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PubMed1979

Imitative modeling as a language intervention strategy: the effects of two mediating variables.

Previous research has indicated that language intervention strategies which stress the learning of abstract grammatical rules are more successful than those which emphasize specific stimulus-response associations. Accordingly, this study experimentally compared two such strategies (imitative modeling versus mimicry) to determine their relative effectiveness in teaching language-disordered children rules which they previously lacked. Moreover, two additional variables, reinforcement and whether the modeled examples originated with the clinician or with a separate, third-person model, were examined to determine their influence on the modeling process. The results suggest that modeling strategies were superior to mimicry, thereby replicating the earlier results of Courtright and Courtright (1976). In addition, it was found that neither reinforcement nor third-person models significantly increased the teaching effectiveness of modeling techniques. These results are discussed in terms of their pragmatic implications for practicing speech clinicians.

Child↗
PubMed1981

Spontaneous imitations of Down's syndrome children: a lexical analysis.

This study describes the spontaneous imitations produced by four Stage 1 Down's syndrome children. The imitative speech of the children was compared to their spontaneous productions to determine whether words imitated are different from those produced spontaneously. The findings suggest that Down's children are similar to normal-language learners in that they selectively imitate model utterances during this linguistic stage.

Child↗
PubMed1981

Productive strategies for the pronunciation of early polysyllabic lexical items.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify productive strategies for the pronunciation of early polysyllabic words. Replicas (children's modifications) of adult models were classified as either syllable-maintaining or syllable-reducing based on the types and frequencies of phonological processes applied in attempts to achieve simplification. Four children aged 20--24 months were tape-recorded as they were informally engaged in activities that involved naming toys and pictures represented by polysyllabic words. Different productive strategies were observed with different children. The classification of modification types as syllable-maintaining or syllable-reducing provided a useful framework in which to describe regularities in one child and among children for producing complex phonological sequences. Children varied from one another with respect to (a) the consistency in productions across lexical items (interword production), (b) the consistency in productions (tokens) of a single word (intraword), and (c) the preferences for the application of selected phonological processes. Findings are discussed in terms of conditions which may be related to regularity and variation in early attempts at the pronunciation of polysyllabic lexical items.

Child Language↗
PubMed1981

Analysis of the sibship patterns of stutterers.

Analyses of birth rank, age separation, and the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks before and after the proband were undertaken for the purpose of verifying or disproving conjectures made by other authors on possible relationships between family structures and stuttering. Results based on data drawn from over 300 sibships, showed (a) stutterers were randomly distributed among the birth ranks, (b) the age separation of the siblings was independent of stuttering status, and (c) the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks before the proband and the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks after the proband were not significantly different.

Birth Intervals↗
PubMed1981

Early perceptual strategies for the replication of consonants from polysyllabic lexical models.

Perceptual processing strategies for the selection and organization of consonants for early replicas of polysyllabic models were investigated as a related study to the classification of productive strategies (Klein, 1981). The present study investigated the ways in which selected word factors (stress level and serial position of the syllable) provided facilitating cues for the production of polysyllabic words. The original procedure involved collecting a language sample from four children (ages 20-24 months) as each informally interacted with an adult during a play activity that included the manipulation of palpable and picturable objects represented by polysyllabic words. This paper focuses specifically on the perceptual strategies of only two of the four children; each demonstrated equally consistent but dissimilar production patterns. Each child's perceptual strategy is described on the basis of the proportion of instances that his/her consonant replicas could be related with the occurrence of specific word factors. Results revealed that (a) primary stress was an important processing cue for the selection of consonant(s) from 2-syllable words or from longer words containing one major stress, and (b) when two major stress levels occurred in a word, preferences for specific interactions of stress and serial position, as processing cues, appeared to be closely related to the number of syllables a child typically produced. The children, whose productions of the same word were dissimilar, exhibited similar perceptual strategies.

Child Language↗
PubMed1982

The effect of self-initiated and other-initiated actions on linguistic performance.

Two studies were conducted to determine the effect locus of action had on children's conjunction use and clause ordering. Subjects in the first study were 45 normal children between the ages 3:0 and 5:2. The results of the first study showed that the two contexts in which children performed actions were more facilitating to language performance than the context in which children observed the experimenter perform actions. However, the verbal model which accompanied the two child-initiated action contexts might have contributed to these differences. A second experiment was therefore conducted in which the verbal model was eliminated. No differences in conjunction use or clause ordering were found among contexts in the second study. Thus, by itself, locus of action had little influence on language performance. However, when coupled with the verbal model, which seemed to function as a focusing device, performance was enhanced. It was concluded that child-initiated action contexts which include a verbal instruction are preferred over other-initiated action contexts in which a verbal model is not presented.

Child Language↗
PubMed1983

Performance of articulation-disordered children on language and perception measures.

Five-year-old articulation-disordered children were classified as syllable reducers or as substituters. They were compared to each other and to normal controls on measures of expressive and receptive language and on preception of word-initial and word-final voicing contrasts. There were significant differences among the groups on several imitative expressive language measures, with the syllable reducers making both deletion and substitution errors and the substituters making substitution errors for functors. There were no significant differences on a receptive language measure, nor in perception of final voicing contrasts, but the articulation-disordered groups performed more poorly than the controls in perception of initial voicing contrasts. Children's familiarity with the stimulus words of the perception task was related to their performance on language measures. Word familiarity appeared to interact with the intrinsic difficulty of stimulus pairs in the case of word-final voicing contrasts.

Articulation Disorders↗
PubMed1983

Speech identification in Spanish- and English-learning 2-year-olds.

English- and Spanish-learning 2-year-olds were tested for speech skills in a real speech context. Each child was tested in his/her native language on one native and one nonnative contrast. The nonnative contrast consisted of a real native word paired with a nonsense word containing a nonnative element. The native contrast consisted of a native word paired with a nonsense word containing a minimally paired native element. The results showed that both groups of children found identification of native contrasts much easier than identification of nonnative contrasts. The results suggest that by age 2, normal children may have achieved an awareness of their native phonology, an awareness that encourages them to ignore certain distinctions that are not part of their language's contrastive meaning system.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1983

Children's spontaneous and imitative speech: an acoustic-phonetic analysis.

The purpose of this study was to compare the voice onset time of voiced and voiceless stop consonants in children's spontaneous and imitative speech. Ten children (2:3 to 3:8) were recorded producing the same test words spontaneously and imitatively, following a model. There were no statistically significant differences between imitative and spontaneous productions.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1984

Comparisons among three articulation sampling procedures with preschool children.

The purpose of this study was to compare the articulatory responses of normally developing preschool children during three sampling procedures which were controlled for phonetic context. Thirty normally developing children (15 boys, 15 girls) aged 4:4 to 4:8 (years:months) served as subjects. The three test conditions were word test (stimuli consisting of multisyllabic meaningful words and word-strings), nonsense test (items consisting of multisyllabic nonsense utterances), and story-retell. Eight phonemes /t k l s f r tf f/ were tested in each of the three sampling conditions. The stimuli, elicited with pictures, were also controlled for syllable structure, canonical form, and semantic difficulty. Results showed no difference among the three sampling procedures for type and number of errors. Consistency of errors was presented and discussed. A significant sex difference, with boys making significantly more errors than girls, supported separation of articulation data by sex for 4-year-old children.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1984

Role of mothers' expansions in stimulating children's language production.

Mothers' expansions were examined for their role in structuring conversational contributions and facilitating spontaneous imitations and productions of two-term semantic relations not previously used by their children. The subjects were four 2-year-old boys in late Stage 1 of linguistic development and their mothers. The investigation consisted of two studies. Study 1, a descriptive analysis of mother-child conversation, showed a contingent relationship between mothers' expansions and their children's use of spontaneous imitations. Study 2, an experimental procedure using a multiple baseline treatment design, showed that an increase in the mothers' expansions was systematically related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term semantic relations. Results also indicated that following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1985

Some phonological characteristics of the speech of normal-hearing children of deaf parents.

Articulation and stress patterns of 5 hearing children of deaf parents were studied. The children's phonological processes were compared with those of children from normal-speaking homes and with those of their deaf mothers to identify similarities and differences. The phonological processes used most frequently by these children were those that have been identified as common processes among children from hearing homes. None of the children adopted, with any frequency, the less typical productions found in their mother's speech. This was also true for one of the children who was observed to produce articulation and stress patterns resembling "deaf" speech. Possible factors relating to the children's adoption of the standard speech model rather than deaf speech are discussed.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1986

Conversational replies of children with specific language impairment.

Conversational replies were examined in two groups of children with comparable vocabularies and speech limited to single-word utterances: children with specific language impairment, ages 2:10 to 3:6 (years:months); and children, ages 1:5 to 1:11, who were developing language normally. In interactions with adults the language-impaired children produced a greater number and variety of replies to both questions and statements than the normal-language children. The findings suggest that language-impaired children can serve as responsive conversationalists when syntactic skill is not a factor and that comprehension, world knowledge, and/or experience with conversations permit considerable variability in conversational skill even within the same level of expressive language ability.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1987

An effect of modeling and imitation teaching procedures on children with and without specific language impairment.

Following a treatment program in which an invented morpheme was taught through either imitation or modeling procedures, the generalization of 40 specific language-impaired children was compared to that of 40 children learning language normally. The results of the comparison indicated that the two teaching procedures have opposite relative effects on the two groups. The abnormal group generalized more extensively following imitation teaching while the normal group generalized more extensively following modeling teaching. The opposing results of the two procedures on the two groups suggest that language-impaired children will benefit more from teaching strategies that are adapted to their unique learning styles than from strategies fashioned after the styles of children who learn language normally.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1988

Language and gesture in late talkers.

The relationship between language and symbolic gesture was studied in a group of young children who were in the lowest 10% for language production for their age based on information obtained from language inventories filled out by their parents. On a single scheme imitation task, designed to be a gestural analog of lexical production, subjects performed like controls matched for language production. On a multischeme imitation task, designed to be a gestural analog of syntax, subjects performed like age-matched controls, and significantly better than language-matched controls. Potential reasons for this dissociation are discussed in the context of predictors of early language success or impairment.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1989

Language and cognition in two children with Williams syndrome.

In this study, aspects of language, single-gesture retrieval, combinatorial play, and visual-spatial cognition are reported in two children with Williams syndrome who were in the single-word stage of language acquisition. Williams syndrome children are of particular interest because, when older (10-15 years), they display an unusual profile of abilities that may include superior linguistic performance compared with other aspects of cognition. The two children in the present study are compared to a group of normal children in the single-word stage of language acquisition with a mean age of 14.8 months, a group of single-word stage children who are 6-18 months delayed, and a group of older normal children with a mean age of 23.5 months. Results are compatible with the unusual cognitive profile displayed by older Williams syndrome children. We discuss the possibility that this profile involves mechanisms that extend beyond the boundaries of language proper.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1989

Cognitive skills associated with the onset of multiword utterances.

The relationship between early language and cognition was studied in 20 children between one and two years of age. Linguistically, the subjects were classified as No Word Users, Single Word Users, Nonproductive Syntax Users, and Productive Syntax Users. Four cognitive areas were tested: Object Permanence, Means-end, Play, and Imitation. When adjacent pairs of linguistic groups were compared in terms of specific cognitive skills demonstrated, several significant differences were found. First, a significant difference in Play was found between No Word Users and Single Word Users. Second, there were significant differences between Single Word Users and Nonproductive Syntax Users in terms of specific cognitive advances in both Imitation and Play. Third, Nonproductive and Productive Syntax Users were significantly different in Means-end skills. In accordance with the Correlational Hypothesis, specific cognitive skills seem temporally associated with some linguistic abilities, although attainment of skills can be evidenced first in language or cognition.

Child Language↗