| 1. |
- Lavesson, Ann, et al.
(författare)
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Development of a language screening instrument for Swedish 4-year-olds
- 2018
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Ingår i: International journal of language and communication disorders. - : Wiley. - 1368-2822 .- 1460-6984. ; 53:3, s. 605-614
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundThe Swedish Program for health surveillance of preschool children includes screening of language and communication abilities. One important language screening is carried out at age 4 years as part of a general screening conducted by health nurses at child health centres. The instruments presently in use for this screening mainly focus on expressive phonology. This may result in both over-referral of children with phonological difficulties and under-referral of children with language disorders (LDs), involving difficulties with vocabulary, grammar and/or language comprehension. Previous research has proposed non-word repetition as a clinical marker for LD. It has also been found that higher predictive power is achieved when non-word repetition is combined with the assessment of lexical/semantic skills. Taking these findings into account, the construction of a language screening instrument may yield more adequate referrals to speech-language therapists (SLTs). AimsTo construct a new standardized language screening instrument for 4-year-olds and to test its properties. Methods & ProceduresAn instrument was developed and revised after piloting. A population of 352 children was screened at the regular 4-year check-up by 11 health nurses. The final sample consisted of 328 children aged 46-53 months (23% multilingual). Children performing below a preliminary cut-off were referred to an SLT (n = 52). Five SLTs carried out an assessment on average within 5 weeks using a gold standard language test battery. Children who screened negatively were followed up with a parent questionnaire at age 5;6. Outcomes & ResultsThirty-one true-positives and 11 false-positives were identified after SLT assessment. A further six children were identified as false-negatives (two through referral to an SLT and four through parent questionnaire at age 5;6). A receiver-operating characteristics curve with a C statistic of .94 was calculated. Based on optimal cut-off, the sensitivity of the screening instrument was found to be .84, and specificity was .96. Multilingual children performed similar to monolingual children; boys performed significantly lower than girls; and children with a family history of language-related problems performed lower than those without. Interrater reliability was high, as was Cronbach's alpha. Conclusions & ImplicationsThe screening instrument seems sufficiently valid for its purpose to identify children who need further assessment by an SLT. A follow-up study including SLT assessment for all children to check for false-negatives would be interesting in future, as would studies comparing results from the 4-year screening with those from earlier screens.
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| 2. |
- Hansson, Kristina, et al.
(författare)
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Can a 'single hit' cause limitations in language development? A comparative study of Swedish children with hearing impairment and children with specific language impairment.
- 2007
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Ingår i: International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders. - : Wiley. - 1368-2822 .- 1460-6984. ; 42:3, s. 307-323
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies of language in children with mild-to-moderate hearing impairment ( HI) indicate that they often have problems in phonological shortterm memory (PSTM) and that they have linguistic weaknesses both in vocabulary and morphosyntax similar to children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, children with HI may be more likely than children with SLI to acquire typical language skills as they get older. It has been suggested that the more persisting problems in children with SLI are due to a combination of factors: perceptual, cognitive and/or linguistic. Aims: The main aim of this study was to explore language skills in children with HI in comparison with children with SLI, and how children with both HI and language impairment differ from those with non-impaired spoken language skills. Methods & Procedures: PSTM, output phonology, lexical ability, receptive grammar and verb morphology were assessed in a group of children with mild-to-moderate HI ( n=11) and a group of children with SLI (n=12) aged 5 years 6 months to 9 years 0 months. Outcomes & Results: The HI group tended to score higher than the SLI group on the language measures, although few of the differences were significant. The children with HI had their most obvious weaknesses in PSTM, vocabulary, receptive grammar and inflection of novel verbs. The subgroup of children with HI ( five out of 10) who also showed evidence of grammatical output problems was significantly younger than the remaining children with HI. Correlation analysis showed that the language variables were not associated with age, whereas hearing level was associated with PSTM. Conclusions: Children with HI are at risk for at least a delay in lexical ability, receptive grammar and grammatical production. The problems seen in the HI group might be explained by their low-level perceptual deficit and weak PSTM. For the SLI group the impairment is more severe. From a clinical perspective an important conclusion is that the language development in children with even mild-to-moderate HI deserves attention and support.
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| 3. |
- Nettelbladt, Ulrika, et al.
(författare)
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Why ask questions? Contextual effects on the grammatical structure in the language production of children with SLI
- 2001
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Ingår i: Child Language Teaching and Therapy. - : SAGE Publications. - 0265-6590 .- 1477-0865. ; 17:2, s. 89-106
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this small-scale study we investigated the influence of different aspects of context on the language production of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Each of the variables, type of partner, the partner’s interactional style and the type of material used for eliciting conversation, was related to the probability of the use of a set of grammatical constructions by the child. The results show that the interactional style of the conversational partner as well as the type of elicitation material used can have an influence on the grammatical complexity in the language production of children with SLI. Further investigation of such contextual effects from a dialogical perspective would have important implications for intervention with these children.
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| 4. |
- Hansson, Kristina, et al.
(författare)
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Language impairment in children with CI : An investigation of Swedish
- 2018
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Ingår i: Lingua. - : Elsevier BV. - 0024-3841. ; 213, s. 63-77
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In spite of earlier implantation, bilateral implants and advances in the care of deaf children with cochlear implants (CI) within-group variation in language skills is large. We use three tasks with predictive value of language impairment in Swedish to identify children with CI most at risk for persistent difficulties in language development, in need of language intervention. The clinical markers investigated are nonword repetition and past tense inflection. We also assessed language comprehension, a predictor of severe language impairment associated with poorer prognosis. Fifteen Swedish-speaking deaf children with CI and 15 controls aged 5–8 years participated. Most children with CI had bilateral implants and had been fitted with CIs before 12 months. At least 70% in the group with CI performed >1.25 and 47% >2 SD below controls on more than one measure, showing risk for persistent language impairment. Speech perception was more crucial in the nonword repetition and language comprehension tasks. No time factor was significantly related to outcome. We conclude that it is important to allocate resources for continuous follow-up and language intervention. Research and care of children with CI will profit from better integration of knowledge from the fields of audiology, speech-language pathology and linguistics.
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| 5. |
- Hansson, Kristina
(författare)
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Specific Language Impairment in Swedish: Grammar and Interaction
- 1998
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main purpose of this work was to explore grammar in Swedish children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), that is children with impaired language development in the presence of normal hearing and otherwise normal development. In four differents studies, spontaneous data from six children with SLI were analysed and compared with data from either younger children with phonological impairment but normal grammar (PI), or from younger controls with typical development. The children with SLI were matched to their controls on the basis of mean length of utterance (MLU). One of the studies also includes longitudinal data. A fifth study includes experimental data from 10 children with SLI and 10 younger language matched controls. The results showed that in particular word order, verb forms requiring an auxiliary or a modal, and subordination were structures where the Swedish children with SLI differed from their controls. The children with SLI were further found to have a higher amount of hesitation phenomena than children with PI. These two groups also differed with respect to qualitative aspects of their maze behaviour. The conversational partner was not found to influence structural aspects of the language production of children with SLI or PI. The conversational partner did, however, influence the interactive behavior and the productivity of the children. Clinically, the pinpointing of vulnerable structures have important implications for the assessment of children with language impairment in Sweden. The analysis of the influence of the conversational partner can have implications for therapy, if further developed. The results point to the importance of investigating SLI in different languages.
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| 6. |
- Bruce, Barbro, et al.
(författare)
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Assertiveness, responsiveness and reciprocity in verbal interaction. Dialogues between children with SLI and peers with typical language development
- 2010
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Ingår i: First Language. - 0142-7237. ; 30:3-4, s. 493-507
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present study examined assertiveness and responsiveness in two different conversational contexts: children with specific language impairment (SLI) interacting with an age-matched peer with typical language development (TLD) and children with SLI interacting with a language-matched peer with TLD. The dialogues where the 10 participating children with SLI interacted with an age peer were characterized by a higher degree of responsiveness and coherence. The age peers tended to dominate the interaction with the children with SLI. The dialogues where children with SLI interacted with a language peer were characterized by less responsiveness and less coherence and the child with SLI was likely to be more dominant in the interaction. Thus children with SLI take different roles in verbal interaction depending on how much support the conversational partner can offer.
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| 7. |
- Bruce, Barbro, et al.
(författare)
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Interactional style, elicitation strategies and language production in professional language intervention
- 2007
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Ingår i: Child Language Teaching and Therapy. - : SAGE Publications. - 0265-6590 .- 1477-0865. ; 23:3, s. 253-266
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores language intervention for children with specific language impairment in Sweden. The elicitation strategies, style of interaction and language production used by speech and language pathologists (SLPs) were analyzed in two conditions, free conversation and training of grammar. In training, the grammatical targets were used significantly more often by the SLPs, but not by the children. In the free conversations the children talked more and had significantly higher mean length of utterance in words and the SLPs linked significantly more to the child's focus. The two conditions represent different, but complementary approaches to language intervention.
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