Total Number Of Utterances Research Articles

A Brief Intervention to Teach Parents Naturalistic Language Facilitation Strategies.

This proof of concept study assessed the feasibility of a novel approach to teaching parents naturalistic language facilitation strategies in a single session. We investigated whether parents could learn to use the See and Say Sequence, which integrated responsive and language modeling strategies and measured the impacts that this intervention had on features of their input. Fourteen parent-child dyads participated in the study. Children ranged from 15 to 23 months of age and produced between three and 135 words. Five parents had concerns about their children's rate of language development. Parents were taught the See and Say Sequence during a brief single session (M = 18.98 min, SD = 2.65 min) using the Teach-Model-Coach-Review instructional process. We analyzed parents' use of the three See and Say Sequence components, total number of utterances, and mean turn length, as well as responsive and linguistic features of parent input before and after the brief intervention. Following intervention, parents significantly increased their use of the three See and Say Sequence components and decreased their total number of utterances and mean turn length. In addition, the use of the See and Say Sequence components substantially altered the overall composition of parent input. The results of this preliminary study demonstrate the feasibility of the See and Say Sequence in teaching responsive and language modeling strategies in a single session. We discuss the potential use and future evaluation of the See and Say Sequence as an option for early intervention service delivery.

Tele-Assessment of Oral Personal Narratives in Arabic- and Hebrew-Speaking Children Using the Global TALES Protocol

Introduction: Tele-assessment (TA) has the potential to enhance access to speech therapy. This preliminary study aimed to investigate the impact of assessment mode (face-to-face [FTF] vs. TA) on the microstructure level and chosen topics of personal narratives produced by Arabic-speaking and Hebrew-speaking school-age children living in Israel. We also investigated whether performance variations, if evident, could be attributed to the children’s language/culture. Methods: Eighty-nine 10-year-old children, 38 Arabic-speaking and 51 Hebrew-speaking, living in Israel, participated in this study. Forty participants were assigned to a TA group (via Zoom) and 49 to a FTF group. All participants were assessed using the Global TALES protocol, generating six personal narratives each. The narratives were analyzed regarding the following microstructural measures: total number of words, total number of utterances (TNU), number of different words, and mean length of utterance in words (MLU-W). Additionally, each narrative was categorized into a topic according to the Global TALES protocol. Results: The analysis revealed no significant main effect of assessment mode on any of the microstructure measures. However, a significant interaction effect between language/culture and assessment mode was found for TNU and MLU-W, with a significant main effect for TNU exclusively in the Arabic narratives, with the Arabic-speaking children producing more utterances through FTF compared to TA. Across language/culture groups, there was a significant effect of assessment mode on the chosen topic. Additionally, there were significantly higher scores in the Hebrew compared to the Arabic narratives in all microstructure measures, and language/culture also influenced the chosen topics. Conclusions: The results support the feasibility of TA mode for assessing personal narratives in school-aged children, using the Global TALES protocol. However, the results also suggest that TA results may be affected by the language/culture of the narrator. Finally, the findings highlight the potential influence of TA on the chosen topics of personal narratives, perhaps due to a decrease in the quality of communication in TA.

Personal Narratives of 10-Year-Old Children in Iceland: Verbal Productivity, Word Diversity, and Topics

Introduction: The feasibility of using a standard protocol, labelled as the Global TALES, to elicit personal stories was tested across 10 different countries between 2019 and 2021. Personal narratives have not been investigated in Iceland in a similar way. The aim was to explore personal narratives of monolingual children in Iceland by using the Global TALES (2018) protocol to investigate verbal productivity, semantic diversity, and narrative topics. Methods: Twenty-seven children (ages 9; 8–10; 9) with typical language development produced personal stories in response to six emotion-based prompts contained in the protocol. The children were interviewed by using the Zoom platform because of COVID restrictions. Children’s spoken language was analysed for total number of utterances (TNU), total number of words (TNW), number of different words (NDW), mean length of utterances in words (MLUw), and proportion of words with grammatical errors. The narrative topics were coded and documented. Results: The spoken language measures showed that there was a large individual variability within the group on all metrics examined. The mean TNU was 62.1 (SD 20.2) utterances, the mean for TNW was 546 (SD 219) words, the mean for NDW was 206 (SD 62) words, and the MLUw was 8.6 (SD 1.5) words in an utterance. Despite the variability in spoken language performance, around 70–75% of the participants produced TNU, TNW, NDW, and MLUw within +/− 1 SD from the mean. The topics of the stories were most frequently related to personal achievement or relationships with the family or friends. Conclusion: The Global TALES (2018) protocol can be used to elicit personal stories in 10-year-old children in Iceland. The results related to verbal productivity and the topics of interest were in line with previous studies around the world.

Feasibility of Using the Global Tales Protocol to Elicit Personal Narratives in 10-year-Old Children in Ireland

Introduction: This small-scale study explored the feasibility of the Global TALES protocol in eliciting personal narratives in typically developing monolingual Irish children, using the online Zoom platform. We investigated children’s performance on measures of productivity (total number of utterances; total number of words) and syntactic complexity (MLU in words). We also documented the topics children talked about in response to the six emotion-based prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol. Methods: Nineteen typically developing children (6 male, 13 female), aged between 10.0 and 10.11 years produced personal narratives in response to the Global TALES protocol. Given COVID-19 pandemic-related public health restrictions, the language samples were elicited using Zoom. All stories were transcribed and analysed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Qualitative content analysis was used to code the topics of the children’s stories. Results: Sixteen participants responded to all prompts. One participant only responded to three of the six prompts. The prompt that was least successful in eliciting a response was the “problem” prompt; 15.7% (n = 3) of the children did not provide a response to this prompt. On average, children produced 40 utterances, although individual variability was high. On average, MLU was 8.7, ranging from 6 to 11. Children’s topics closely resembled those reported in the Global TALES feasibility study despite the fact, the current study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most frequent topics were related to family (events, illnesses, relationships, siblings) and finding or fixing something. Conclusion: The Global TALES protocol was successful in eliciting personal narratives from 10-year-old Irish English-speaking children. Future larger scale studies are now needed to investigate if the results generalise to the wider Irish population with a view to create local benchmarks of personal narrative performance.

Dehumanisasi ujaran kebencian dalam penggunaan kata ‘lu’ pada komentar Instagram Rachel Vennya

The purpose of this study is to determine the discursive representation of the word 'lu' in the speech written on Rachel Vennya's Instagram comments that have the potential to express hatred using the synergy of linguistic corpus methodology and to identify illocutionary speech acts using Searle's pragmatic theory. This study is a qualitative study in which researchers serve as research tools. The research data collocates with the word 'lu' processed using the Sketch Engine Tool. The hate speech corpus was compiled from Rachel Vennya's Instagram comments from 2020 to 2022. The Instagram Comments Scraper tool was used to capture these comments. The total number of utterances is 4,865, with 22,986 words. The word 'lu' appears in 88 different speech patterns in Instagram comments. The collocation analysis also reveals differences in the proclivity to utilize terms in R1 and L1. Apart from 'dakjal' vs 'setan' and 'kya' vs 'kek,' there was also a proclivity to use other words with similar meanings. One example is the colloquial R1 for the word 'anjing' in the (n+lu) pattern. Then, at 48%, directive speech acts dominated the rise of hate speech, followed by expressive speech acts at 33% and assertive speech acts at 19%.

Say that again: Quantifying patterns of production for children with autism using recurrence analysis.

The current research study characterized syntactic productivity across a range of 5-year-old children with autism and explored the degree to which this productivity was associated with standardized measures of language and autism symptomatology. Natural language samples were transcribed from play-based interactions between a clinician and participants with an autism diagnosis. Speech samples were parsed for grammatical morphemes and were used to generate measures of MLU and total number of utterances. We applied categorical recurrence quantification analysis, a technique used to quantify patterns of repetition in behaviors, to the children's noun-related and verb-related speech. Recurrence metrics captured the degree to which children repeated specific lexical/grammatical units (i.e., recurrence rate) and the degree to which children repeated combinations of lexical/grammatical units (i.e., percent determinism). Findings indicated that beyond capturing patterns shown in traditional linguistic analysis, recurrence can reveal differences in the speech productions of children with autism spectrum disorder at the lexical and grammatical levels. We also found that the degree of repeating noun-related units and grammatical units was related to MLU and ADOS Severity Score, while the degree of repeating unit combinations (e.g., saying "the big fluffy dog" or the determiner-adjective-adjective-noun construction multiple times), in general, was only related to MLU.

Bilingual Mandarin-English preschoolers' spoken narrative skills and contributing factors: A remote online story-retell study.

This study examined the spoken narrative skills of a group of bilingual Mandarin–English speaking 3–6-year-olds (N = 25) in Australia, using a remote online story-retell task. Bilingual preschoolers are an understudied population, especially those who are speaking typologically distinct languages such as Mandarin and English which have fewer structural overlaps compared to language pairs that are typologically closer, reducing cross-linguistic positive transfer. We examined these preschoolers’ spoken narrative skills as measured by macrostructures (the global organization of a story) and microstructures (linguistic structures, e.g., total number of utterances, nouns, verbs, phrases, and modifiers) across and within each language, and how various factors such as age and language experiences contribute to individual variability. The results indicate that our bilingual preschoolers acquired spoken narrative skills similarly across their two languages, i.e., showing similar patterns of productivity for macrostructure and microstructure elements in both of their two languages. While chronological age was positively correlated with macrostructures in both languages (showing developmental effects), there were no significant correlations between measures of language experiences and the measures of spoken narrative skills (no effects for language input/output). The findings suggest that although these preschoolers acquire two typologically diverse languages in different learning environments, Mandarin at home with highly educated parents, and English at preschool, they displayed similar levels of oral narrative skills as far as these macro−/micro-structure measures are concerned. This study provides further evidence for the feasibility of remote online assessment of preschoolers’ narrative skills.

Monitoring of Communication Precursors in Extremely Low Birth Weight (ELBW) Newborns by Video Analysis Method: Preliminary Results.

Background: The survival of extremely low birth weight infants (ELBW) has increased worldwide. Even in the absence of major disabilities, ELBW infants show difficulty in simple language functions. It is relevant to assess early abilities, which are the base of early linguistic skills, in order to implement customized intervention programs in ELBW infants. Aims: To evaluate communication precursors of language development in ELBW infants at 12 and 24 months of correct age (C.A). To investigate the correlation of linguistic and communicative prerequisites with mental development outcome at 24 months CA. Method: 52 ELBW neonates (mean gestational age 26.6 weeks, mean birth weight was 775 g) who were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of the University Hospital of Modena, were enrolled. Data were collected from archived audio-video recordings of neurodevelopmental follow-up visits. Video analysis of communicative and linguistic developmental was performed at 12 and 24 months CA. Neurodevelopmental outcome was evaluated with Mental Developmental Scales (GMDS-R). Results: The video-analysis showed that infants at 12 months CA used predominantly eye contacts and gestural turns, while vocal turns were scant. At 24 months CA, a significant change in eye contacts, vocal turns, gestural turns, and utterances (p < 0.001) occurred. The total number of utterances (p = 0.036) and eye contacts (p = 0.045) were significantly correlated to the Development Quotient (DQ) of Hearing and Language scale. Moreover, a significant correlation was found with the Personal-Social scale vocal turns (p = 0.009) and the total number of utterances (p = 0,02). Finally, the Global Quotient of the GMDS-R was related to the Vocal Turns (p = 0.034) and the total number of Utterances (p = 0.013). Conclusions: ELBW infants at 12 months CA use predominantly eye contacts and gestural turns to communicate with adults. At 24 months CA, the child’s communicative intention evolves from gestural to verbal communication. The latter is characterized by an increase in both vocal turns and the number of utterances produced during interaction. The video analysis we implement appears to be a sensitive tool for early assessment of communication and language development and to refine early intervention

Preschool Minority Children's Persian Vocabulary Development: A Language Sample Analysis.

This study linked background TV and socioeconomic status (SES) to minority children’s Persian vocabulary development. To this end, 80 Iranian preschool children (aged 5–6 years old) from two minority groups of Arabs and Turks were selected using stratified random sampling. They were simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., their mother tongue was either Arabic or Azari and their first language was Persian. Language sample analysis (LSA) was used to measure vocabulary development through a 15-min interview by language experts (PhD in applied linguistics). The LSA measures included total number of utterances (TNU), total number of words (TNW), total number of new words (NDW), and mean length of utterance (MLU). A series of independent-samples t test, paired-samples t test, and repeated measures MANOVA tests were ran to examine data. Results showed significant improvements in children’s vocabulary scores from pretest to posttest for all children. In addition, high-SES children scored higher on the vocabulary measures in pretest and posttest. Moreover, background TV was associated with higher means in the TNW and the NDW in groups. The researchers concluded that background TV may be related to higher vocabulary scores in low-SES families as it may compensate for some linguistics gaps in these families including lower amount of child-parent interaction, play, and parents’ level of literacy.

Maternal mind-mindedness and communicative functions in free-play and mealtime contexts: Stability, continuity and relations with child language at 16 months

The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the interactions occurring between 25 mothers and their 16-month-old children in each context were video-recorded, transcribed and later coded for the selected measures. Significant contextual stability was observed in the mothers' production of general language measures (total number of utterances, total number of words and MLU), in the children's production of word types and tokens, and in some communicative functions (Tutorial, Control and Asynchronous). No contextual stability was found for the mothers' production of attuned mind-related comments. For continuity, both mothers and children produced more utterances and words in the free-play than in the mealtime context; the production of attuned mind-related comments and the use of the Control function were also more frequent in the free-play context. Lastly, the analysis of the concurrent correlations indicated that, especially in the mealtime context, the number of words produced by children was positively associated with the number of words produced by mothers and by their use of the Tutorial and Didactic functions, but negatively associated with their use of the Control function. The mothers' production of attuned mind-related comments bore no relation with children's expressive language. Similarities and differences with previous findings are discussed.

Production of Narratives by At-Risk American Indian Children in the Midwest

The narratives of two groups of 28 American Indian children attending a Midwestern Bureau of Indian Affairs school (16 with a mean age of 5;10 years, and 12 with a mean age of 7;8 years) were examined in three contexts: retell, fictional with sequence pictures, and fictional with one picture. The narratives were examined in terms of microstructure (e.g., total number of utterances, total number of words, total number of communication units, and mean length of utterance in words and morphemes), macrostructure, and evaluative elements, which are used by speakers to link events, comment on events and characters, and inform the listener on how to interpret the story. Differences among story task contexts also were evaluated. The narratives of American Indian students differed between age groups and across tasks. The older children produced narratives with longer mean length of utterances in morphemes and more evaluative elements. The older children also produced more end-at-high-point stories, whereas the younger children produced more chronological narratives. Both age groups responded with longer and more complex narratives when generating fictional stories with visual support. Clinical implications are provided for adjusting narrative assessment tasks to be more culturally appropriate for children by modifying the task demands, increasing the role of the listener, and adding cultural relevance to stories.

Mind Your Language: New Insights on Memory and Cognitive Aging Research Through Real-Life Methods

In the past decades, the so-called “age - prospective memory paradox”– a phenomenon comparing prospective memory (PM) performance in and outside the lab – has challenged the classical assumption that older adults necessarily evidence a marked decline in PM functioning. In our study, we want to extend established methods for measuring memory through arising technologies, such as the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, 2017). Over the course of three days, 60 younger adults (18-32 years) and 45 older adults (60-82 years) completed an ambulatory assessment with the EAR in order to detect spontaneous speech production related to memory and memory failures. Results reveal that younger and older adults do not differ in the total number of utterances related to different facets of memory and cognition. However, when it comes to failures, older adults talk significantly less about PM failures than younger adults. Possible explanations for these findings will be discussed.

Relaxing and Communication-Promoting Effects of Wooden Tableware at Workplace Social Gathering

&lt;em&gt;Human beings are thought to have evolved in close contact with wood and touching wood is known to have relaxing effects. In 10 health subjects participating workplace social gathering, the effects of the use of wooden tableware on autonomic functions and communication were examined in comparison to the use of porcelain-metal tableware with a crossover study design. Analysis of pulse rate variability revealed that, compared to porcelain-metal tableware, wooden tableware lowered the amplitude of low-frequency (LF, 0.04-0.15 Hz) component without affecting the amplitude of high-frequency (HF, 0.15-0.45 Hz) component, resulting lower LF-to-HF ratio. Communication measured by the total number of utterances did not differ with the type of tableware. Subjective evaluation by a post questionnaire also showed consistent results, indicating better impression, warmth, relaxation, remission, nostalgic feeling for wooden tableware than porcelain-metal tableware. The use of wooden tableware may reduce sympathetic tone at the workplace social gathering compared to porcelain-metal tableware.&lt;/em&gt;

Babbling in children with neurodevelopmental disability and validity of a simplified way of measuring canonical babbling ratio

ABSTRACTBabbling is an important precursor to speech, but has not yet been thoroughly investigated in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Canonical babbling ratio (CBR) is a commonly used but time-consuming measure for quantifying babbling. The aim of this study was twofold: to validate a simplified version of the CBR (CBRUTTER), and to use this measure to determine if early precursors to speech and language development could be detected in children with different neurodevelopmental disabilities. Two different data sets were used.In Part I, CBRUTTER was compared to two other CBR measures using previously obtained phonetic transcriptions of 3571 utterances from 38 audio recordings of 12–18 month old children with and without cleft palate. In CBRUTTER, number of canonical utterances was divided by total number of utterances. In CBRsyl, number of canonical syllables was divided by total number of syllables. In CBRutt, number of canonical syllables was divided by total number of utterances. High agreement was seen between CBRUTTER and CBRsyl, suggesting CBRUTTER as an alternative.In Part II, babbling in children with neurodevelopmental disability was examined. Eighteen children aged 12–22 months with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy or developmental delay were audio–video recorded during interaction with a parent. Recordings were analysed by observation of babbling, consonant production, calculation of CBRUTTER, and compared to data from controls. The study group showed significantly lower occurrence of all variables, except for of plosives. The long-term relevance of the findings for the speech and language development of the children needs to be investigated.

Impact of Prominent Themes in Clinician-Patient Conversations on Caregiver's Perceived Quality of Communication with Paediatric Dental Visits.

Patients’ perceived satisfaction is a key performance index of the quality health care service. Good communication has been found to increase patient’s perceived satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the prominent themes arising from clinician-patient conversations on the caregiver’s perceived quality of communication during paediatric dental visits. 162 video recordings of clinical dental consultations for 62 cases attending the Paediatric Dentistry Clinic of The Prince Philip Dental Hospital in Hong Kong were captured and transcribed. The patients’ demographic information and the caregiver’s perceived quality of communication with the clinicians were recorded using the 16-item Dental Patient Feedback on Consultation skills questionnaires. Visual text analytics (Leximancer™) indicated five prominent themes ‘disease / treatment’, ‘treatment procedure related instructions’, ‘preparation for examination’, ‘positive reinforcement / reassurance’, and ‘family / social history’ from the clinician-patient conversation of the recorded videos, with 60.2% of the total variance in concept words in this study explained through principal components analysis. Significant variation in perceived quality of communication was noted in five variables regarding the prominent theme ‘Positive reinforcement / reassurance’: ‘number of related words’ (p = 0.002), ‘number of related utterances’ (p = 0.001), ‘percentage of the related words in total number of words’ (p = 0.005), ‘percentage of the related utterances in total number of utterances’ (p = 0.035) and ‘percentage of time spent in total time duration’ (p = 0.023). Clinicians were perceived to be more patient-centered and empathetic if a larger proportion of their conversation showed positive reinforcement and reassurance via using related key words. Care-giver’s involvement, such as clinicians’ mention of the parent, was also seen as critical to perceptions of quality clinical experience. The study reveals the potential of the application of visual text analytics software in clinical consultations with implications for professional development regarding clinicians’ communication skills for improving patients’ clinical experiences and treatment satisfaction.

Individual differences in children’s private speech: The role of imaginary companions

Relations between children’s imaginary companion status and their engagement in private speech during free play were investigated in a socially diverse sample of 5-year-olds (N=148). Controlling for socioeconomic status, receptive verbal ability, total number of utterances, and duration of observation, there was a main effect of imaginary companion status on type of private speech. Children who had imaginary companions were more likely to engage in covert private speech compared with their peers who did not have imaginary companions. These results suggest that the private speech of children with imaginary companions is more internalized than that of their peers who do not have imaginary companions and that social engagement with imaginary beings may fulfill a similar role to social engagement with real-life partners in the developmental progression of private speech.

Development of an Expressive Language Sampling Procedure in Fragile X Syndrome

There is a great need for valid outcome measures of functional improvement for impending clinical trials of targeted interventions for fragile X syndrome (FXS). Families often report conversational language improvement during clinical treatment, but no validated measures exist to quantify this outcome. This small-scale study sought to determine the feasibility, reproducibility, and clinical validity of highly structured expressive language sampling as an outcome measure reflecting language ability. Narrative and conversation tasks were administered to 36 verbal participants (25 males and 11 females) with FXS (aged 5-36 years, mean, 18 ± 7 years). Alternate versions were used with randomized task order at 2- to 3-week intervals (mean, 19.6 ± 6.4 days). Audio recordings of sessions were transcribed and analyzed. Dependent measures reflected talkativeness (total number of utterances), utterance planning (proportion of communication [C] units with mazes), articulation (proportion of unintelligible/partly unintelligible C-units), vocabulary (number of different word roots), and syntactic ability (mean length of utterance [MLU] in words). Reproducibility of measures was evaluated with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). All participants could complete the tasks. Coded data were highly reproducible with Pearson's correlations at p < .01 for all measures and ICC values of .911 to .966 (conversation) and .728 to .940 (narration). Some measures including MLU and different word roots were correlated with expressive language subscale scores from the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. These expressive language sampling tasks appear to be feasible, reproducible, and clinically valid and should be further validated in a larger cohort, as a promising means of assessing functional expressive language outcomes during clinical trials in FXS.

The production of complex sentences by young and older adults with mild to moderate retardation

ABSTRACTThis study examined the ability of young (mean CA = 29 years; SD = 3.67 years) and older adults (CA = 63 years; SD = 5.54 years) with mild to moderate mental retardation to produce complex sentences in naturalistic conversation. All of the complex sentences produced were coded into subcategories of complementation, relativization, or coordination. First, the overall proportion of complex utterances produced by each subject (based on the total number of utterances) was examined. Following this analysis, the well-formed production and productivity of the three general categories of complex sentences were considered. Individual complex sentences were then categorized by developmental level using Rosenberg and Abbeduto's (1987) acquisition scale. No significant differences were observed between the young and older groups.

Mothers' Use of Personal Pronouns when Talking with Toddlers

The verbal interaction of 2-year-old children (N = 46; 16 girls, 30 boys) and their mothers was audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed for the use of personal pronouns, the total number of utterances, the child's mean length of utterance, and the mother's responsiveness to her child's utterances. Mothers' use of the personal pronoun we was significantly related to their children's performance on the Stanford-Binet at age 5 and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children at age 8. Mothers' use of we in social--vocal interchange, indicating a system for establishing a shared relationship with the child, was closely connected with their verbal responsiveness to their children. The total amount of maternal talking, the number of personal pronouns used by mothers, and their verbal responsiveness to their children were not related to mothers' social class or years of education.

Preclausal patterns in language acquisition: a study of Spanish-speaking children in Chile.

Language utterances were recorded in three groups of 1- to 3-yr.-old day care children in Valdivia, Chile. An analysis of the preclausal patterns of language development according to the model outlined by Hubbell (1988) indicated that 4 of 12 major utterances--experiencer-state, action-object, agent-action, and negation-X--accounted for 68% of the total number of utterances recorded. The results suggest that preclausal patterns in language development of Spanish-speaking children are similar to and yet different in some respects from those of children who acquire English as their first language.