Getting the Most Bang for Your Therapy Minute: Sound and Word Complexity in Treatment of Children with Phonological Disorders

Research shows that the complexity approach to phonological treatment has a stronger evidence-base than other treatment options yet implementation in clinical practice has been missing, most likely due to a lack of familiarity with this approach. This session provided a tutorial on the main sound (accuracy, implicational universals, developmental norms, stimulability, sonority sequencing principle for clusters) and word characteristics (frequency, density, age-of-acquisition, lexicality) that guide treatment planning in the complexity approach. Case studies were used to provide practice selecting sounds and words within a complexity approach for a variety of different cases. Practical issues in using this approach (i.e., how to actually teach complex sounds and words) along with clinical materials were shared to support greater implementation of this evidence-based approach in attendee’s clinical practice

The Complexity Approach to Phonological Treatment: How to Select Treatment Targets

Supplemental Material for this article: Supplemental Material S1: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6007562 KU ScholarWorks Supplemental Material: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/24767PURPOSE There are a number of evidence-based treatments for preschool children with phonological disorders (Baker & McLeod, 2011). However, a recent survey by Brumbaugh and Smit (2013) suggests that speech-language pathologists are not equally familiar with all evidence-based treatment alternatives, particularly the complexity approach. The goal of this clinical tutorial is to provide coaching on the implementation of the complexity approach in clinical practice, focusing on treatment target selection. METHOD Evidence related to selecting targets for treatment based on characteristics of the targets (i.e., developmental norms, implicational universals) and characteristics of children's knowledge of the targets (i.e., accuracy, stimulability) is reviewed. Free resources are provided to aid clinicians in assessing accuracy and stimulability of singletons and clusters. Use of treatment target selection and generalization prediction worksheets is illustrated with 3 preschool children. RESULTS Clinicians can integrate multiple pieces of information to select complex targets and successfully apply the complexity approach to their own clinical practice. CONCLUSION Incorporating the complexity approach into clinical practice will expand the range of evidence-based treatment options that clinicians can use when treating preschool children with phonological disorders

The Developing Mental Lexicon of Children With Specific Language Impairment

This is the author’s accepted manuscript. Copyright 2011 in The Handbook of psycholinguistic & cognitive processes: Perspectives in communication disorders by Holly L. Storkel. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc. This material is strictly for personal use only. For any other use, the user must contact Taylor & Francis directly at this address: [email protected]. Printing, photocopying, sharing via any means is a violation of copyright

Do children still pick and choose? The relationship between phonological knowledge and lexical acquisition beyond 50 words

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699200500266349Previous studies document an influence of phonological knowledge on word learning that differs across development. Specifically, children with expressive lexicons of fewer than 50 words learn words composed of IN sounds more rapidly than those composed of OUT sounds. In contrast, preschool children with larger expressive lexicons show the reverse effect. The goal of the current study was to provide a re‐analysis of existing data to determine if this discrepancy across studies may be related to how phonological knowledge has been defined. This study defines knowledge on a continuum from most to more to less. Results showed a continuous inverse relationship between phonological knowledge and word learning by preschool children. Specifically, most phonological knowledge was associated with poorest word learning, more knowledge with intermediate word learning, and less knowledge with best word learning. Theoretical implications are discussed

Learning New Words II: Phonotactic Probability in Verb-learning

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1781381Phonotactic probability, a measure of the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, appears to facilitate noun learning (H. L. Storkel, 2001). Nouns and verbs, however, tend to differ in rate of acquisition, indicating that word-learning mechanisms may differ across grammatical class. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of phonotactic probability on verb learning. Thirty-four typically developing preschool children participated in a multitrial word-learning task involving nonwords varying in phonotactic probability paired with unfamiliar actions. Multiple measures of word learning were obtained at increasing numbers of exposures. Correct responses were analyzed to examine rate of word learning. Results paralleled those of the previous noun-learning study, with common sound sequences being learned more rapidly than rare sound sequences. The results are interpreted in relation to the effect of distributional regularities on acquisition and the reported discrepancy between noun and verb learning in English

A corpus of consonant-vowel-consonant real words and nonwords: Comparison of phonotactic probability, neighborhood density, and consonant age of acquisition

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original publication is available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13428-012-0309-7A corpus of 5,765 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) sequences was compiled, and phonotactic probability and neighborhood density based on both child and adult corpora were computed. This corpus of CVCs, provided as supplementary materials, was analyzed to address the following questions: (1) Do computations based on a child corpus differ from those based on an adult corpus? (2) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density of real words differ from that of nonwords? (3) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density differ across CVCs varying in consonant age-of-acquisition? Results showed significant differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density for child versus adult corpora, replicating prior findings. The impact of this difference on future studies will depend on the level of precision needed in specifying probability and density. In addition, significant and large differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were detected between real words and nonwords, which may present methodological challenges for future research. Lastly, CVCs composed of earlier acquired sounds differed significantly in probability and density from CVCs composed of later acquired sounds, although this effect was relatively small and less likely to present significant methodological challenges to future studies

The Emerging Lexicon of Children With Phonological Delays

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1781499&resultClick=3The effects of phonotactic constraints (i.e., the status of a sound as correctly or incorrectly articulated) and phonotactic probability (i.e., the likelihood of a sound sequence) on lexical acquisition have been investigated independently. This study investigated the interactive influence of phonotactic constraints and phonotactic probability on lexical acquisition in 3 groups of children: children with functional phonological delays (PD), phonology-matched, younger, typically developing children (PM), and age-/vocabulary-matched typically developing peers (AVM). Sixty-eight children participated in a multitrial word-learning task involving nonwords varying in phonotactic constraints (IN vs. OUT) and phonotactic probability (common vs. rare). Correct and error responses were analyzed. Results indicated that OUT sound sequences were learned more rapidly than IN sound sequences. This suggests that OUT sounds may be salient because they represent only a small subset of the child's sound system. The effect of phonotactic probability varied across groups: Children with PD showed a common sound sequence disadvantage, younger PM children showed a common sound sequence advantage, and AVM children showed no effect. Moreover, error analyses indicated that children with PD had particular difficulty creating lexical representations and associations between lexical and semantic representations when learning common sound sequences. Children with PD may rely more heavily on lexical representations to learn new words or may have difficulty learning common sound sequences because of the high degree of similarity between these sequences and other known words. Finally, the effect of phonotactic probability was consistent across IN and OUT sound sequences, suggesting that the lexical representation of both correctly articulated and misarticulated words is based on the adult-target pronunciation

Learning New Words Phonotactic Probability in Language Development

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1780808Though the influences of syntactic and semantic regularity on novel word learning are well documented, considerably less is known about the influence of phono-logical regularities on lexical acquisition. The influence of phonotactic probability, a measure of the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, on novel word learning is investigated in this study. Thirty-four typically developing children (from ages 3 years 2 months to 6 years 3 months) participated in a multitrial word-learning task involving nonwords of varying phonotactic probability (common vs. rare) paired with unfamiliar object referents. Form and referent learning were tested following increasing numbers of exposures (1 vs. 4 vs. 7) and following a 1-week delay. Correct responses were analyzed to determine whether phonotactic probability affected rate of word learning, and incorrect responses were analyzed to examine whether phonotactic probability affected the formation of semantic representations, lexical representations, or the association between semantic and lexical representations. Results indicated that common sound sequences were learned more rapidly than rare sound sequences across form and referent learning. In addition, phonotactic probability appeared to nfluence the formation of semantic representations and the association between semantic and lexical representations. These results are integrated with previous findings and theoretical models of language acquisition

Developmental differences in the effects of phonological, lexical and semantic variables on word learning by infants

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original is available at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3530760&fileId=S030500090800891XThe influence of phonological (i.e. individual sounds), lexical (i.e. whole-word forms) and semantic (i.e. meaning) characteristics on the words known by infants age 1 ; 4 to 2 ; 6 was examined, using an existing database (Dale & Fenson, 1996). For each noun, word frequency, two phonological (i.e. positional segment average, biphone average), two lexical (i.e. neighborhood density, word length) and four semantic variables (i.e. semantic set size, connectivity, probability resonance, resonance strength) were computed. Regression analyses showed that more infants knew (1) words composed of low-probability sounds and sound pairs, (2) shorter words with high neighborhood density, and (3) words that were semantically related to other words, both in terms of the number and strength of semantic connections. Moreover, the effect of phonological variables was constant across age, whereas the effect of lexical and semantic variables changed across age

Sublexical influences on lexical development in children

Previous experimental research has found that adults and infants are sensitive to the likelihood of occurrence of sequences of segments, or probabilistic phonotactics, in the ambient language. One hypothesis that emerges from this finding is that probabilistic phonotactics, a sublexical factor, may influence rate of lexical acquisition. Preliminary results are reported from a study involving 21 typically developing preschool children. Children participated in a multi-trial word learning task involving eight nonwords of varying phonotactic probability. Each nonword was paired with a picture of an unusual object having no apparent corresponding label in English. Referent and item identification tasks were used to monitor lexical acquisition during learning and retention trials. Results indicated that high probability nonwords were learned with fewer exposures than low probability nonwords across both test measures. This finding suggests that sublexical representations influence lexical development in children.National Institutes of Health DC00433, RR7031K, DC00076, DC001694 (PI: Gierut