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Preschool language intervention--a follow-up of some within-group differences.

A more detailed study was made of the children who had been followed-up by Urwin, Cook & Kelly (1988) 4-8 years after leaving a preschool language group. Children were independently allocated into groups according to their speech and language diagnosis prior to entry to the Unit. There were two major dimensions--receptive/expressive versus expressive only, and phonology versus non-phonology. Comparisons were made between the group as indicated by children's performance at follow-up for measures of ability, achievement, language and social functioning. Conclusions are drawn about the long-term effects of the early language difficulty and preschool intervention. Attention is also drawn to differences in perceiving the effects of language difficulty between the specialist professionals on the one hand and parents and teachers on the other.

Child↗

Issues in the development of language intervention programmes.

An attempt has been made in this paper to address some issues involved in the development of language intervention programmes. The relative neglect of 'language' in the paper is justified by the importance of more general issues. After cursory attention to prescriptiveness in programmes, the concentration has been on the 'training of the trainers' and the need for an adequate and effective instructional model. Particular attention is given to evaluation and the need for a design which while acknowledging the practicalities of life in the field can nevertheless assist in determining the effects of the intervention (with a nod in the direction of casting the net sufficiently wide to encompass possible unintended effects). Finally, there is discussion of implementation, covering guidelines to bear in mind the developing the intervention and stressing that without successful implementation even the most effective programme fails, as it disappears like water in to the sands of the desert.

Child↗

Verbal communication outcomes in children with autism after in-home father training.

BACKGROUND: This retrospective study examined the efficacy of in-home father training on the communicative outcomes of children with autism. The in-home training consisted of two components: (1) expectant waiting; and (2) imitation with animation. METHODS: Efficacy of parent training was examined by measuring the ratio of utterances produced by the parents to the utterances produced by the children and the number of verbal imitation by the parents. Outcomes of the children's verbal production were examined by measuring the number of (1) single word utterances; (2) different words produced; and (3) verbal response to questions. RESULTS: Following training there was a decrease in the ratio of parent to child utterances and an increase in (1) the use of imitation by the parents; and (2) the number of single words and different words produced by the children. DISCUSSION: Results of this study suggested that the parents had learned to wait for their children to communicate verbally during communicative interactions and to interact more efficiently with their children by using verbal imitation. Overall, the results of this study support the efficacy of parent training that focuses on promotion of social reciprocity, and have important implications for clinicians and future research.

Adult↗

The Adelaide preschool language unit: results of follow-up.

OBJECTIVE: To determine educational, social and behavioural functioning of children who had been involved in a preschool language intervention programme between 1982 and 1990. METHODOLOGY: Fifty children who attended the Unit were available for follow-up. The children were divided into three groups: (i) language disorder; (ii) speech disorder; and (iii) mixed speech and language disorder. A psychologist administered educational, cognitive and social behavioural tests. Speech, language and articulation were assessed by a speech pathologist. RESULTS: Cognitively, the 'mixed' speech and language group obtained lower scores than the speech and language disorder children; results on educational tests were also generally lower. All three groups were significantly underachieving in areas of language, reading, spelling and arithmetic relative to their performance IQ. No socialization problems were found. CONCLUSIONS: Severe speech and language disorders in young children, even after periods of intensive intervention, have a significant effect on later educational achievement even when children appear to be 'coping' in their educational settings.

Child↗

Together we are heard: effectiveness of daily 'language' groups in a community preschool.

Strong oral language skills are a prerequisite for successful literacy and there is a strong interdependence between oral language acquisition and emergent literacy development. Ramifications of this are that children with language impairments are at great risk for difficulties in learning to read and write, with problems often persisting throughout the school years into adulthood. The Together we are heard program involved improving each child's oral language skills through group sessions facilitated by a speech pathologist on a daily basis at preschool. The aim of the present research was to determine the effectiveness of the program to identify the best way to assist children to develop appropriate language skills. The study showed that the children improved significantly in all four levels of the Preschool Language Assessment Inventory (PLAI). Importantly, the program was effective for both genders and there was no difference in the success of Indigenous children when compared to their European counterparts. There is a strong recommendation for further research and to expand such programs, particularly in areas that target children from impoverished and deprived environmental backgrounds.

Child Day Care Centers↗

Evaluating intervention for language impaired children: a review of the literature.

Intervention studies are divided into those which have examined the effectiveness of specific techniques and those that have attempted to examine efficacy within the clinical context. Of the specific techniques, imitation and recasting or expansion have been the most commonly examined. Results suggest that they may be equally useful in reaching targets but that input in context has more chance of generalising. Combinations of techniques such as 'milieu teaching' seem especially promising. Evaluation of general language training strategies has tended to show good results relative to controls, although care has to be taken to discriminate between changes brought about to interaction skills and those to specific linguistic structures. The paper also covers issues associated with evaluation including clinical outcomes and methodological considerations. A number of research directions are suggested.

Child, Preschool↗

Verbs in the emergence of word combinations in young children with specific expressive language impairment.

Young children with specific expressive language impairment (SELI) are typically first identified by their delay in initial vocabulary learning. When their language difficulties persist they often have problems with verb constructions. The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of lexical development in children with SELI who were moving from the single-word to the multi-word stage of language production, with particular attention to verbs. The research examined the nature of the developing lexicon (lexicon size and composition) and realisation of lexical categories and their combinatorial properties transitivity of verbs) as the children began producing word combinations during a nine-week period of observation, three weeks of which involved treatment. Results indicated a moderate correlation between the developing lexicon, both in size and composition of vocabulary, and the emergence of word combinations as measured by mean length of utterance. Further, the data revealed the importance of intransitive and ditransitive verbs for children who demonstrated the greatest change in their language production. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and clinical importance.

Child, Preschool↗

Enhancing the phonological processing skills of children with specific reading disability.

The present study evaluated the benefits of phonological processing skills training for children with persistent reading difficulties. Children aged between 9-14 years, identified as having a specific reading disability, participated in the study. In a series of three experiments, pedagogical issues related to length of training time, model of intervention and severity of readers' phonological processing skills deficit prior to intervention, were explored. The results indicated that improvement in poor readers' phonological processing skills led to a dramatic improvement in their reading accuracy and reading comprehension performance. Increasing the length of training time significantly improved transfer effects to the reading process. Children with particularly severe phonological processing skill deficits benefited from an extended training period, and both individual and group intervention models for phonological processing training proved successful. Implications for speech and language therapists are discussed.

Adolescent↗

Motivation in childhood autism: can they or won't they?

Research in the area of motivation in autistic and other children suggests that autistic children may be capable of performing at a higher level than they typically function. This article describes research in the area of 'learned helplessness' which suggests that autistic children's handicaps may expose them to frequent failure and to an unusual level of non-contingent reinforcement which may produce a 'learned helplessness' state of extremely low motivation, with a consequent abnormally low overall functioning level. The present article also discusses research on strategies which might be employed to improve autistic children's exposure to favourable response-reinforcer contingencies. This would be expected to improve the general level of motivation in such children, with related gains in the acquisition, generalization maintenance of a broad array of target behaviours.

Autistic Disorder↗

Psychosocial outcomes at 15 years of children with a preschool history of speech-language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests there is a heightened risk of psychiatric disorder in children with speech-language impairments. However, not all forms of language impairment are strongly associated with psychosocial difficulty, and some psychiatric disorders (e.g., attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)) are more prevalent than others in language-impaired populations. The present study assessed the psychosocial adjustment in adolescence of young people with history of speech-language impairment, and investigated specific relationships between language deficits and psychiatric disorders. METHODS: Seventy-one young people (aged 15-16 years) with a preschool history of speech-language impairment were assessed using a psychiatric interview (K-SADS) supplemented by questionnaires probing social encounters and parental reports of behaviour and attention. Their psycho-social adjustment was compared with that of a cross-sectional control group of age-matched controls. RESULTS: Overall the rate of psychiatric disorder was low in the clinical sample and children whose language delay had resolved by 5.5 years had a good outcome. For those whose language difficulties persisted through the school years, there was a raised incidence of attention and social difficulties. These difficulties were partially independent and associated with different language profiles. The group with attention problems showed a profile of specific expressive language difficulties; the group with social difficulties had receptive and expressive language difficulties; and the group with both attention and social difficulties was of low IQ with global language difficulties. CONCLUSIONS: Amongst children with speech-language delays at 5.5 years, those with more severe and persistent language difficulties and low nonverbal IQ are at higher risk of psychiatric morbidity in adolescence.

Adolescent↗

Temporal processing deficits of language-learning impaired children ameliorated by training.

Children with language-based learning impairments (LLIs) have major deficits in their recognition of some rapidly successive phonetic elements and nonspeech sound stimuli. In the current study, LLI children were engaged in adaptive training exercises mounted as computer "games" designed to drive improvements in their "temporal processing" skills. With 8 to 16 hours of training during a 20-day period, LLI children improved markedly in their abilities to recognize brief and fast sequences of nonspeech and speech stimuli.

Child↗

Language comprehension in language-learning impaired children improved with acoustically modified speech.

A speech processing algorithm was developed to create more salient versions of the rapidly changing elements in the acoustic waveform of speech that have been shown to be deficiently processed by language-learning impaired (LLI) children. LLI children received extensive daily training, over a 4-week period, with listening exercises in which all speech was translated into this synthetic form. They also received daily training with computer "games" designed to adaptively drive improvements in temporal processing thresholds. Significant improvements in speech discrimination and language comprehension abilities were demonstrated in two independent groups of LLI children.

Algorithms↗

Prognostic indicators and the pattern of recovery of communication in aphasic stroke patients.

Communication abilities were assessed on a wide range of tests in 56 aphasic stroke patients, 33 classified as "moderate" and 23 as "severe". Thirty-six of the patients had received language treatment. The biographical variables of age, months post-onset and handedness were shown to be differentially correlated with improvements. In particular, there were some significant trends of decreasing improvement with increasing months post-onset on expressive verbal tasks in treated moderate aphasics and on comprehension tasks in treated severe aphasics. Untreated patients did not show the same clear pattern of trends; however, these patients were reassessed after a shorter period and covered a smaller range of months post-onset. The role of treatment deserves further clarification. The results also indicate that language recovery is relatively independent of age and of handedness.

Adolescent↗