Dynamic Assessment and Informed Intervention for Children with Language Impairment

Although speech and language therapy practitioners commonly place great weight on standardised, static assessment, the procedures may not be fully representative, and reveal little about the child’s learning potential or the direction that intervention should take. Vygotsky’s theories, particularly his notion of the Zone of Proximal Development, underpin a range of approaches within the complementary assessment paradigm known as Dynamic Assessment (DA) (Vygotsky 1986). The term is used for assessments consisting of ‘active intervention by the examiners and assessment of examinees’ response to intervention” (Haywood and Lidz 2007 P1) The current project investigated the application of Dynamic Assessment to a population of children with previously identified Language Impairments. As in parallel studies of intelligence, both manifest skills of language, and underlying processes used in manipulating and constructing language as a tool, were elucidated. The contribution that such an assessment can make to extending the understanding of language impairment, and in devising intervention programmes was investigated. This thesis describes the development of a Dynamic Assessment task requiring implicit knowledge of syntactic structure. The construction of the procedure was a novel adaptation and combination of established DA methodologies that are described and evaluated in Chapter 1. The task, which is essentially a sentence anagram, comprised 12 items specifically selected to assess particular grammatical structures reported in Chapter 2 to be problematic in children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). The details of the task construction are reported in Chapter 3. The measure was employed on 24 children aged 8-10, with identified language impairment, and the results are reported in Chapter 4. Inter-rater reliability of the test measure was 88%, and the sensitivity of the test to change over time was demonstrated. Information about participants’ ability to transfer learning between items, their ability to use less directive prompts, their strategy use, and their metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness was extracted, and reported to the speech and language therapists working with the children. Evaluation of the test is discussed in Chapter 5. The thesis also reports on an investigation of the role of the information derived from the DA in informing intervention programmes (Chapter 6). The same cohort of 24 children with SLI was randomly allocated to two groups. Reports from the DA were used to inform the ongoing language intervention of one of the groups of children. In Chapter 7 the outcomes of therapy from that group were compared to the outcomes of the group receiving regular intervention. Differences between groups were nonsignificant although the gains achieved by subgroups of children were predicted, and in particular children making little progress in their ongoing therapy were shown to derive most benefit from the modified intervention. The information was rated as useful by participating SLTs who altered the nature of their intervention strategies. Discussion of the results and identification of factors such as emotional and behavioural issues that affect progress in intervention are discussed in Chapter 8. Implications for further development of the DA paradigm are discussed, and conclusions are summarized in Chapter 9

Dynamic Assessment of bilingual children’s language at the point of referral

The DAPPLE (Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers’ Proficiency in Learning English) was developed in response to a clinical need to obtain information about bilingual children’s English language learning ability, particularly in the absence of detailed information regarding their proficiency in their other languages. The assessment looked at children’s responses to opportunities to learn in the areas of vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology (speech sounds). Twelve bilingual children aged between three and five years who had been referred to speech and language therapy were assessed. Their responses across the three areas were explored to derive profiles of strength and weakness across language areas. One of the twelve children was found to possess good language learning abilities across all areas, which may reflect an inappropriate referral. All of the remaining children demonstrated difficulties with learning within one or more areas of the DAPPLE, with one child having difficulties across all areas. The findings indicate that the DAPPLE could be used productively as a pre-diagnostic tool. Future directions for the development of the test are considered

Compensatory responses to insulin resistance in obese A frican‐ A merican and L atina girls

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/101770/1/ijpo184.pd

Early identification of children at risk of communication disorders: Introducing a novel battery of Dynamic Assessments for infants

Purpose Many children with communication disorders (CD) experience lengthy gaps between parental reporting of concerns and formal identification by professionals. This means that children with CD are denied access to early interventions that may help to support the development of communication skills and prevent possible negative sequelae associated with long-term outcomes. This may be due, in part, to the lack of assessment instruments available for children younger than three years of age. This study therefore reports on promising preliminary data from a novel set of valid dynamic assessment measures designed for infants. Methods We recruited 53 low-risk children and two groups of children considered to be at high risk for CD (n=17 social-high-risk and n=22 language high-risk) due to family members with language and social communication difficulties. Children were between 1 and 2 years of age and were assessed using a battery of five dynamic assessment (DA) tasks related to receptive vocabulary, motor imitation, response to joint attention, turn taking and social requesting. A set of standardised measures was also used. Results The DA tasks showed high levels of inter-rater reliability and relationships with age across a cross-sectional sample of children from the low-risk group. Three tasks showed moderate to strong correlations with standardised measures taken at the same age, with particularly strong correlations between the DA of receptive vocabulary and other receptive language measures. The DA of receptive vocabulary was also the only task to discriminate between the three risk groups, with the social-high-risk group scoring lower. Conclusions These results provide preliminary information about early DA tasks, forming the basis for further research into their utility. DA tasks might eventually facilitate the development of new methods for detecting CD in very young children, allowing earlier intervention and support

True optical spacial derivatives for plasma density measurements

This paper shows analytically and numerically that a vortex plate coupled to a neutral density filter can deliver a true optical derivative when placed at the focal plane of a $2f$ lens pair. This technique turns spatial variations in intensity into an intensity, which square root is the spatial derivative of the initial intensity variation. More surprisingly, it also turns any spatial variations in phase into an intensity, which square root is the spatial derivative of the initial phase variation. Since the optical derivative drops the DC component of the signal, it is possible to measure the full electron plasma turbulence spectrum optically, without using any interferometer