Measures Of Language Production Research Articles

Narrative analysis in individuals with Parkinson's disease following intensive voice treatment: secondary outcome variables from a randomized controlled trial.

Communication is often impaired in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), typically secondary to sensorimotor deficits impacting voice and speech. Language may also be diminished in PD, particularly for production and comprehension of verbs. Evidence exists that verb processing is influenced by motor system modulation suggesting that verb deficits in PD are underpinned by similarities in the neural representations of actions that span motor and semantic systems. Conversely, subtle differences in cognition in PD may explain difficulty in processing of complex syntactic forms, which increases cognitive demand and is linked to verb use. Here we investigated whether optimizing motor system support for vocal function (improving loudness) affects change in lexical semantic, syntactic, or informativeness aspects of spoken discourse. Picture description narratives were compared for 20 Control participants and 39 with PD, 19 of whom underwent Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD®). Treated PD narratives were also contrasted with those of untreated PD and Control participants at Baseline and after treatment. Controls differed significantly from the 39 PD participants for verbs per utterance, but this difference was largely driven by untreated PD participants who produced few utterances but with verbs, inflating their verbs per utterance. Given intervention, there was a significant increase in vocal loudness but no significant changes in language performance. These data do not support the hypothesis that targeting this speech motor system results in improved language production. Instead, the data provide evidence of considerable variability in measures of language production across groups, particularly in verbs per utterance.

Using Animated Action Scenes to Remotely Assess Sentence Diversity in Toddlers.

Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of language production, structured protocols have the potential to elicit many different exemplars of language structures in a shorter amount of time. We created a structured elicitation protocol, the Sentence Diversity Priming Task (SDPT), to efficiently assess sentence diversity in toddlers via video chat platforms. Sentence diversity is operationalized as the number of different subject–verb combinations in active declarative sentences. The task is presented as an animated picture book, with parents serving as the child's primary partner during administration. In this article, we provide the rationale for assessing sentence diversity, describe the task, and present preliminary analyses of compliance and developmental associations for 32 typically developing toddlers, 30–35 months old, with average language abilities. The preliminary findings suggest that the SDPT is an engaging task that holds toddlers' attention, reveals robust individual differences in their ability to produce sentences, is positively correlated with parent-reported language measures, and has the potential for assessing children's language growth over time. Finally, recommendations and tips for developing and remotely administering the protocol are provided, with an emphasis on encouraging parent involvement and increasing toddler compliance.

Mazes in Spanish-English dual language learners after language enrichment: a case study

ABSTRACT The number of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in the United States continues to increase every year. In the absence of developmental language norms for DLLs it is important to learn more about typical language production characteristics to distinguish typical from atypical language characteristics. An area of language production with conflicting results in the literature is the production of mazes. Mazes are interruptions in the forward flow of language in the form of interjections, repairs or revisions of words and phrases. At elevated rates, mazes may interrupt the communication process. A common practice in classroom settings is to provide support for DLLs through small group activities such as language enrichment. It is unknown if maze patterns may change as a result of structured language input meant to increase linguistic skills. This preliminary case study explored maze patterns in four Spanish-English DLLs between the ages of 5;4 and 6;1 before and after two structured language enrichment sessions in English. Pretest and posttest narratives in English and Spanish were analyzed for maze patterns and measures of language productivity using conventional language sample analysis metrics. Maze patterns yielded mixed results. Certain maze types increased from pre to posttest while some decreased. Participants exhibited increases in measures of language productivity in English and Spanish. Language productivity and maze patterns demonstrated changes after two structured language enrichment sessions. Implications for further study of maze patterns in Spanish-English DLLs are discussed.

Inhibitory Control Skills and Language Acquisition in Toddlers and Preschool Children

AbstractIn this study, we explored the role of emerging inhibitory control skills in language acquisition in 62 typically developing children aged 24–32 months and investigated whether early inhibitory control skills are longitudinally associated with language outcome. Specifically, we focused on two different inhibitory processes that develop approximately at age 3, namely, response inhibition and interference suppression. At Time 1 children were administered five inhibitory control tasks and a language test; language abilities were also evaluated by means of a parent‐report questionnaire. Receptive morphosyntactic ability was assessed after 1 year (Time 2) in a subsample of 28 children. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis showed that all language production measures at Time 1, as well as later receptive morphosyntactic ability at Time 2, were significantly associated with the interference suppression score, even when early lexical and grammatical measures, age, and mother's education were included in the analysis.

Surveying pragmatic performance during a study abroad stay: A cross-sectional look at the language of spoken requests

This paper documents a cross-sectional look at L1 transfer and L2 contact for learners of English in a UK study abroad (SA) context. The study employed an instructional experimental design over a 6-month period with 34 Chinese students assigned to either an explicitly instructed group or a control group receiving no instruction. Instruction took place prior to departure for the UK and performance was measured based on a pretest-posttest design using an oral computer-animated production test (CAPT). This paper explores the data in two specific ways. Firstly, the request data were analysed at the pre-and delayed test stages (six months into the study abroad period) to analyse the extent to which participants’ reliance on L1 request strategies and language changes over time. Secondly, we measured the amount and type of contact with English which participants reported prior to and six months into the study abroad period. Results show that instruction facilitated development of pragmatically appropriate request language over time, with instructed learners showing significantly less reliance on L1 transfer than non-instructed learners. Contact with English increased significantly for both groups on all measures of language production but not all receptive contact with English. When compared, there was no significant difference between the groups’ contact with English at each stage, suggesting that instruction did not result in significantly more interaction with English during the study abroad period.

Diurnal Cortisol Dynamics, Perceived Stress, and Language Production in Aphasia.

Purpose The current study investigated diurnal cortisol dynamics in adults with and without aphasia, along with subjective reports of stress and measures of language production. Dysregulation of cortisol, a common biomarker of stress, is associated with cognitive dysfunction in different clinical populations. However, little is known about the consequences of stress-induced cortisol disturbances for stroke survivors, including those with aphasia. Method Nineteen participants with aphasia and 14 age-matched neurotypical adults were tested. Saliva samples were collected from participants to assess the cortisol awakening response, a marker of the integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Participants also completed 2 subjective stress questionnaires. Language was evaluated using 3 short, picture description narratives, analyzed for discourse (dys)fluency and productivity markers. Results In contrast to neurotypical participants, adults with aphasia did not show the predictable cortisol awakening response. Participants with aphasia also showed an unusual heightened level of cortisol upon awakening. Additionally, neurotypical participants demonstrated an association between intact language performance and the cortisol awakening response, whereas the participants with aphasia did not, although they did perceive the language tasks as stressful. Conclusion This study indicates that the functionality of the HPA axis, as indexed by cortisol, contributes to optimal language performance in healthy adults. The absence of an awakening response among participants with aphasia suggests that stroke leads to dysregulation of the HPA axis, although the degree to which this impairment affects language deficits in this population requires further investigation.

Language planning and pauses in story retell: Evidence from aging and Parkinson’s disease

We examined if and how pauses during connected speech reflect cognitive processes underlying language formulation in typical aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD), beyond respiratory and motor-speech mechanisms. The frequency of silent pauses was measured (a) in relation to different linguistic (independent clausal, subordinate clausal, phrasal, and atypical) boundaries and (b) proficiency measures of language production in young adults, older adults, and individuals with PD. At the group level, aging, but not PD, resulted in increased pausing at atypical linguistic locations. However, in both aging and PD, individuals’ reduced production of syntactically complex sentences was associated with more frequent pausing at various typical prosodic (clausal or phrasal) boundaries. Frequency of pauses was not associated with individual performance in grammaticality of sentences and lexical-semantic production. Overall, the present study demonstrated that production of pauses during connected speech reflects cognitive processes underlying language production beyond respiratory-physiological processes of communication. Assessing production of pauses in connected speech may augment, but does not replace, assessment of language production in clinical practice.

Cross-Sectional Analysis of Picture Descriptions of Healthy Young and Older Adults

It is poorly understood whether and how normal aging affects different aspects of connected speech production, such as fluency, informativity, efficiency, and vocabulary use. The present study cross-sectionally investigates the effects of age on a broad variety of language production measures, using connected speech samples elicited by the two most frequently used picture description tasks. Twenty-six young (20-25 y.o.) and twenty-two older participants (55-90 y.o.) were included in this study. Speech samples were transcribed using the CLAN program and eight measures were extracted. Our results indicate that, in a picture description task, older adults produce more disruptions to fluency, but that lexical diversity, informativity, and efficiency of speech remain unaffected by age. The use of less frequent words by older adults might reflect a larger vocabulary size. These findings have implications for future studies assessing changes in connected speech production, in both healthy and clinical populations.

Retelling stories: Grammatical and lexical measures for identifying monolingual spanish speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI)

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have grammatical and lexical difficulties when telling stories. The aim of this work was to explore whether language productivity measures, such as mean length of utterance (MLU), percentage of ungrammatical sentences (%UGS), total number of words (TNW), and number of different words (NDW) produced by young children during a story retell task, can be used to accurately differentiate monolingual Spanish-speaking children with SLI from children with typical language development (TLD). Fifty monolingual Spanish-speaking children between 4; 0 and 6; 11 years were assigned to one of two groups: 25 children with SLI and 25 TLD age-matched peers. A scripted picture book was read to each child and the child was subsequently asked to retell the story using pictures. Story retells were analyzed for MLU, %UGS, TNW, and NDW. Results showed significant differences between groups on all four measures. Children with SLI showed significantly lower MLU, TNW and NDW, and significantly higher%UGS when compared with age-matched peers with TLD. Results suggest that measures of language productivity obtained during story retells may be used to accurately detect differences in language performance and differentiate monolingual Spanish-speaking children with SLI from their typical peers. The findings from this study have clinical implications for assessment and identification of monolingual Spanish-speaking children with language impairments.

Évaluation des troubles du langage oral chez des mineurs incarcérés et leurs impacts sur le déroulement de la détention

ObjectivesNumerous studies in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia have shown that the prevalence of language impairment is much higher amongst young offenders than in the general population. To our knowledge, no such study has ever been undertaken in France. The goal of this pilot study was to bring greatly needed information on language difficulties among a small group of young offenders going through the French prison system and to raise awareness on their communication difficulties. MethodsFormal and functional oral language assessment was conducted on a small sample of 19 subjects. Productive and receptive tasks were used to investigate the two sides of language faculty. Six core tasks were used as markers for language difficulties. Language production measures: morphology and syntax were measured using a sentence repetition task, a sentence completion task and a discourse task using a reminder of an oral story. Language reception measures: receptive vocabulary was measured using a French adaptation of the PPVT, a comprehension of instructions test and a short debate, both based on functional situations. Further analysis was used to compare language difficulties and progression through the prison system. ResultsSome subjects did not complete the protocol. However, main results are as follows: 15 out of 19 subjects scored below 1.65 SD or below C10 on one or several of the six core tasks; a comparison made between subgroups shows that, among the 19 subjects assessed, those with the most difficulties on the receptive vocabulary task and the narration task are those who spent more time serving a punitive sentence within the prison and those less likely to live in a responsibility unit. ConclusionThis study confirmed that a high level of oral language difficulties was present in the population assessed. It was also partially confirmed that these difficulties might have an impact on young offenders’ progression inside the prison system. Issues regarding the assessment of oral language abilities in teenagers and the relevance of the protocol used in this study are discussed. The limitations of the study and indications for further research are also explored to consider a further study on a larger sample.

Fluency or Accuracy - Two Different �Colours� in Writing Assessment

Fluency and accuracy. These two things have victoriously won many teachers attention at tertiary level. In the case of writing, these two remain debatable, and have always attracted many people, both lecturers and students attention. These language production measures have distracted many lecturers concentration: should they be faithful to fluency of ideas, or grammatical and language accuracy in correcting students essays? This paper tries to present the classical yet never-ending dilemmatic conflicts within the area of writing assessment. This debate still remains interesting to follow. Data were gained from close observation on documents, that is, 21 students essays and interviews with 2 students of Academic Writing in Semester II, 2015-2016. Four writing lecturers were also interviewed for their intellectual and critical opinions on these dilemmatic problems in assessing writing. Discussion results of FGD (Forum Group Discussion) involving all writing lecturers at the English Education Study Program at the Faculty of Language and Literature of Satya Wacana Christian University which were held in June, 2016, were also included as source of data. Hopefully, this paper gives a little more colour in the area of writing assessment, and gives a little enlightenment for other writing lecturers.DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2016.190201

Narrative Discourse Impairments in Persian-Speaking Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury: A Pilot Study

Objective: Studies have shown the presence of narrative discourse difficulties in persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI), even in those who do not suffer from aphasia. Yet, there still exist inconsistencies between the results of different studies, in particular at the microlinguistic level. Moreover, a limited number of languages have been studied in this regard. Therefore, this study aimed at examining these skills in Persian-speaking individuals with TBI. The purpose of this pilot study was to analyse the microlinguistic and macrolinguistic skills of these individuals to determine impaired linguistic measures at different levels of narrative discourse. Participants and Methods: Fourteen non-aphasic Persian-speaking persons with TBI (9 with severe TBI and 5 with moderate TBI), aged 19-40 years (mean = 25.84, SD = 5.69), and 61 age-matched healthy adults completed a narrative task. Measures of language productivity, clause density, verbal error ratio, and cohesion ratio were calculated. Also, test-retest and inter-rater reliability coefficients were analysed. Results: The TBI group was impaired in some microlinguistic and all macrolinguistic measures compared to their control peers. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that multi-level narrative discourse analyses of Persian-speaking individuals with TBI may be useful for speech/language pathologists wishing to evaluate communication disorders in persons with TBI.

Spoken Persuasive Discourse Abilities of Adolescents With Acquired Brain Injury

The aim of this study was to examine the performance of adolescents with acquired brain injury (ABI) during a spoken persuasive discourse task. Persuasive discourse is frequently used in social and academic settings and is of importance in the study of adolescent language. Participants included 8 adolescents with ABI and 8 peers without ABI who were matched for age, gender, and education. A spoken persuasive discourse task requiring participants to express their opinion on a topic was administered, and the 2 groups were compared on measures of language productivity, syntactic complexity, and language content. In addition, the relationship between working memory and discourse production was explored. There were no statistically significant group differences on measures of language productivity or syntactic complexity, with the exception of the use of mazes, which was more prevalent in the discourse of the group with ABI. However, there were significant differences in language content, with age-matched peers producing more than twice as many supporting reasons and far fewer tangentially related utterances than the adolescents with ABI. Persuasive discourse production was affected following ABI. Given the importance of persuasive discourse in social and academic situations, further investigations into factors that influence discourse production in adolescents with ABI are warranted.

The Interactive Effect of Parental Education on Language Production

This study examines the interactive effect of mother’s and father’s education on childhood language development. Parents of sixteen- and twenty-month-old children (N = 48) completed measures on their children’s language production (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences) as well as basic demographic information. There were variations in language production according to maternal education for only the older children. There was also an interaction between maternal and paternal education; children of parents with heterogeneous levels of education (that is, only one parent with a 4-year degree) had higher levels of language production than parents with homogeneous levels of education (that is, either both parents with a degree or both parents without a degree). Surprisingly, children with homogeneous levels of parental education were the ones who scored the lowest on measures of language production. This may be due to less effective parenting at both the low and high parental education levels or because disparity in parental education positively affects the home learning environment.

Expository Language Skills of Young School-Age Children

This research investigated the expository language skills of young school-age children with the ultimate aim of obtaining normative data for clinical practice. Specifically, this study examined (a) the level of expository language performance of 6- and 7-year-old children with typical development and (b) age-related differences between young and older school-age children. Expository discourse was elicited from two groups of children using the favorite game or sport (FGS) task. Performance of the younger age group (n=61), age 6;0 (years;months) to 7;11, was compared to that of a group of twenty 11-year-old children from an earlier study. Samples were analyzed on measures of verbal productivity, syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, and verbal fluency. The FGS task was effective in eliciting text-level discourse from young school-age children. These children produced discourse that resulted in a fairly normal distribution across some of the language production measures. Age-related differences were observed on measures of verbal productivity, grammatical accuracy, and verbal fluency, but not on syntactic complexity. The findings suggest that expository discourse sampling may be a useful addition to a language assessment protocol, even for very young school-age children.

Language sample measures and language ability in Spanish-English bilingual kindergarteners

Measures of productivity and sentence organization are useful metrics for quantifying language development and language impairments in monolingual and bilingual children. It is not yet known what measures within and across languages are most informative when evaluating the language skills of bilingual children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how measures of language productivity and organization in two languages converge with children's measured language abilities on the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA), a standardized measure of language ability. 170 kindergarten age children who produced narrative language samples in Spanish and in English based on a wordless picture book were included in the analysis. Samples were analyzed for number of utterances, number of different words, mean length of utterance, and percentage of grammatical utterances. The best predictors of language ability as measured by the BESA scores were English MLU, English grammaticality, and Spanish grammaticality. Results are discussed in relationship to the nature of the measures in each of the languages and in regard to their potential utility for identifying low language ability in bilingual. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to identify (1) why narratives are useful for evaluating bilingual language ability, (2) which measures of productivity and sentence organization in narratives best capture language ability and development in bilingual children, (3) how a bilingual or composite language ability across two languages can be determined, and (4) what relationship exists between measures of productivity and sentence organization in each language with a bilingual language ability score.

Interpreting the “Sounds of Silence” in Dual Language Preschools in Qatar: Teacher's Use of Story Retelling and Language Sampling

Abstract Analysis of English and Arabic story retelling in eight dual-language preschool classrooms in Qatar indicated that this method might provide useful data for monitoring children at risk for language delay. Language samples, elicited by teachers during five repeated story-retelling sessions, were obtained from a larger study of the vocabulary data of 157 children. Measures of language productivity included analysis of Total Utterances (TU) and number of Different Word Roots (DWR). Results revealed that 13% of the children who gave no response (NR) in English during the initial session were still non-productive 4 months later, at mid-year. Twenty-one percent of the children demonstrated English DWR more than 1 standard deviation below class means at mid-year and 17% remained below the mean at the end of the year. Review of concurrent Arabic language sampling at mid-year revealed that 7% of the children were non-productive in both languages and 13% achieved Arabic DWR levels that were more than 1 standard deviation below their class mean, with minimal change noted at the end of the year (12%), in spite of daily Arabic and English instruction. Recommendations are offered for SLP-supervised language sampling that facilitates dual language instruction in early childhood classrooms.

Using Language Sample Databases

Over the past 50 years, language sample analysis (LSA) has evolved from a powerful research tool that is used to document children's linguistic development into a powerful clinical tool that is used to identify and describe the language skills of children with language impairment. The The Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; J. F. Miller & A. Iglesias, 2008) Software Project has developed several databases of language samples from more than 6,000 typical speakers. This article presents an overview of the SALT databases and then demonstrates the power of these databases in classifying children with language impairment. Conversational language samples were elicited from 244 children with language impairment who were between 3 and 13 years of age. Language production measures generated from these transcripts were compared to measures from 244 transcripts in the SALT conversational database. A series of discriminant function analyses were completed to document the sensitivity and specificity of the language sample measures. The language sample measures were effective in classifying children based on their language status, with correct identification of 78% of the children with language impairment and 85% of the children who were typically developing. The SALT databases provide a useful tool for the clinical management of children with language impairment.

Productivity, Fluency, and Grammaticality Measures From Narratives

The purpose of this study was to identify potential general outcome indicators (GOIs) of language proficiency. Brief narratives were elicited from 45 kindergarten, first-grade, and third-grade children using single-picture scenes and a standardized protocol. Measures of language productivity, verbal fluency, and grammaticality were examined for alternate-form reliability and criterion validity. Two verbal fluency measures, total productive words per minute and total number of words per minute, were reliably obtained for students in all grades, demonstrated moderate criterion validity with a standardized oral language measure, and differentiated third-grade students from those in kindergarten and first grade. Additional standards for GOIs are discussed.

Examining the use of standard language production measures in the language samples of African-American toddlers

This study examined the relationship between several measures of language production, age, and non-standard speech use in toddlers from African-American English (AAE) backgrounds. Free play language samples were collected from two age groups of typically developing African-American toddlers. Group one consisted of 11 toddlers who were 2½ years old and group two consisted of 11 toddlers who were 3½ years old. Measures of mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU), mean syntactic length, Index of Productive Syntax scores, and a dialect density rate were extracted from the language samples. Results indicated that MLU, MSL, and IPSYN scores were sensitive to differences in chronological age for the toddlers. These findings suggest that measures other than MLU, such as the IPSYN, may prove to be useful and valid tools for monitoring the language growth of young speakers from AAE backgrounds.