Young Children's Production Research Articles

Normal diurnal variation in serum cortisol concentration in asthmatic children treated with inhaled budesonide

Background: Twenty-four-hour serum cortisol secretion is a sensitive parameter for the assessment of the pituitary-adrenal function of asthmatic children treated with inhaled corticosteroids. This study was undertaken to determine the effect of the long-term administration of inhaled budesonide on 24-hour cortisol production in young children with asthma. Methods: We studied 11 children, aged 7 to 12 years, with severe perennial asthma. All had been receiving 100 μg of inhaled budesonide twice daily, administered with a spacer device, for 3 to 5 years. Serum cortisol concentration was measured at 8:00 AM, 60 minutes after intravenous administration of 0.25 mg of corticotropin, and every 30 minutes for 24 hours in an open-design study. Urinary cortisol secretion was measured by 24-hour urine collection. All determinations were made with a radioimmunoassay kit. Results: The individual morning serum cortisol concentration and the serum cortisol concentration at 60 minutes after corticotropin stimulation were within normal limits in all children. The 24-hour urinary cortisol excretion was also normal. The individual 24-hour serum cortisol concentration showed a normal pattern in all children, with no evidence of nocturnal suppression of serum cortisol concentration. Conclusion: Prolonged (3 to 5 years) administration of 200 μg/day of inhaled budesonide in young children with severe asthma does not impair pituitary-adrenal function, even according to the sensitive test for 24-hour serum cortisol secretion. (J A LLERGY C LIN I MMUNOL 1995;96:874-8.)

Metrical patterns of words and production accuracy.

This investigation examined the influence of metrical patterns of words (syllable stress and serial position) on the production accuracy of 20 children (22 to 28 months). The data were productions of six pairs of individualized two-syllable experimental words that referred to unfamiliar objects. Members of each pair differed only in the placement of stress (e.g., ['soti] vs. [so'ti]). Unstressed syllables were much more likely to be omitted, particularly at the beginning of words. Very few stressed syllables and unstressed second position syllables were omitted. One fourth of the word initial unstressed syllables were omitted. Consonant omissions, though few in number, tended to occur in initial position. Assimilation errors were not influenced by stress or serial position. When segmental errors due to syllable omissions were excluded, other consonant errors were not affected by stress or serial position. These findings indicate that young children's productions of syllables are influenced by the metrical patterns of words. However, the trochaic pattern of English is a statistical tendency, not an absolute constraint on two-syllable words. Metrical pattern also does not affect the consonant accuracy in syllables produced.

An Analysis of the Phonetic Level Evaluation

The Phonetic Level Evaluation (PLE) (Ling, 1976) was administered to 30 preschoolers (chronological age [CA] 3:0 to 5:0, years:months) with normal hearing. Each child received the entire segmental portion of the PLE to determine if the children's overall scores of percent correct sound production increased with increasing age, and whether the elicited speech tasks were observed to be ordered according to difficulty, as described by Ling. Two judges scored each production. Results indicated that: (a) older children received significantly higher percent correct scores than younger children, (b) approximately the same error rate was observed for vowel productions as for simple consonants, and (c) scores for all children were considerably poorer for initial consonant blends than for final consonant blends. The latter two results ran counter to the proposed order of task difficulty designed by Ling. This study provides speech production data from children with normal hearing in this frequently used speech-elicitation task for children with hearing loss. These data are useful to clinicians in setting developmentally appropriate goals for speech production in young children with hearing loss. In addition, the results suggest that clinicians might change the order of presentation of word-initial and word-final blends in the administration of the PLE in order to provide a better approximation to developmental task difficulty.

Presentational features for young children's production and recall of information

Young children's production and recall of information presented at varying levels of action and verbal labels was compared on a computer versus a felt board. Forty children, equally distributed by Grades Preschool and Kindergarten, were randomly assigned to a computer or felt board condition. Within each condition, the same 24 objects (6 sets of 4 objects) were presented with or without action and verbal labels. Both action and labels increased children's recall of verbal information, regardless of the medium in which that information was presented. The results suggest that action facilitates, rather than disrupts, children's learning of verbal information.

Young children's production of causal connectives

Young children's production of causal connectives

Training imagery production in young children through motor involvement.

Kindergarten and first grade children were given a paired-assdciate learning task following one of five types of strategy-training procedures. In the motor training conditions, subjects generated interactions involving pairs of toys by playing with them or by drawing pictures of them. It was found that relative to simple imagery practice, motor training facilitated the performance of kindergarteners, with no differences among four motor training variations. For the first graders, imagery practice by itself was as effective as each of the motor-training procedures. The results are discussed in terms of Piaget's theory of cognitive development and contrasted with previously unsuccessful attempts to induce self-generated elaboration strategies in young children.