Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Major Professor

Trina D. Spencer, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Committee Member

Carolyn Ford, Ed.D., CCC-SLP

Committee Member

Matthew E. Foster, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Howard Goldstein, Ph.D.

Keywords

child language, elicitation context, language sample analysis, school-age language

Abstract

Language sampling is a familiar tool in the speech-language pathologist’s (SLP’s) repertoire, used to assess a student’s language ability and inform treatment targets. The current literature has several studies comparing various dimensions of language sampling context, but with relatively small samples. The goal of this study was to identify what sampling contexts elicit the most productive and complex language, thereby contributing insight into what conditions may yield the most accurate representation of a child’s language skill, as well as the resulting intervention focus.

One-thousand thirty-seven kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade students (mean age [years; months] ≈ 7;5; range = 5;0-10;9), participated in spoken language sampling activities involving four different contexts, varying by discourse type (i.e., expository and narrative) and task type (i.e., retell and generation). The contexts are as follows : 1) expository generation; 2) expository retell; 3) narrative generation; and 4) narrative retell. Each student’s performance for each context was audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and entered into the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts computer software program (Miller & Iglesias, 2015). Samples were then analyzed for language productivity, as measured by number of total words (NTW), and language complexity, as measured by mean length of utterance in words (MLU), number of different words (NDW), and subordination index (SI). Differences across each grade for language productivity and complexity were also examined by analyzing grade interactions.

When compared to narrative conditions, expository conditions yielded greater language productivity and complexity for all measures, excluding SI. Generation conditions resulted in greater language productivity but had mixed results for language complexity, such that there were no statistically significant differences for measures of MLU and SI across retell and generation tasks. Average language productivity and complexity increased by grade. Differences between discourse types and task types were observed across grades. As a component of a comprehensive language evaluation, clinicians should consider collecting language samples through activities involving expository and generation tasks to encourage greater language productivity and language complexity.

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