazes, propositions, types of conjunctions and story elements. A significant relationship between the explicitness dimension on the Narrative Assessment Profile and the BST Information score in the CP group suggested that the problems could be derived to a limited use of cohesion and a scarcity of essential information. Compared to the CP group, the TD group used significantly more causal conjunctions. The results indicate a general problem with cohesion at the textual level in the CP group. A further finding was the occurrence of a positive correlation between the use of mazes and the BST Information score in the CP group. These results have implications for the design of a more specific intervention for children, where the NAP was found to be a valuable tool in combination with the BST or other assessment materials. Further, it is shown that mazes, mostly regarded as a behaviour that not enhances speech production, for some children can be used as a means to find necessary words and pieces of information

A descriptive study of lexical organisation in bilingual children with language impairment: Developmental changes

Purpose : This study aimed to describe the development of Arabic and Swedish lexical organisation in bilingual children with language impairment (BLI). Method : Lexical organisation was assessed through word associations in 10 BLI and 10 bilingual children with typical development (BTD), aged 6;2 – 8;0 years, matched for age and gender. The participants were assessed twice, with a 1-year interval. Word associations were coded as paradigmatic, syntagmatic, phonological, other and no answer. This study reports analyses of the semantically-related syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. Using repeated measures ANOVA, main and interaction effects of Group, Time and Language were examined for paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations separately. Result : The interaction between Group and Time was signifi cant for both associations. The BLI group increased syntagmatic associations from time 1 to time 2, while the BTD group increased paradigmatic associations. Results showed a signifi cant main effect of Language for both types of associations, with better performance in Swedish. Signifi cant Group by Language interactions resulted from lower Arabic than Swedish syntagmatic and paradigmatic scores for the BLI and BTD groups, respectively. Conclusion : Differing developmental trajectories indicate that bilingual children with LI develop lexical organisation at a slower pace than bilingual peers with typical language development

Conceptual Scoring of Lexical Organization in Bilingual Children With Language Impairment

The aim was to evaluate conceptual scoring of lexical organization in bilingual children with language impairment (BLI) and to compare BLI performance with monolingual children with language impairment (MLI). Word associations were assessed in 15 BLI and 9 MLI children. BLI were assessed in Arabic and Swedish, MLI in Swedish only. A number of syntagmatic (semantic link, different word class) and paradigmatic associations (semantic link, same word class) were calculated. Arabic and Swedish scores were compared with a conceptual score (total number of concepts from both languages). For BLI, the paradigmatic conceptual score was significantly higher than single language scores, confirming the distribution of lexical knowledge across languages. The BLI group had significantly higher conceptual paradigmatic scores than the MLI group. Conceptual scoring may reduce the over-identification of language impairment (LI) and underestimation of lexical knowledge in bilingual populations