Contributions of early motor deficits in predicting language outcomes among preschoolers with developmental language disorder.

We assessed the extent to which language, speech, and fine/gross motor skills in preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD; also referred to as specific language impairment) predicted language outcome two years later. Participants with DLD ( 15) and typical development (TD;  = 14) completed language, speech, and fine/gross motor assessments annually, beginning as 4- to 5-year-olds (Year 1 timepoint) and continuing through 6 to 7 years of age (Year 3 timepoint). We performed Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression analyses to examine the relative contributions of Year 1 language, speech, and motor skills to Year 3 language outcome in each group.

Applying Item Response Theory Modeling to Identify Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder.

Purpose No diagnostic tools exist for identifying social (pragmatic) communication disorder (SPCD), a new category for individuals with social communication deficits but not the repetitive, restricted behaviors and interests (RRBIs) that would qualify them for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We explored the value of items from a widely used screening measure of ASD for distinguishing SPCD from typical controls (TC; Aim 1) and from ASD (Aim 2). Method We applied item response theory (IRT) modeling to Social Communication Questionnaire-Lifetime (Rutter, Bailey, & Lord, 2003) records available in the National Database for Autism Research.

A New Method for Studying Statistical Learning in Young Children.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine whether a new oculomotor serial reaction time (RT) task revealed statistical sequence learning in young children. Method We used eye tracking to measure typically developing children's oculomotor RTs in response to cartoon-like creatures that appeared successively in quadrants of a monitor during 200 trials: an initial patterned phase (120 trials) in which the creature's location reflected 15 repetitions of an 8-element sequence, a pseudorandom phase (40 trials) in which the location was not predictable, and a final patterned phase (40 trials). In an auditory-visual version of the task, spoken nonwords linked to quadrants preceded the creature's appearance.

Implementation and Analysis of a Free Water Protocol in Acute Trauma and Stroke Patients.

Background: Free water protocols allow patients who aspirate thin liquids and meet eligibility criteria to have access to water or ice according to specific guidelines. Limited research is available concerning free water protocols in acute care settings.

Objectives: To compare rates of positive clinical outcomes and negative clinical indicators of a free water protocol in the acute care setting and to continue monitoring participants discharged into the hospital system's rehabilitation setting.

The Finite Verb Morphology Composite: Values From a Community Sample.

Purpose We investigated the finite verb morphology composite (FVMC), a measure associated with developmental language disorder (DLD), in a large community sample to provide evidence on its distribution, its association with other variables, and its sensitivity and specificity. Method We coded percent occurrence of FVMC morphemes in obligatory contexts in archival language samples from 676 six-year-olds conversing with an adult family member. Using multiple regression, we quantified the variance in FVMC scores accounted for by language sample characteristics (number of utterances and obligatory contexts) and child/family variables (performance IQ, family history, maternal education, and adult FVMC).

Automatic Screening to Detect 'At Risk' Child Speech Samples using a Clinical Group Verification framework.

Pediatric speech sound disorders (SSD) encompass a wide range of speech production deficits that can interfere with children's educational growth, social engagement and employment opportunities. Early detection of SSDs can facilitate timely intervention and minimize the potential for life-long adverse effects, but distinguishing between typical and atypical speech production in preschoolers is challenging due to developmental and individual variability in speech acquisition. In this study we apply Gaussian Mixture Models to speech samples from 3- to 6-year-old children, recorded by parents using an iOS app.

Measuring the Diagnostic Features of Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder: An Exploratory Study.

Purpose: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition introduced a new neurodevelopmental disorder, social (pragmatic) communication disorder (SPCD), that is characterized by deficits in 4 areas of communication. Although descriptions of these areas are provided, no assessment tools for SPCD are recommended. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which items from measurement tools commonly used in assessing pragmatic language impairment and related disorders might be useful in assessing the characteristics of social communication that define SPCD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.

Automatic generation of the index of productive syntax for child language transcripts.

The index of productive syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough (Applied Psycholinguistics 11:1-22, 1990) is a measure of syntactic development in child language that has been used in research and clinical settings to investigate the grammatical development of various groups of children. However, IPSyn is mostly calculated manually, which is an extremely laborious process. In this article, we describe the AC-IPSyn system, which automatically calculates the IPSyn score for child language transcripts using natural language processing techniques.

Consonant accuracy after severe pediatric traumatic brain injury: a prospective cohort study.

Purpose: The authors sought to describe longitudinal changes in Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R) after severe pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI), to compare the odds of normal-range PCC-R in children injured at older and younger ages, and to correlate predictor variables and PCC-R outcomes.

Method: In 56 children injured between age 1 month and 11 years, PCC-R was calculated over 12 monthly sessions beginning when the child produced ≥ 10 words. At each session, the authors compared odds of normal-range PCC-R in children injured at younger (≤ 60 months) and older (> 60 months) ages.

A systematic review of assessments for identifying executive function impairment in adults with acquired brain injury.

Purpose: To synthesize quantitative findings concerning measures of executive function (EF) in adults with acquired brain injury (ABI).

Method: Electronic databases were searched for studies of EF assessments in adults with ABI that reported any of 3 values: likelihood ratios (LRs), standardized group mean comparisons (ds), or correlations (rs) among EF tests. Forest plots were constructed for each value.

Language-specific noun bias: evidence from bilingual children.

Most evidence concerning cross-linguistic variation in noun bias, the preponderance of nouns in early expressive lexicons (Gentner, 1982), has come from comparisons of monolingual children acquiring different languages. Such designs are susceptible to a number of potential confounders, including group differences in developmental level and sociodemographic characteristics. The aim of this study was to quantify noun bias in bilingual Mandarin-English toddlers whose expressive lexicons in each language contained 50-300 words.

Exploring a corpus-based approach for detecting language impairment in monolingual English-speaking children.

Objectives: This paper explores the use of an automated method for analyzing narratives of monolingual English speaking children to accurately predict the presence or absence of a language impairment. The goal is to exploit corpus-based approaches inspired by the fields of natural language processing and machine learning.

Methods And Materials: We extract a large variety of features from language samples and use them to train language models and well known machine learning algorithms as the underlying predictors.

Taxometric analyses of specific language impairment in 6-year-old children.

Purpose: To determine whether language scores at age 6 years suggest that specific language impairments (SLIs) distribute in a categorical or in a dimensional fashion.

Method: A taxometric analysis of language scores from 601 six-year-old children who were free of neonatal risk factors was performed. From among 4 candidate indicators of SLI, 2 were eligible for the mean above minus below a cut (MAMBAC) procedure (Meehl & Yonce, 1994): number of different words (NDW) produced in a language sample and average percentage phonemes repeated correctly in 3- and 4-syllable nonwords (3-4 PPC).

Bilingual language assessment: a meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy.

Purpose: To describe quality indicators for appraising studies of diagnostic accuracy and to report a meta-analysis of measures for diagnosing language impairment (LI) in bilingual Spanish-English U.S. children.

Manipulating articulatory demands in non-word repetition: a 'late-8' non-word repetition task.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the psychometric properties of a non-word repetition task (NRT), the Late-8 Non-word Repetition Task (L8NRT). This task was designed similarly to the NRT, but contains only Late-8 consonants to increase articulatory demands and avoid ceiling effects in studies with adolescents and adults. Thirty college students were administered the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised/Normative Update WRMT-RNU, L8NRT and NRT.

A nonword repetition task for speakers with misarticulations: the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT).

Purpose: Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) word repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. In this article, the authors (a) describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT), that eliminates this confound and (b) report findings from 3 validity studies.

Method: Ninety-five preschool children with speech delay and 63 with typical speech completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT; C.

A performance curve for assessing change in Percentage of Consonants Correct Revised (PCC-R).

Purpose: Interpreting the rapidly changing speech skills of young children recovering from neurological injury is difficult because developmental expectations are generally available only at relatively lengthy intervals (e.g., 6 or 12 months).

Tympanostomy tubes and developmental outcomes at 9 to 11 years of age.

Background: Developmental impairments in children have been attributed to persistent middle-ear effusion in their early years of life. Previously, we reported that among children younger than 3 years of age with persistent middle-ear effusion, prompt as compared with delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes did not result in improved cognitive, language, speech, or psychosocial development at 3, 4, or 6 years of age. However, other important components of development could not be assessed until the children were older.

Developmental outcomes after early or delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes.

Background: To prevent later developmental impairments, myringotomy with the insertion of tympanostomy tubes has often been undertaken in young children who have persistent otitis media with effusion. We previously reported that prompt as compared with delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes in children with persistent effusion who were younger than three years of age did not result in improved developmental outcomes at three or four years of age. However, the effect on the outcomes of school-age children is unknown.

Evidence-based practice in communication disorders: what do we know, and when do we know it?

Unlabelled: Evidence-based practice (EBP), a framework that originated in clinical medicine, offers a principled means of addressing longstanding questions about clinical practice in communication disorders. However, in several respects EBP represents a radical departure from traditional thinking in speech-language pathology and audiology. In this paper, I first describe some of the ways in which the EBP orientation challenges conventional wisdom.

Taxometric analyses of specific language impairment in 3- and 4-year-old children.

Specific language impairment (SLI), like many diagnostic labels for complex behavioral conditions, is often assumed to define a category of children who differ not only in degree but also in kind from children developing language normally. Although this assumption has important implications for theoretical models and clinical approaches, its validity has not been tested. In this study, distributions of language scores from children at ages 3 (N = 620) and 4 (N = 623) years were analyzed using a taxometric procedure known as "mean above minus below a cut" (MAMBAC; P.

Parent-reported language skills in relation to otitis media during the first 3 years of life.

As part of a larger study of the potential impact of early-life otitis media (OM) on speech, language, cognition, and behavior, we studied the degree of association between parent-reported language scores at ages 1, 2, and 3 years and the cumulative duration of middle-ear effusion (MEE) during the first 3 years of life in a demographically diverse sample of 621 children. We estimated the cumulative percentage of days with MEE from prospective monthly observations of middle-ear status and interpolations for periods between visits. For each child, parents completed the appropriate inventory of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; L.

Otitis media and tympanostomy tube insertion during the first three years of life: developmental outcomes at the age of four years.

Objective: In a long-term, prospective study, we set out to determine whether otitis media in the first 3 years of life persisting for periods currently considered developmentally threatening actually results in later impairments of children's cognitive, language, speech, or psychosocial development; whether prompt insertion of tympanostomy tubes prevents or lessens any such impairments; and whether, irrespective of causality, associations exist between persistent early-life otitis media and later developmental impairments. This report describes findings in study participants at the age of 4 years.

Methods: We enrolled 6350 healthy infants from 2 to 61 days of age at urban hospitals and 2 small-town/rural and 4 suburban private pediatric practices.

Risk factors for speech delay of unknown origin in 3-year-old children.

One hundred 3-year-olds with speech delay of unknown origin and 539 same-age peers were compared with respect to 6 variables linked to speech disorders: male sex, family history of developmental communication disorder, low maternal education, low socioeconomic status (indexed by Medicaid health insurance), African American race, and prolonged otitis media. Abnormal hearing was also examined in a subset of 279 children who had at least 2 hearing evaluations between 6 and 18 months of age. Significant odds ratios were found only for low maternal education, male sex, and positive family history; a child with all 3 factors was 7.

Early versus delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes for persistent otitis media: developmental outcomes at the age of three years in relation to prerandomization illness patterns and hearing levels.

Background: Whether prompt insertion of tympanostomy tubes in children with persistent early life otitis media prevents or minimizes subsequent developmental impairment has been the subject of conflicting opinions and differing approaches to management.

Methods: We randomly assigned 429 children with persistent middle ear effusion (MEE) before the age of 3 years to have tympanostomy tubes inserted either as soon as possible or up to 9 months later if MEE persisted. In 402 of these children, we found no significant differences at age 3 years between the 2 treatment groups in mean scores on any measure of speech, language and cognition and in 401 of the children no significant differences in measures of psychosocial development.