SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
This paper explores the effectiveness of elicited imitation in clinical assessment and remediation procedures. A critical review of the literature dealing with the role of elicited imitation in language acquisition as well as the use of elicited imitation clinically is presented. Conclusions drawn from the review indicated that the effectiveness of employing elicited imitation for assessment and remediation purposes is not clearly defined.
One hundred children (25 three-year-old girls, 25 three-year-old boys, 25 three-and-a-half-year-old girls, and 25 three-and-a-half-year-old boys) were administered an articulation test using the spontaneous method and then the imitative method of stimulus presentation. No significant differences were found between the methods of stimulus presentation on the subjects' total articulation scores. Articulatory performance was significantly influenced by age, sex, and the interaction of age and sex.
Two language measures, designed for normal-hearing children, were applied to a sample of 52 severely and profoundly hearing-impaired children between four and 15 years of age. The Developmental Sentence Analysis (Lee, 1974) was used to assess their spontaneous language and the Carrow Elicited Languate Inventory (Carrow, 1974a) to assess imitated language. The correlation between scores on the two measures was similar to that found by Carrow (1974b) for normal children (r = .75). However, there was little relation between either measure and reading achievement in hearing-imparied children. A subsample of children retested one year later showed those who remained in a school for the deaf showed greater improvement in their ability to imitate while those who had been integrated into school with normal-hearing children improved most in spontaneous language. Over half of the hearing-impaired subjects scored below normal hearing three-year-olds on both measures. Caution is advised, however, in applying these norms to hearing-impaired children. The spontaneous language of these children differed from that of younger hearing children who received similar overall scores in the normative sample. The hearing-impaired subjects tended to use more mature constructions but used fewer correct structures per utterance.
Ten five-year-old children with adequate articulation skills and 10 five-year-old children with inadequate articulation skills were administered the Templin-Darley Test of Articulation and the Test of Rhythm and Intonation Patterns (TRIP). Differences between the adequate and inadequate groups in terms of the mean percentage correct and the correlations between TRIP and Templin-Darley Test scores within groups were statistically nonsignificant. Item analysis revealed no differences between groups in the pattern of performance on the three subtests of the TRIP or on specific test items. The possible effects of therapy enrollment on suprasegmental test performance are discussed, and future research needs are suggested.
The Elicited Language Inventory (ELI) (Carrow, 1974b) was administered in standardized fashion and in a modified procedure with contextually supported cues to eight language-delayed and eight normal-speaking children in Brown's (1973) Stage II of morphological development. Additionally, grammatical morpheme use under the two ELI presentation conditions was compared with use of the same morphemes in spontaneous speech for two language-delayed and two normal-speaking subjects. Results of both comparisons favored modified use of the ELI with contextually cued items when sampling children's expressive speech. A significantly greater number of morphemes was imitated and provided in obligatory contexts under modified ELI conditions. Significantly fewer total errors were produced by all subjects when ELI items were presented with contextual cues. Moreover, children's performance on contextually cued ELI items was a significantly better predictor of their grammatical morpheme use in spontaneous speech than performance on the standard version of the ELI. Except for total errors, subject group differences were not significant; however, the older language-delayed children performed consistently better than the stage-matched normal-speaking children on all imitative response measures.
Elicited imitation is a language sampling procedure in which a child is asked to repeat an utterance that is modeled by the examiner. In most clinical applications of this technique, the stimulus sentences are presented without any relevant context and without regard to whether the child knows the meaning of the sentences to be imitated. In the current experiment, 16 language-delayed preschool children repeated a set of 40 sentences, controlled for length, without context and with context provided by a set of pictures drawn to capture the meaning of the stimuli. For some of the children, the context had little effect. For the group as a whole, however, the number of errors was significantly reduced when the visual context was provided. These findings suggest that, for at least some children, the elicited imitation procedure is made more sensitive to the child's best grammatical performance when context is added.
The Tennessee Test of Rhythm and Intonation Patterns (T-TRIP) is a three-part suprasegmental test with 25 test items. The test items consisted of the nonsense syllable (ma) that was spoken and recorded with different rhythm and intonation patterns. Ten three-year-olds and 10 five-year-olds imitated the pattern they heard. The five-year-olds scored significantly better than the three-year-olds. The T-TRIP appears sensitive to differences between groups of different ages.
Language-disordered children's use of two devices through which utterances are related to ongoing discourse, focus and substitution operations, were observed. Focus operations merely repeat, while substitutions repeat part but also alter a previous utterance in some way. Previous research with normal-language children shows that the predominant device a child uses changes developmentally, with focus operations more frequently used early and substitution operations emphasized later. The use of these devices was observed in the spontaneous conversations of three language-disordered children. Two were at a lower linguistic level (MLU's of 1.8 and 2.2) than the third (MLU 3.2). A developmental trend reflecting that of the normally developing children emerged. These results indicate that language-disordered children are not qualitatively different from normally developing children in their ability to use these particular devices for learning to participate in conversations.
Elicited imitation has been suggested as an alternative to Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) as a means of measuring grammatical performance. Numerous investigators, however, have demonstrated that short-term memory is a confounding variable during elicited imitation. In the first experiment the imitative skills of 4 year old were assessed as a function of sentence comprehension and delayed imitation. The second experiment examined the relationship between the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory (CELI) and DSS under three imitative conditions; 0, 3, and 5 second delays. Results indicated that subjects were able to accurately repeat sentences which they did not understand as long as imitation was immediate. Delaying imitation 3 seconds adversely affected imitation of noncomprehended sentences while having no significant effect on comprehended sentences. A 3 second delay on the CELI also improved its correlation with DSS from -.77 (standard procedures) to -.90. The validity of elicited imitation as a test of expressive grammar is challenged.
Two aspects of elicited imitation procedures, the relationship between imitation and spontaneous performance and the effect of nonlinguistic context, were examined using seven normal preschool children. The children performed two tasks: (a) they participated in a conversation with an adult and (b) they imitated 80 sentences controlled for length and structure while viewing a videotape depicting four types of nonlinguistic contexts. The results indicated that elicited imitation performance did not accurately predict spontaneous speech performance and that the addition of nonlinguistic context cues did not significantly effect the accuracy of imitation. The implications of these findings to clinical procedures are discussed.
This study examined the number of trials necessary to obtain sampling reliability in elicited imitation. An examiner-constructed elicited imitation test was administered to 15 language-disordered subjects, sampled from the age range of 5:6 to 6:6 years. All test sentences were controlled for length, syntactic construction, and semantic content. The test instrument contained multiple occurrences of 16 syntactic structures. For each of these forms, subject performance on 1, 3, 5, and 7 trials was compared with performance on 10 trials. It was observed that sampling reliability increased as the number of trials increased, but as few as three repetitions provided reliable data.
Ten language-normal children, aged 2:1-3:3 (yrs:mos), and eight language-impaired children, 3:7-4:1, in Brown's (1973) Stages II or III received two subtests of the Oral Language Sentence Imitation Screening Test (OLSIST: Zachman, Huisingh, Jorgenson, & Barrett, 1978) in a contextually supported condition and in a standardized test condition. Also, children's generation of eight grammatical morphemes in a spontaneous language sample condition was compared to their imitative control of the same structures on the OLSIST. Results indicated significantly enhanced imitative performance for the language-impaired children but not for the language-normal children in the contextually cued condition. Stage III language-normal children earned significantly better imitative scores than language-impaired subjects and Stage II language-normal children, regardless of test condition, although OLSIST subtests did not differentiate performance of any group. With only one exception, morpheme difficulty orders on the OLSIST did not predict morpheme orders in spontaneous language samples. Presence of cues, moreover, did not significantly increase the OLSIST's predictive ability. With the exception of Stage III language-normal subjects, all children displayed greater productive control of most morphemes in their spontaneous speech. Conclusions were drawn relative to the clinical significance of contextual reliance as well as alternatives to imitation testing for estimating the grammatical skills of the language-impaired child.
Personal pronoun confusion ("I/me" for "you" and "you" for "me/I") was studied longitudinally in the language of a highly imitative preschool child with normally developing language. The proportion of pronoun confusion was compared with proportion of imitative utterances and with level of linguistic complexity. Over a 5-month period, pronoun confusion decreased as imitation decreased and linguistic complexity increased. The developmental changes that occurred were qualitative as well as quantitative. Several categories of pronoun confusion were observed. These were similar to pronoun confusions reported in older language-disordered children. Pronoun confusion was related to (a) a tendency to imitate utterances of others, (b) early production of "you" as a productive linguistic form, and (c) a tendency to use a pronoun rather than a noun for self-reference. Clinical implications are presented.
Rather than concentrating exclusively on consequences in early vocal instruction, the manipulation of antecedent conditions has been recommended. Few empirical data have been collected on the effect of different antecedent events. Therefore, a series of three experiments was conducted with three severely retarded children to investigate the vocalization-producing potential of two antecedent conditions: adult talk, a commonly cited antecedent, and adult silence. The conditions were evaluated using a modified alternating treatments design. In Experiment 1, 5 min of continuous adult talk was alternated with 5 min of adult silence; the results indicated that adult silence occasioned more vocalizations than did adult talk. In Experiment 2, a mixed (alternating 30-s periods of silence and talk) condition was compared to a silence condition; again the results indicated a higher frequency of vocalization during the silence condition. In Experiment 3, a modified talk (a question or comment presented every 10 s) condition was compared to a silence condition; the results indicated that the two conditions occasioned similar vocalization frequencies for two children, and the questions/comments condition occasioned more vocalizations for one child. In addition to studying optimal conditions for adult talk, the present investigation provides a methodology for deriving empirical data on the effects of differing antecedent conditions on vocalization frequencies.
Mothers told stories to their children, inserting 30 questions about each story under two conditions. In one situation, mothers were alone with their younger child, and in the other condition, an older sibling was also present. During the question-answer interactions, older siblings responded to 60%-65% of all mothers' questions before younger children had a chance to respond and provided direct answers to the questions in 57%-65% of those instances. Mothers responded by producing fewer rephrased questions, fewer questions providing hints and answers, fewer questions functioning as repetitions and expansions, and more directly repeated questions when the older sibling was present. The effect of older siblings' first responses also reduced by half the number of younger children's utterances. The younger children produced fewer noncontent and content answers and more imitated answers in the presence of the older sibling. It is concluded that the presence of older siblings may influence the language young children hear and produce.
This investigation examined the influence of unsolicited lexical imitation on the comprehension and on the production of novel words by language-impaired children. Subjects were 13 children (2:8-3:1) exhibiting specific language impairment who were presented with 16 unfamiliar words referring to unfamiliar objects or actions over 10 experimental sessions. Unsolicited imitations appeared to facilitate subsequent production of these words on a posttest. This effect was greatest when these words were also produced spontaneously prior to the posttest. Words that were produced imitatively and spontaneously also appeared more frequently in spontaneous usage than words that were only produced spontaneously. No relationship between such imitations and comprehension was observed. These findings suggest that unsolicited imitations benefit children's lexical acquisition primarily by providing them with additional opportunities to produce words that are in the process of being established in their expressive lexicons.
A tracking procedure that emphasizes practical coping strategies for hearing-impaired patients, along with practice in responding to other cues in the perception of connected speech, is described in detail in the course of its use with one subject. The subject's tracking scores before and after training illustrate the potential value of the procedure both as an evaluative measure and as a training tool. The organization of the materials and the design of the training protocol allow for a wide range of practice activities in tracking, including the use of nonverbatim as well as verbatim responses.
A structured discourse strategy, employing child echoic imitations and adult expansion, was used to teach 5 autistic children two-term semantic relations. The 5 male preschoolers in late Stage I of linguistic development were exposed systematically to two-term semantic relations in a structured dialogue with a clinician. A combined multiple baseline and AB(A) design was used to examine the relationship between the clinician expansions and the children's subsequent spontaneous imitations and spontaneous productions. The results showed that an increase in modeling and expansion was related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term relations. Further, following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.