The Effects of Fast ForWord Language on the Phonemic Awareness and Reading Skills of School-Age Children With Language Impairments and Poor Reading Skills

Purpose—To examine the efficacy of Fast For-Word Language (FFW-L) and 2 other interventions for improving the phonemic awareness and reading skills of children with specific language impairment with concurrent poor reading skills. Method—A total of 103 children (age 6;0 to 8;11 [years;months]) with language impairment and poor reading skills participated. The children received either FFW-L computerized intervention, a computer-assisted language intervention (CALI), an individualized language intervention (ILI), or an attention control (AC) computer program. Results—The children in the FFW-L, CALI, and ILI conditions made significantly greater gains in blending sounds in words compared with the AC group at immediate posttest. Long-term gains 6 months after treatment were not significant but yielded a medium effect size for blending sounds in words. None of the interventions led to significant changes in reading skills. Conclusion—The improvement in phonemic awareness, but not reading, in the FFW-L, CALI, and ILI interventions limits their use with children who have language impairment and poor reading skills. Similar results across treatment conditions suggest that acoustically modified speech was not a necessary component for improving phonemic awareness

The use of differing verb types in the oral narratives of school-age children

The aim of this project was to examine age-related use of action, metacognitive, and metalinguistic verbs because factors related to verb transparency are thought to impact word learning. Performance on fictional, oral narratives elicited using a single-episode picture was evaluated for 84 children with typical language (TL) and 38 age-matched children with a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) ranging in age from 5;1 to 14;4 years of age. Narrative samples were transcribed and coded for occurrences of action verbs (AV), metacognitive verbs (MCV), and metalinguistic verbs (MLV). The total number of verbs used and the number of different verbs produced in each category were examined across ages, as was the difference in verb usage patterns across language ability groups. A statistically significant increase in the overall use of action, MCV, and MLV with age was observed. TL children used a wider variety of each verb type as compared to those with DLD. Age-related progression for verb use was observed in the fictional narrative generation task by both groups of children. However, despite similar rates of total verb use, children with DLD produced fewer different verbs in the three categories. These findings indicate the total number of verbs used is similar in children with TL and DLD, but there is a difference in the number of different verbs used in functional tasks such as narratives for children with DLD. These results also indicate a need for ongoing examination of the factors not only impacting verb acquisition but also use in communication tasks.</p

Verbal and Spatial Information Processing Constraints in Children with Specific Language Impairment.

A dual-processing paradigm was used to investigate informationprocessing limitations underlying specific language impairment(SLI). School-age children with and without SLI were asked torecall verbal and spatial stimuli in situations that variedthe number of tasks that were required and the speed at whichstimuli were presented. Children recalled digits or locationsof X\u27s that were presented on a computer screen. In some conditions,they were asked to name or point to the color of the stimulibefore completing the recall task. In comparison to their typicallydeveloping peers, children with SLI had generally poorer recallof digits and locations across all conditions. Typically developingchildren derived greater benefit than the children with SLIunder conditions that enabled them to disperse processing effortsacross verbal and spatial response modalities. It appears thatlimitations in general cognitive capacity and central executivefunctions in working memory work synergistically with responsemodality to constrain information processing in children withSLI