A Comparison Of Adult- And Peer-Mediated Intervention For Autism: A Case Study

This study examined the response of a young child with autism to two play-based intervention conditions: adult-mediated and peer-mediated. The client was five years old, demonstrated moderate-to-severe autism, and exhibited developmental functioning between the 14 to 34 month level. The peer-mediated condition, based on a modified Integrated Play Group approach, utilized a typically developing peer who was three years of age. The study utilized an ABAB alternating treatment design to compare the impact of the adult- and peer-mediated interventions. Results from the current study suggest that the adult-mediated intervention resulted in increased engagement and more sophisticated social-communicative behaviors than the peer-mediated approach for the child with autism. Clinical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed

Speech-Language Pathologists Collaborating with Head Start to Improve Children’s Early Language and Literacy Skills: Efficacy and Intensity Effects

The current study examined the efficacy of a speech-language pathologist–designed and implemented emergent literacy program for Head Start preschoolers and the influence of intensity of intervention on children’s gains. Results indicated that children who participated in the intervention program exhibited greater gains than the control group on oral language, phonological awareness, and alphabet/print knowledge. Children who received a higher dosage of intervention made greater gains on vocabulary and oral language compared to the lower intensity group. Speech-language pathologists may be valuable collaborators in promoting emergent literacy skills in at-risk children

Grammatical Morphology in School-Age Children With and Without Language Impairment: A Discriminant Function Analysis

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test Bedore and Leonard\u27s (1998) proposal that a verb morpheme composite may hold promise as a clinical marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in English speakers and serve as an accurate basis for the classification of children with and without SLI beyond the preschool level. Method: The language transcripts of 50 school-age children with SLI (Mage = 7;9 [years;months]) and 50 age-matched typically developing peers (Mage = 7;9) were analyzed. Following the Bedore and Leonard (1998) procedure, 3 variables were measured: a finite verb morpheme composite, a noun morpheme composite, and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm). Results: Overall findings indicated that neither grammatical morpheme composite alone adequately discriminated the groups at this developmental level. However, combining the verb and noun grammatical morpheme composite measures with MLUm resulted in good discriminant accuracy in classifying subgroups of the youngest children with and without SLI in the school-age sample. Conclusion: Verb morphology alone is not a useful clinical marker of SLI in school-age children. Potential explanations for these findings and ideas for future research are discussed

Grammatical Morphology in School-Age Children With and Without Language Impairment: A Discriminant Function Analysis

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test Bedore and Leonard\u27s (1998) proposal that a verb morpheme composite may hold promise as a clinical marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in English speakers and serve as an accurate basis for the classification of children with and without SLI beyond the preschool level. Method: The language transcripts of 50 school-age children with SLI (Mage = 7;9 [years;months]) and 50 age-matched typically developing peers (Mage = 7;9) were analyzed. Following the Bedore and Leonard (1998) procedure, 3 variables were measured: a finite verb morpheme composite, a noun morpheme composite, and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm). Results: Overall findings indicated that neither grammatical morpheme composite alone adequately discriminated the groups at this developmental level. However, combining the verb and noun grammatical morpheme composite measures with MLUm resulted in good discriminant accuracy in classifying subgroups of the youngest children with and without SLI in the school-age sample. Conclusion: Verb morphology alone is not a useful clinical marker of SLI in school-age children. Potential explanations for these findings and ideas for future research are discussed

Using Alphabet Knowledge to Track the Emergent Literacy Skills of Children in Head Start

Having strong alphabet knowledge early in life is a powerful predictor of long-term reading and academic outcomes. Upon tracking the alphabet knowledge of 172 children enrolled in their first year of Head Start, we identified that most of the children could name fewer than 10 letters at the beginning of the academic year. Approximately, one third of the children with low alphabet knowledge in fall made significant progress and demonstrated mastery of 10 or more letters in spring. For the children who started the year knowing fewer than 10 letters, receptive vocabulary was the best predictor of who would make gains in alphabet knowledge throughout the year. In addition, most children who entered Head Start knowing fewer than 10 letters knew letters from their first names and the letters A, B, or O. Implications for the management of emergent literacy skills for children at-risk for academic difficulties are discussed

Comparing Measures From Computer-Administered and Examiner-Administered Narrative Retells in Spanish: A Pilot Study

Purpose: Narrative language sample analysis (LSA) is a recommended best practice for the assessment of monolingual and bilingual children. With business-as-usual narrative LSA, examiners are actively involved in all aspects of the elicitation. Software advancements have shown multiple benefits of computer-administered language assessments, some of which may be beneficial for narrative assessments, particularly for bilingual children. The goal of this pilot study was to test the feasibility of computer-administered narrative retells in bilingual children. Method: Ten English–Spanish bilingual children, kindergarten to fourth grade, completed two narrative retells using wordless picture books (Frog Goes to Dinner and Frog on His Own) in two conditions: examiner-administered and computer-administered. Five narrative measures were generated from these 20 transcripts. Results: Significant, strong correlations were observed between the two elicitation methods for four of the five measures. We completed a series of Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests and found no significant differences in measures across the elicitation methods. Follow-up descriptive analyses revealed few large differences across elicitation methods for the individual participants. Conclusion: This study provides preliminary evidence on the use of a computer-administered narrative procedure and motivates further research on the method to confirm its validity and to document its effectiveness within clinical practice

The Role of Dialect Density in Nonword Repetition Performance: An Examination with At-risk African American Preschool Children

The Nonword Repetition Task (NRT) is considered to be a less-biased language measure for children from cultural minority groups. In the current study, we examined NRT performance of 50 at-risk, preschool-age children who spoke African American English (AAE). In addition to the NRT, measures included AAE dialect density and several standardised language tests. The primary aim was to determine significant contributors to NRT performance. We hypothesised that the language measures would significantly contribute to NRT performance while dialect density would be an insignificant contributor. Contrary to our predictions, dialect density was a unique and significant predictor of NRT performance (in addition to phonological awareness), while the language measures were not significant predictors. The current findings cast doubt on categorising the NRT as a less-biased language assessment for AAE-speaking preschoolers; however, the NRT may have potential as a screener for identifying preschoolers at risk for delays in literacy acquisition

An Examination of Cultural-linguistic Influences on PPVT-4 Performance in African American and Hispanic Preschoolers from Low-income Communities

In this study, we examined potential influences of cultural and linguistic background on PPVT-4 performance in a community sample of preschool-age children from low-SES households. We did this by evaluating PPVT-4 item-level performance across African American and Hispanic children from low-income families. We compared PPVT-4 item-level performance for 332 Hispanic and African American children (Mage = 48 months) using Wald chi-square tests of independence. There were clinically significant differences in accuracy on 14 PPVT-4 test items with most favouring the African American group. We then looked at the relationship between African American English use and PPVT-4 scores for a subset of 113 African American children (Mage = 49.9 months). A correlational analysis with PPVT-4 standard scores and a dialect density measure (DDM) in narratives revealed no association between these measures. We concluded that there were potential cultural-linguistic biases in PPVT-4 items that were not explained by income alone for the young Hispanic children

Dialect Density, Language Abilities, and Emergent Literacy Skills of Prekindergarten Children who Speak African American English

Background Numerous studies have observed a significant and unique relationship between children\u27s use of nonmainstream dialect and reading outcomes. We aimed to examine the relationship between nonmainstream dialect and reading at its roots by completing a preliminary evaluation of the relationship between African American English (AAE) dialect and multiple dimensions of emergent literacy skills in young African American children enrolled in Head Start. Methods Seventy-eight African American preschoolers completed the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening-PreK (PALS-PreK) and a narrative retell of the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? The narratives were used to generate three measures of narrative productivity and the dialect density measure (DDM). Results Structural equation modelling found that the PALS-PreK measures significantly loaded onto a single print-related emergent literacy latent variable and that the three narrative measures significantly loaded onto a single language-based emergent literacy latent variable. There was a significant relationship between print-related emergent literacy skills and DDM, but the overall model had a poor fit, showing that the relationship between emergent literacy and DDM was weak. Conclusions We conclude the manuscript by discussing implications of this research and suggestions for further study