Investigating the role of language in children's early educational outcomes

Most children develop speech and language skills effortlessly, but some are slow to develop these skills and then go on to struggle with literacy and academic skills throughout their schooling. It is the first few years of life that are critical to their subsequent performance.\ud This project looks at what we know about the early communication environment in a child’s first two years of life, and the role this plays in preparing children for school using data from a large longitudinal survey of young people (ALSPAC - the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children).\ud It examines the characteristics of the environment in which children learn to communicate (such as activities undertaken with children, the mother’s attitude towards her baby, and the wider support available to the family) and the extent to which this affects a child’s readiness for school entry (defined as their early language, reading, writing, and maths skills that they need in school).\ud \ud Key Findings:\ud •\ud There is a strong association between a child’s social background and their readiness for school as measured by their scores on school entry assessments covering language, reading, maths and writing.\ud •\ud Language development at the age of 2 years predicts children’s performance on entry to primary school. Children’s understanding and use of vocabulary and their use of two or three word sentences at 2 years is very strongly associated with their performance on entering primary school.\ud •\ud The children’s communication environment influences language development. The number of books available to the child, the frequency of visits to the library, parents teaching a range of activities, the number of toys available, and attendance at pre-school, are all important predictors of the child’s expressive vocabulary at 2 years. The amount of television on in the home is also a predictor; as this time increased, so the child’s score at school entry decreased.\ud •\ud The communication environment is a more dominant predictor of early language than social background. In the early stages of language development, it is the particular aspects of a child’s communication environment that are associated with language acquisition rather than the broader socio-economic context of the family.\ud •\ud The child’s language and their communication environment influence the child’s performance at school entry in addition to their social background. Children’s success at school is governed not only by their social background; the child’s communication environment\ud before their second birthday and their language at the age of two years also have a strong influence

Understanding capacity for implementing new interventions : A qualitative study of speech and language therapy services for children with speech sound disorder

Acknowledgements Thank you to all participants who gave so generously of their time to share their experiences of practice change, and to the services and other people who facilitated access, including the Scottish Speech and Language Therapy Managers’ group. Thanks also to the Specialists in SSD Network, Caroline Bowen, Sharynne McLeod, and to team leaders in a fourth Scottish service whose SSD intervention initiative informed the study design. Finally, thank you to retired speech and language therapists Linda Armstrong and Jen Reid for critical feedback throughout the study. Funding statement This paper is based on work carried out as part of an ESRC funded PhD studentship awarded to AN at the NMAHP Research Unit, University of Stirling. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The paper was written after AN moved to the University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Predictors and outcomes of speech and language therapists' treatment decisions

This study investigated predictors of decisions made by speech and language therapists (SLTs) to offer intervention for pre-school children and the children's outcomes relative to that decision. The study uses data from 347 children who were first assessed aged under 3 years 6 months by community speech and language therapists in the UK. Of these, 158 were offered therapy, 189 were either discharged or offered only monitoring appointments. After adjusting for the child's age and gender, six variables were significantly associated with the therapist's original decision: being a quiet baby, not using two word utterances or making comments on their play, being unintelligible to strangers and the child's score on auditory comprehension and expressive language scales of the Preschool Language Scales (PLS-3). These show a focus on communication variables rather than broader demographic and medical variables. At follow-up, aged 7 - 9 years, 56% of the children were available for re-assessment. Therapists' decisions at initial assessment show a sensitivity of .85 and a specificity of .61 relative to children's outcomes. Of the 191 children seen at follow-up, 21 were deemed to have ongoing difficulties

The United Kingdom

First paragraph: The earliest references to developmental speech and language disorders (Wylie 1894; Kerr 1897) initially referred to it as ‘congenital word blindness’ (Hinshelwood 1895) ‘congenital semantic aphasia’ (Head, 1926), ‘aphasia in children’ (Ewing 1930) and ‘congenital auditory imperceptions/ word deafness’ (Worster Drought & Allen 1929). By the 1940s, the first schools for children with ‘developmental aphasia’ were starting to open. However, language disorder was not included in the UK 1944/45 Education Acts as a category of disability, although ‘speech defect’ was. By the nineteen sixties, there was a much greater awareness of a clinical ‘population’ (Renfrew & Murphy 1964; Ingram 1959) and a series of seminal texts were published (Rutter & Martin 1972; Yule & Rutter 1987). The focus was on symptom description and differential diagnosis although texts commonly included a chapter on speech and language therapy interventions. The terminology has continued to develop (Reilly et al. 2014). The terms currently recommended in the UK are Developmental Language Disorders (DLD), the consensus diagnostic term adopted by researchers and speech and language practitioners (Bishop et al. 2016) and Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN), the educational category which includes any child with speech and language impairments

Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills predict reading ability: A 9-year longitudinal study

Background: Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills encapsulate a complex array of grammatical and semantic skills that underpin complex reading comprehension processes. However, most research in this area has focused on children with reading difficulties and not on typically developing children. Also the research has mostly focused on short-term effects of these skills on reading during the primary school years. Therefore, it remains unclear what specific role linguistic comprehension and narrative skills play in typically developing children’s reading beyond the primary school years. Aims: With this 9-year prospective longitudinal study, we sought to clarify the independent effects of linguistic comprehension and narrative skill (at 5 years of age) on children’s reading ability at 10 and 14 years of age. Sample: We examined the data from 716 children (MAge = 67 months, SD = 2.13 months), which were drawn from a major population cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Methods: Children’s language skills were assessed at 5 and word reading and reading comprehension skills at 10 years of age. The reading achievement scores at 14 years of age were based on national curriculum test results. Results: Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills at 5 years of age made unique and direct contributions to reading comprehension skills and reading achievement after accounting for general cognitive ability, memory, phonological skills, and mother's education. Moreover, listening comprehension predicted reading achievement even when prior reading skills were taken into account. Conclusions: Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills are related but distinct oral language skills that continue to influence children's reading development beyond the primary school years

The United Kingdom

First paragraph: The earliest references to developmental speech and language disorders (Wylie 1894; Kerr 1897) initially referred to it as ‘congenital word blindness’ (Hinshelwood 1895) ‘congenital semantic aphasia’ (Head, 1926), ‘aphasia in children’ (Ewing 1930) and ‘congenital auditory imperceptions/ word deafness’ (Worster Drought & Allen 1929). By the 1940s, the first schools for children with ‘developmental aphasia’ were starting to open. However, language disorder was not included in the UK 1944/45 Education Acts as a category of disability, although ‘speech defect’ was. By the nineteen sixties, there was a much greater awareness of a clinical ‘population’ (Renfrew & Murphy 1964; Ingram 1959) and a series of seminal texts were published (Rutter & Martin 1972; Yule & Rutter 1987). The focus was on symptom description and differential diagnosis although texts commonly included a chapter on speech and language therapy interventions. The terminology has continued to develop (Reilly et al. 2014). The terms currently recommended in the UK are Developmental Language Disorders (DLD), the consensus diagnostic term adopted by researchers and speech and language practitioners (Bishop et al. 2016) and Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN), the educational category which includes any child with speech and language impairments