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Hickey, Tina. "Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish." Journal of Child Language 18, no. 3 (October 1991): 553–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900011247.
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ABSTRACTOne of the most widely used indices of language development is a measure of utterance length in morphemes (MLUm). This study examines the applicability of MLUm to the acquisition of Irish. MLUm was calculated for data from Cian, aged 1;11–3;0. Even when an attempt was made to ‘assume the maximum’ by counting all possible morphemes, the correlation between a morpheme MLU (MLUm) and a word count MLU (MLUw) was very high (0·99). This points to MLUw being as effective a measure of Irish development as MLUm, as well as being easier to apply and more reliable. MLUw was calculated for the two younger children in the study (Eibhlís 1;4–2;1 and Eoin 1;10–2;6). An examination of the relationship between the three children's MLUw values and their grammatical complexity as measured on ILARSP (the Irish adaptation of LARSP) indicates that MLUw is a useful preliminary index for early development in Irish. However, further data are necessary to check whether MLUw loses its predictive relationship with grammatical complexity after a certain point. The study emphasizes the caution necessary in applying MLU to languages whose acquisition has not hitherto been studied, and underlines the role of MLU as a preliminary measure, which must not be overinterpreted.
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Parker, Matthew D., and Kent Brorson. "A comparative study between mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw)." First Language 25, no. 3 (October 2005): 365–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723705059114.
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Wieczorek, Roma. "Using MLU to study early language development in English." Psychology of Language and Communication 14, no. 2 (January 1, 2010): 59–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10057-010-0010-9.
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Using MLU to study early language development in English The study examines the parameter of Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), measured both in morphemes (MLUm) and words (MLUw), in early language development in the case of two English children matched for age. The MLU scores of a normally developing child were compared to the MLU results of a language-impaired child in a longitudinal study. Moreover, the reliability of the MLU index measured in words was also tested in both children. The MLU analysis was based on the CHILDES database and CLAN programme, where the transcripts of spontaneous speech samples are used to calculate basic language parameters at different age-points. The findings of this study indicate that despite the expected delay, the language-impaired child followed a similar route of language development as the control child. However, significant differences between MLUw and MLUm confirmed that the parameters performed two different linguistic analyses.
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Owen, Amanda J., and Laurence B. Leonard. "Lexical Diversity in the Spontaneous Speech of Children With Specific Language Impairment." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 45, no. 5 (October 2002): 927–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2002/075).
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The lexical diversity of children with specific language impairment (SLI) (ages 3 years 7 months to 7 years 3 months) was compared to that of normally developing same-age peers and younger normally developing children matched according to mean length of utterance in words (MLUw). Lexical diversity was calculated from spontaneous speech samples using D, a measure that uses repeated calculations of type-token ratio (TTR) to estimate how TTR changes as the speech samples increase in size. When D computations were based on 250-word samples, developmental differences were apparent. For both children with SLI and typically developing children, older subgroups showed higher D scores than younger subgroups, and subgroups with higher MLUws showed higher D scores than subgroups with lower MLUws. Children with SLI did not differ from same-age peers. At lower MLUw levels, children with SLI showed higher D scores than younger typically developing children matched for MLUw. The developmental sensitivity of D notwithstanding, comparisons using 100-utterance samples, in which the number of lexical tokens varied as a function of the children's MLUws, and comparisons between 250- and 500-word samples revealed the possible influence of sample size on this measure. However, analysis of the effect sizes using smaller and larger samples revealed that D is not affected by sample size to the degree seen for more traditional measures of lexical diversity.
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Wu, Shang-Yu. "Mean length of utterance among Mandarin-speaking children with and without DLD." Child Language Teaching and Therapy 36, no. 3 (July 29, 2020): 165–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265659020945366.
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This study explored the differences in mean length of utterance (MLU) and mean length of the five longest utterances (MLU5) between 5–6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children, and between typically developing children and children with developmental language disorders (DLD). Eighty-nine typically developing children and 35 children with a DLD participated in this study. The researchers collected, transcribed, and analysed language samples from these children. MLU and MLU5 were analysed and compared between the groups. The results showed that MLU and MLU5 were significantly higher for 6-year-olds than 5-year-olds. Also, both MLU measures were significantly lower for children with DLD than for typically developing children. The findings demonstrate that MLU and MLU5 can be used to evaluate language ability and to identify children with DLD among Mandarin-speaking children aged 5 and 6 years.
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Baron, Alisa, Lisa M. Bedore, Elizabeth D. Peña, Samantha D. Lovgren-Uribe, Amanda A. López, and Elizabeth Villagran. "Production of Spanish Grammatical Forms in U.S. Bilingual Children." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 27, no. 3 (August 6, 2018): 975–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2018_ajslp-17-0074.
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Purpose The purpose of this analysis was to understand how grammatical morpheme production in Spanish for typically developing Spanish–English bilingual children relates to mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and the extent to which different bilingual profiles influence order of grammatical morpheme acquisition. Method Participants included 228 Spanish–English bilingual children ages 4;0–7;6 (years;months). Grammatical morpheme accuracy was evaluated using an experimental version of the Bilingual English–Spanish Assessment (Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein, & Bedore, 2014). MLUw data were calculated from children's narrative samples. Production accuracy of plural nouns, singular and plural definite articles, preterite tense, imperfect aspect, direct object clitics, prepositions, subjunctive, and conjunctions was calculated and analyzed as a function of MLUw in Spanish. Level of accuracy on these forms was compared for Spanish-dominant and English-dominant groups. Results Accuracy was significantly associated with MLUw. The relative difficulty of Spanish grammatical morphemes is highly similar across different bilingual profiles. Conclusions There are common elements of Spanish that are easy (imperfect, plural nouns, singular articles, conjunctions), medium (plural articles, preterite), or hard (prepositions, direct object clitics, subjunctive), regardless of whether a child is a Spanish-dominant or English-dominant bilingual.
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Voniati, Louiza. "Mean Length of Utterance in Cypriot Greek-speaking Children." Journal of Greek Linguistics 16, no. 1 (2016): 117–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15699846-01601002.
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While research undertaken worldwide indicates that mean length of utterance (MLU) is a valuable index in investigations of child language development, to date there have been no studies exploring MLU in pre-primary Cypriot Greek (CYG)-speaking children. The participants in this study were 36 monolingual CYG-speaking children at ages 36, 40, 44 and 48 months, with a typical course of language development. The findings demonstrated that MLU counted in words (MLU-w) of typically developing CYG-speaking children had a positive correlation with age (from 36 to 48 months) and a non-significant difference in MLU-w by gender at each age point, and that typically developing CYG-speaking children, for the age range studied, tended to produce more multiword utterance types. An outcome of this study is an MLU-w database which could be used, with some caution, in the language assessment of a similar population or as the basis for future studies. Areas for further research are identified.
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Valian, Virginia, and Zena Eisenberg. "The development of syntactic subjects in Portuguese-speaking children." Journal of Child Language 23, no. 1 (February 1996): 103–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900010114.
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ABSTRACTIn order to separate competence and performance factors in acquisition of knowledge of syntactic subjects, we audiotaped and analysed the spontaneous speech of 20 Portuguese-speaking two-year-olds in natural conversation with Portuguese-speaking adults. We separated the children into three groups based on Mean Length of Utterance in Words: 1·5–1·99; 2·0–2·99; 3·0–4·99. Our cross-sectional data demonstrated that Portuguese-speaking children increased their use of subjects from 28% in the lowest-MLUW group to 57% in the highest-MLUW group. The children in the highest-MLUW group almost perfectly matched the adult speakers in the study on every measure. The increase in children's use of subjects was primarily due to an increase in the use of pronominal subjects. A comparison between Portuguese- and English-speaking children suggests that adult competence about the status of subjects is present at the onset of combinatorial speech, as shown by differential production of subjects. Each group also experiences performance limitations, as shown by the increase in subject use as development proceeds.
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Kapantzoglou, Maria, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, and M. Adelaida Restrepo. "Language Sample Analysis and Elicitation Technique Effects in Bilingual Children With and Without Language Impairment." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 60, no. 10 (October 17, 2017): 2852–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2017_jslhr-l-16-0335.
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Purpose This study examined whether the language sample elicitation technique (i.e., storytelling and story-retelling tasks with pictorial support) affects lexical diversity (D), grammaticality (grammatical errors per communication unit [GE/CU]), sentence length (mean length of utterance in words [MLUw]), and sentence complexity (subordination index [SI]), which are commonly used indices for diagnosing primary language impairment in Spanish–English-speaking children in the United States. Method Twenty bilingual Spanish–English-speaking children with typical language development and 20 with primary language impairment participated in the study. Four analyses of variance were conducted to evaluate the effect of language elicitation technique and group on D, GE/CU, MLUw, and SI. Also, 2 discriminant analyses were conducted to assess which indices were more effective for story retelling and storytelling and their classification accuracy across elicitation techniques. Results D, MLUw, and SI were influenced by the type of elicitation technique, but GE/CU was not. The classification accuracy of language sample analysis was greater in story retelling than in storytelling, with GE/CU and D being useful indicators of language abilities in story retelling and GE/CU and SI in storytelling. Conclusion Two indices in language sample analysis may be sufficient for diagnosis in 4- to 5-year-old bilingual Spanish–English-speaking children.
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Koehlinger, Keegan M., Amanda J. Owen Van Horne, and Mary Pat Moeller. "Grammatical Outcomes of 3- and 6-Year-Old Children Who Are Hard of Hearing." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56, no. 5 (October 2013): 1701–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0188).
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Purpose Spoken language skills of 3- and 6-year-old children who are hard of hearing (HH) were compared with those of children with normal hearing (NH). Method Language skills were measured via mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and percent correct use of finite verb morphology in obligatory contexts based on spontaneous conversational samples gathered from 185 children (145 HH, 40 NH). Aided speech intelligibility index (SII), better-ear pure-tone average (BE-PTA), maternal education, and age of amplification were used to predict outcomes within the HH group. Results On average, the HH group had MLUws that were 0.25–0.5 words shorter than the NH group at both ages, and they produced fewer obligatory verb morphemes. After age, aided SII and age of amplification predicted MLUw. Aided SII and BE-PTA were not interchangeable in this analysis. Age followed by either BE-PTA or aided SII best predicted verb morphology use. Conclusions Children who are HH lag behind their peers with NH in grammatical aspects of language. Although some children appear to catch up, more than half of the children who are HH fell below the 25th percentile. Continued monitoring of language outcomes is warranted considering that children who are HH are at increased risk for language learning difficulties.
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SERRATRICE, LUDOVICA. "The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian." Applied Psycholinguistics 26, no. 3 (July 2005): 437–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716405050241.
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This longitudinal study investigates the distribution of null and overt subjects in the spontaneous production of six Italian-speaking children between the ages of 1 year, 7 months and 3 years, 3 months. Like their peers acquiring other Romance null-subject languages, the children in this sample produced more overt subjects as their mean length of utterance in words (MLUW) increased. Pronominal subjects, and specifically first person pronouns, accounted for an increasingly larger proportion of the overt subjects used. The distribution of both pronominal and lexical subjects was further investigated as a function of the informativeness value of a number of pragmatically relevant features. The results showed that as early as MLUW 2.0 Italian-speaking children can use null and overt subjects in a pragmatically appropriate way. The relevance of these findings is discussed with reference to performance limitation and syntactic accounts of subject omission, and implications are drawn for a model of language development that incorporates the mastery of pragmatics in the acquisition of syntax.
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DEVESCOVI, ANTONELLA, MARIA CRISTINA CASELLI, DANIELA MARCHIONE, PATRIZIO PASQUALETTI, JUDY REILLY, and ELIZABETH BATES. "A crosslinguistic study of the relationship between grammar and lexical development." Journal of Child Language 32, no. 4 (November 2005): 759–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000905007105.
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The relationship between grammatical and lexical development was compared in 233 English and 233 Italian children aged between 1;6 and 2;6, matched for age, gender, and vocabulary size on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Four different measures of Mean Length of Utterance were applied to the three longest utterances reported by parents, and to corrected/expanded versions representing the ‘target’ for each utterance. Italians had longer MLUs on most measures, but the ratio of actual to target MLUs did not differ between languages. Age and vocabulary both contributed significant variance to MLU, but the contribution of vocabulary was much larger, suggesting that vocabulary size may provide a better basis for crosslinguistic comparisons of grammatical development. The relationship between MLU and vocabulary size was non-linear in English but linear in Italian, suggesting that grammar ‘gets off the ground’ earlier in a richly inflected language. A possible mechanism to account for this difference is discussed.
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Kovacs, Thomas, and Katya Hill. "Language Samples From Children Who Use Speech-Generating Devices: Making Sense of Small Samples and Utterance Length." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 26, no. 3 (August 15, 2017): 939–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2017_ajslp-16-0114.
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Purpose Mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) is underreported in people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). MLUm is difficult to measure in people who use AAC because of 2 challenges described in literature: the challenge of small language samples (difficulty collecting representative samples) and the challenge of transcribing short utterances (difficulty transcribing 1-morpheme utterances). We tested solutions to both challenges in a corpus of language samples from children who use speech-generating devices. Method The first challenge was addressed by adjusting the length of the sampling window to obtain representative language samples. The second challenge was addressed by using mean syntactic length (MSL) as an alternative to MLUm. Results A 24-hour sample window consistently failed to yield representative samples. An extended 1-month sample window consistently yielded representative samples. A significant positive prediction of MLUm by MSL was found in a normative sample. Observed measures of MSL were used to predict MLUm in representative language samples from children who use AAC. Conclusions Valid measures of utterance length in people who use AAC can be obtained using extended sampling windows and MSL. Research is needed to characterize the strengths and limitations of both solutions.
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Quick, Antje Endesfelder, Elena Lieven, Ad Backus, and Michael Tomasello. "Constructively combining languages." Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8, no. 3 (March 20, 2018): 393–409. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lab.17008.qui.
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Abstract Language development in bilingual children is often related to differing levels of proficiency. Objective measurements of bilingual development include for example mean length of utterance (MLU). MLU is almost always calculated for each language context (including both monolingual and code-mixed utterances). In the current study, we analyzed the MLUs of three German-English bilingual children, aged 2;3–3;11 separately for the monolingual and code-mixed utterances. Our results showed that language preference was reflected in MLU values: the more children spoke in one language the higher the MLU was in that language. However, it was the mixed utterances that had the highest MLU for all three children. We support the results with a construction type analysis and suggest a potential usage-based explanation for these results based on individual differences in each child’s developmental inventory of words and constructions.
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Ari Laras Utami, Anak Agung Istri, and I. Nengah Sudipa. "Mean Length of Utterance of Children at the Trihita Alam Eco School." Humanis 25, no. 3 (August 22, 2021): 286. http://dx.doi.org/10.24843/jh.2021.v25.i03.p04.
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The aim of the study is mainly at testing the theory of Brown on the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). Methods applied in this study were observation and audio recording technique. The data in this study were the utterances produced by students of Trihita Alam Eco School. There were sixteen children ranging from 4 to 6 years participating in this study (M=5.4). The children observed in this study are healthy children both physically and psychologically. The written permission from the school has been obtained to conduct the study. The results show that the sentence structures produced by children are quite well-organized and are able to place language functions clearly. The calculation of the MLU value in the research subjects show that Brown's theory which states that children at age 47 months have the MLU of 4.5 are mostly correct. The assumption that children who have the same ages doesn’t imply that they have the same MLU is proven right.
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Flipsen, Peter J., and Kathleen Kangas. "Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) in Children with Cochlear Implants." Volta Review 114, no. 2 (September 2014): 135–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.17955/tvr.114.2.744.
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Tomas, Ekaterina, and Svetlana Dorofeeva. "Mean Length of Utterance and Other Quantitative Measures of Spontaneous Speech in Russian-Speaking Children." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 12 (December 18, 2019): 4483–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_jslhr-l-18-0339.
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Purpose This study investigated methodological and theoretical aspects of using mean length of utterance (MLU) and its alternatives in cross-linguistic research and, in particular, its applicability to Russian—a language with a rich system of grammatical and derivational morphemes. Method We collected audio recordings of spontaneous speech samples from 27 Russian-speaking children aged between 2;9 and 5;7 (years;months) over individual play sessions. For each participant, we transcribed the first 100 complete utterances and coded them for several types of utterance length measurements, including length in morphemes (grammatical and derivational), words, and syllables. At a sample level, we calculated the average number of produced unique grammatical forms, getting an alternative quantitative estimate of children's morphosyntactic abilities. Results A combination of Pearson correlation analysis and Bland–Altman difference plots established that MLU can be reliably used in Russian-speaking children aged around 3;0. The average number of unique grammatical forms remains a sensitive measurement of language capabilities even in older children aged over 3;6. Two quantitative measurements, MLU in syllables and morphemes, show good agreement, suggesting that these measurements can be used interchangeably across studies. Sample size analysis revealed that samples under 75 utterances do not provide sufficient reliability for estimating a child's MLU. Conclusions This article demonstrated that MLU can be used in young Russian-speaking children under 3;0–3;6. Also, we showed that the classical morpheme calculation approach can be substituted with counting syllables, which is more time efficient in the absence of automated parsers and is potentially more appropriate for some (e.g., polysynthetic) languages. Our proposed alternative to MLU—the average number of grammatical forms in a sample—appears to be a more sensitive measurement of language capabilities even in older children.
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Klee, Thomas, and Martha Deitz Fitzgerald. "The relation between grammatical development and mean length of utterance in morphemes." Journal of Child Language 12, no. 2 (June 1985): 251–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900006437.
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ABSTRACTA widely held practice in many studies of child language development and disorders has been to employ an easily calculated numerical metric, mean length of utterance measured in morphemes (MLU), as a ‘general index of grammatical development’. While this practice seems to have found acceptance among many students of child language, the usefulness of MLU past Stage II has been assumed but never empirically tested. This study evaluated the grammatical performance and MLU of 18 normally developing 2- and 3-year-old children and found that MLU did not correlate significantly with age (r = 0·26), nor did it discriminate children's profiles of grammatical development.
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SIMON-CEREIJIDO, GABRIELA, and VERA F. GUTIÉRREZ-CLELLEN. "Spontaneous language markers of Spanish language impairment." Applied Psycholinguistics 28, no. 2 (March 1, 2007): 317–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716407070166.
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Spanish-speaking (SS) children with language impairment (LI) present with deficits in morphology and verb argument structure. These language areas may be useful for clinical identification of affected children. This study aimed to evaluate the discrimination accuracy of spontaneous language measures with SS preschoolers to tease out what combination of grammatical measure(s) were responsible for the LI deficits, and to determine the role of verb argument structure and syntactic complexity in identifying SS children with LI. Two sets of experiments were conducted on the spontaneous language samples of SS preschoolers with and without LI using discriminant function analyses. The study found that (a) mean length of utterance in words (MLUW) and ungrammaticality index in combination are fair to good discriminators of preschoolers with LI; (b) a morphology model combining correct use of articles, verbs, and clitics fairly discriminates LI children but may miss children whose language has limited syntactic complexity; and (c) semantic–syntactic complexity measures, such as MLUW, theme argument omissions, and ditransitive verb use, should be considered in the assessment of Spanish LI. The children who were bilingual and Spanish dominant in the study were classified as accurately as the Spanish-only children.
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Binger, Cathy, Jamie Ragsdale, and Aimee Bustos. "Language Sampling for Preschoolers With Severe Speech Impairments." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 25, no. 4 (November 2016): 493–507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2016_ajslp-15-0100.
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Purpose The purposes of this investigation were to determine if measures such as mean length of utterance (MLU) and percentage of comprehensible words can be derived reliably from language samples of children with severe speech impairments and if such measures correlate with tools that measure constructs assumed to be related. Method Language samples of 15 preschoolers with severe speech impairments (but receptive language within normal limits) were transcribed independently by 2 transcribers. Nonparametric statistics were used to determine which measures, if any, could be transcribed reliably and to determine if correlations existed between language sample measures and standardized measures of speech, language, and cognition. Results Reliable measures were extracted from the majority of the language samples, including MLU in words, mean number of syllables per utterance, and percentage of comprehensible words. Language sample comprehensibility measures were correlated with a single word comprehensibility task. Also, language sample MLUs and mean length of the participants' 3 longest sentences from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al., 2006) were correlated. Conclusion Language sampling, given certain modifications, may be used for some 3-to 5-year-old children with normal receptive language who have severe speech impairments to provide reliable expressive language and comprehensibility information.
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Chapman, Robin S., Hye-Kyeung Seung, Scott E. Schwartz, and Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird. "Language Skills of Children and Adolescents With Down Syndrome." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, no. 4 (August 1998): 861–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4104.861.
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Hypotheses that children and adolescents with Down syndrome show (a) a specific expressive language impairment, (b) a "critical period" for language acquisition, (c) a "simple sentence syntactic ceiling" in production, and (d) deficit in grammatical morphology were investigated cross-sectionally. Conversational and narrative language samples from 47 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21), aged 5 to 20 years, were compared to those from 47 control children aged 2 to 6 years matched statistically for nonverbal mental age. Children with Down syndrome appear to have a specific language impairment, compared to control children, in number of different words and total words (in the first 50 utterances) and in mean length of utterance (MLU). Total utterance attempts per minute were more frequent in the Down syndrome group. Narrative samples contained more word tokens, more word types, and longer MLU than conversation samples, for both groups. Intelligibility of narratives was significantly poorer for the Down syndrome group than controls. Analyses of narrative language sample by age sub-group showed no evidence of a critical period for language development ending at adolescence, nor of a "syntactic ceiling" at MLUs corresponding to simple sentences for the Down syndrome group. Omissions of word tokens and types were more frequent in the older Down syndrome than the younger control sample, matched on MLU.
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D'Odorico, Laura, Mirco Fasolo, Rosalinda Cassibba, and Alessandro Costantini. "Lexical, Morphological, and Syntactic Characteristics of Verbs in the Spontaneous Production of Italian Children." Child Development Research 2011 (January 17, 2011): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/498039.
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This study investigates from a developmental point of view the lexical, morphological, and syntactic characteristics of verb production during the first stages of language acquisition. The spontaneous productions of children with different mean length of utterance (MLU) were analysed, examining the relative production of different types of verbs (transitive, intransitive, and mixed), the arguments expressed or omitted in the utterances containing a verb, the morphological inflections produced by the children for each verb, and the generalisation of the syntactic construction with which specific verbs were produced. Data are interpreted in support of the hypothesis that children have a limited abstract knowledge of verbs in the early period of multiword utterance production and that the process of abstractness and generalisation develops gradually on the basis of linguistic experience.
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Leonard, Laurence B., and Denise Finneran. "Grammatical Morpheme Effects on MLU." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46, no. 4 (August 2003): 878–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2003/068).
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Studies of children with specific language impairment (SLI) often include 2 comparison groups of typically developing children—a group matched according to age and a group matched according to mean length of utterance (MLU). In these studies, both groups of typically developing children often perform better than the SLI group. For many of these investigations, grammatical morpheme use constitutes the dependent measure. The use of grammatical morphemes requires longer utterances than the failure to use these morphemes. If children with SLI show less use of grammatical morphemes than typically developing children matched for MLU, shouldn't they produce some other detail of language more frequently than the MLU-matched group¿ In this article, the authors report 2 studies showing that such offsetting effects are not necessary in principle, given the nature of MLU. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Smith, Sara A., Stephanie R. Seitz, Kelly H. Koutnik, Meaghan Mckenna, and Jorge N. Garcia. "The “work” of being a bilingual: Exploring effects of forced language switching on language production and stress level in a real-world setting." Applied Psycholinguistics 41, no. 3 (May 2020): 701–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716420000259.
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AbstractResearch using single-word paradigms has established that forced language switching incurs processing costs for some bilinguals, yet, less research has addressed this phenomenon at the utterance level or considered real-world applications. The current study examined the impacts of forced language switching on spoken output and stress using a simulated virtual meeting. Twenty Spanish–English heritage bilinguals responded to general work-oriented questions in monolingual English (control) or language-switching (experimental) conditions. Responses were analyzed for mean length of utterance (MLU) and type-token-ratio (TTR). Multilevel modeling revealed an interaction effect of Condition (control vs. experimental) and question order on MLU, such that participants in the experimental condition produced significantly shorter utterances by the end of the task. Participants also had significantly lower lexical variation (TTR) overall in the experimental than the control condition. A 2 × 2 ANOVA revealed a significant effect of Condition and an interaction of Task (pre- vs. posttask) and Condition, such that participants in the control condition reported significantly lower stress after the activity. Results demonstrated the impact of a forced switching condition on production at the utterance level. Findings have implications for theory and scenarios in which heritage bilinguals are asked to use multiple languages in the workplace.
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McKenna, Megan M., and Pamela A. Hadley. "Assessing Sentence Diversity in Toddlers At-Risk for Language Disorders." Perspectives on Language Learning and Education 21, no. 4 (November 2014): 159–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/lle21.4.159.
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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to introduce clinicians to an approach for assessing toddlers' sentence diversity and using criterion-referenced expectations to identify toddlers at-risk for clinically significant delays in grammatical development between 30 and 36 months of age. Method: Five at-risk toddlers were identified from an archival database. Mean length of utterance (MLU), grammatical complexity, and sentence diversity measures at 30 months of age were then used to evaluate the grammatical abilities of the at-risk children. Results: Three participants had MLUs of 1.50 or more standard deviations below the mean which alone would be sufficient for raising clinical concern. Although the other two toddlers had MLUs above 1.50, assessment of sentence diversity identified them as at-risk. The sentence diversity findings were also consistent with low grammatical complexity scores. Discussion: The clinical usefulness of a sentence-focused approach for assessment, intervention planning, and progress monitoring are discussed.
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Murray, Ann D., Jeanne Johnson, and Jo Peters. "Fine-tuning of utterance length to preverbal infants: effects on later language development." Journal of Child Language 17, no. 3 (October 1990): 511–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900010862.
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ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to determine (1) whether mothers simplify their speech during the second half of the first year of development when infants begin to comprehend words and use gestures to communicate intentionally, and (2) whether individual differences in mothers' speech adjustments influence their infants' later language acquisition. The subjects for the study were 14 mother-infant pairs from a medically low risk sample who were followed longitudinally. Mothers' mean length of utterance (MLU) was calculated from transcripts of face-to-face interaction when the infants were 0;3, 0;6, and 0;9 in age. Mothers who provided responsive and stimulating environments, as indicated by HOME scores, also reduced their MLU over the age range studied. Moreover, mothers' MLU adjustments during the first year were more predictive than the HOME scale in forecasting receptive language development at 1; 6. In contrast, expressive language abilities at 1; 6 were unrelated to the environmental variables measured but were predicted by child characteristics such as the infant's sex. These results suggest that a mother's ability to ‘fine-tune’ her early linguistic input may be predictive of her child's later receptive language functioning. Precursors of fine-tuning, such as maternal beliefs in reciprocity and infant object orientation, are discussed.
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CHE, ELIZABETH S., PATRICIA J. BROOKS, MARIA F. ALARCON, FRANCIS D. YANNACO, and SEAMUS DONNELLY. "Assessing the impact of conversational overlap in content on child language growth." Journal of Child Language 45, no. 1 (April 20, 2017): 72–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000917000083.
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AbstractWhen engaged in conversation, both parents and children tend to re-use words that their partner has just said. This study explored whether proportions of maternal and/or child utterances that overlapped in content with what their partner had just said contributed to growth in mean length of utterance (MLU), developmental sentence score, and vocabulary diversity over time. We analyzed the New England longitudinal corpus from the CHILDES database, comprising transcripts of mother–child conversations at 14, 20, and 32 months, using the CHIP command to compute proportions of utterances with overlapping content. Rates of maternal overlap, but not child overlap, at earlier time-points predicted child language outcomes at later time-points, after controlling for earlier child MLU. We suggest that maternal overlap plays a formative role in child language development by providing content that is immediately relevant to what the child has in mind.
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Montanari, Simona, Robert Mayr, and Kaveri Subrahmanyam. "Bilingual Speech Sound Development During the Preschool Years: The Role of Language Proficiency and Cross-Linguistic Relatedness." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 61, no. 10 (October 26, 2018): 2467–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-17-0393.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate typical Spanish–English speech sound development longitudinally in a group of bilingual preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start Program and to examine the extent to which such development is linked to language proficiency. The study also aimed to identify whether speech development is related cross-linguistically and to improve our understanding of error patterns in this population. Method Thirty-five bilingual preschool children produced single-word speech samples in Spanish and English both at the beginning of their first and their second year in a Head Start Program. Conversational samples in both languages were also collected at these data points to calculate mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and thus assess the children's linguistic proficiency. The phonetically transcribed speech samples were compared over time in terms of segmental accuracy measures and error pattern frequencies. Correlation analyses were run to examine the relation between segmental accuracy measures across languages and between speech sound production and MLUw. Results One-way within-subject analysis of variance revealed significant improvements in accuracy over time in both languages, but not always for cross-linguistically unshared segments, nor for all consonant manner classes. Overall error rates decreased over time in both languages; although, certain error types showed no change. Cross-linguistic interactions were low in both languages. The results also revealed significant cross-linguistic correlations in segmental accuracy between Spanish and English, as well as between MLUw and speech sound production in both languages on a range of measures, with language-specific differences in Year 2 of the Head Start Program, but not in Year 1. Conclusions This study is the first to document developmental changes in the speech patterns of Spanish–English bilingual preschool children over 1 year. Accuracy rates improved significantly in both languages, suggesting that enhanced exposure to the majority language at school may not impede phonological development in the home language. Bootstrapping effects were particularly pronounced on cross-linguistically shared sounds, which suggests that the same underlying skills are utilized in both languages, whereas language-specific singleton consonants and consonant clusters did not appear to benefit from exposure to the other language. The results also suggest an intricate link between phonological skills and morphosyntactic performance at the early stages of development, but a more complex pattern thereafter with differences that may be based on language-specific phonological properties.
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Blake, Joanna, Wendy Austin, Marsha Cannon, Amanda Lisus, and Annabel Vaughan. "The Relationship between Memory Span and Measures of Imitative and Spontaneous Language Complexity in Preschool Children." International Journal of Behavioral Development 17, no. 1 (March 1994): 91–107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/016502549401700106.
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Preschool children, aged 2 to 5 years, were given a memory task that required them to repeat a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. A sample of their spontaneous speech was also recorded. Word span was found to predict sentence imitation scores across the whole preschool age range. Word span and chronological age (CA), together, also predicted the mean length of utterance in spontaneous speech in younger preschool children. In a replication with children aged 2 to 3 years, word span predicted mean length or utterance (MLU) better than both CA and mental age (MA). These results extend previous findings regarding the relationship between word span and language imitation to younger preschool children. They also support the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appears to obviate a memory constraint on spontaneous language, at least with these measures.
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Yoder, Paul J., Heidi Spruytenburg, Anne Edwards, and Betty Davies. "Effect of Verbal Routine Contexts and Expansions on Gains in the Mean Length of Utterance in Children With Developmental Delays." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 26, no. 1 (January 1995): 21–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.2601.21.
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This study tests the hypothesis that verbal routines and expansions increase generalized child mean length of utterance (MLU). Verbal routines were built through repeated interaction with the same picture book across several intervention sessions. The subjects were four young children with developmental delay. One of the subjects experienced two rounds of the intervention (i.e., two intervention phases with two different books) to provide the opportunity for more replication and extension of the effects. Generalization sessions were conducted with a different adult, different modality of material (i.e., objects), and different interaction style than were used during the intervention. The pattern of the results provides strong evidence that the intervention increased generalized MLU in children in the first stage of language development more than in children in a later language stage. The secondary analyses support the notion that verbal routines and expansions were responsible for the effects. Future research is needed to determine why the intervention was not effective for the developmentally older cases but was effective for the developmentally younger cases.
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Konst, Emmy M., Toni Rietveld, Herman F. M. Peters, and Anne Marie Kuijpers-Jagtman. "Language Skills of Young Children with Unilateral Cleft Lip and Palate following Infant Orthopedics: A Randomized Clinical Trial." Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal 40, no. 4 (July 2003): 356–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1597/1545-1569_2003_040_0356_lsoycw_2.0.co_2.
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Objective To investigate the effects of infant orthopedics (IO) on the language skills of children with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP). Design In a prospective randomized clinical trial (Dutchcleft), two groups of children with complete UCLP were followed up longitudinally: one group was treated with IO based on a modified Zurich approach in the first year of life (IO group); the other group did not receive this treatment (non-IO group). At the ages of 2, 2½, 3, and 6 years, language development was evaluated in 12 children (six IO and six non-IO). Receptive language skills were assessed using the Reynell test. Expressive language skills of the toddlers were evaluated by calculating mean length of utterance (MLU) and mean length of longest utterances (MLLU); in the 6-year-olds, the expressive language skills were measured using standardized Dutch language tests. Patients The participants had complete UCLP without soft tissue bands or other malformations. Results IO did not affect the receptive language skills. However, the expressive language measures MLU and MLLU were influenced by IO. At age 2½ and 3 years, the IO group produced longer utterances than the non-IO group. In the follow-up, the difference in expressive language between the two groups was no longer significant. Conclusions Children treated with IO during their first year of life produced longer sentences than non-IO children at the ages of 2½ and 3 years. At 6 years of age, both groups presented similar expressive language skills. Hence, IO treatment did not have long-lasting effects on language development.
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Ma, Yingying. "An Analysis of Linguistic Differences between Different Genders of Chinese Children from the Communicative Strategies." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 9, no. 4 (April 1, 2019): 429. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0904.10.
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This research investigates gender difference in verbal interaction of Chinese Children around 3 and a half years old. It based on corpus linguistic study and focused on comparing the MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) and frequency of use of word parts between boys and girls, to find whether there are significant differences in language competence between boys and girls. Meanwhile, this research provides some practical strategies to facilitate the language learning process from the aspect of different genders.
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Lattermann, Christina, Rosalee C. Shenker, and Elin Thordardottir. "Progression of Language Complexity During Treatment With the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering Intervention." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 14, no. 3 (August 2005): 242–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2005/024).
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The Lidcombe Program is an operant treatment for early stuttering. Outcomes indicate that the program is effective; however, the underlying mechanisms leading to a successful reduction of stuttering remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fluency achieved with the Lidcombe Program was accompanied by concomitant reduction of utterance length and decreases in linguistic complexity. Standardized language tests were administered pretreatment to 4 male preschool children. Spontaneous language samples were taken 2 weeks prior to treatment, at Weeks 1, 4, 8, and 12 during treatment, and 6 months after the onset of treatment. Samples were analyzed for mean length of utterance (MLU), percentage of simple and complex sentences, number of different words (NDW), and percentage of syllables stuttered. Analysis revealed that all participants presented with language skills in the average and above average range. The children achieved an increase in stutter-free speech accompanied by increases in MLU, percentage of complex sentences, and NDW. For these preschool children who stutter, improved stutter-free speech during treatment with the program appeared to be achieved without a decrease in linguistic complexity. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
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Owens, Robert E., and Stacey L. Pavelko. "Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised (SUGAR): Quantitative Values for Language Sample Analysis Measures in 7- to 11-Year-Old Children." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 3 (July 15, 2020): 734–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00027.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to document whether mean length of utterance SUGAR (MLU S ), total number of words (TNW), clauses per sentence (CPS), and/or words per sentence (WPS) demonstrated age-related changes in children with typically developing language, aged 7;0–10;11 (years;months). Method Participants were 132 typically developing children (aged 7;0–10;11), with a final sample size of 112 participants (57 boys and 55 girls). Fifty utterance conversational language samples were collected using a language sampling protocol. Four language sample analysis metrics (i.e., MLU S , TNW, CPS, and WPS) were calculated from the samples. Results Results indicated statistically significant age-related increases in three (MLU S , TNW, and WPS) of the four metrics. Conclusions MLU S , TNW, CPS, and WPS may be used with other assessment data to document age-related language changes in children aged 7;0–10;11. When combined with previous data from younger (aged 3;0–7;11) children (Pavelko & Owens, 2017), the data suggest that these metrics offer a set of measures that can be used to assess children's conversational language skills from preschool through late elementary school.
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LEVY, YONATA, RIKI GOTTESMAN, ZVI BOROCHOWITZ, MOSHE FRYDMAN, and MICHAL SAGI. "Language in boys with fragile X syndrome." Journal of Child Language 33, no. 1 (February 2006): 125–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030500090500718x.
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The current paper reports of language production in 15 Hebrew-speaking boys, aged 9;0–13;0, with fully methylated, non-mosaic fragile X syndrome and no concomitant diagnosis of autism. Contrary to expectations, seven children were non-verbal. Language production in the verbal children was studied in free conversations and in context-bound speech. Despite extra caution in calculating MLU, participants' language level was not predicted by mean utterance length. Context bound speech resulted in grammatically more advanced performance than free conversation, and performance in both contexts differed in important ways from performance of typically developing MLU-matched controls. The relevance of MLU as a predictor of productive grammar in disordered populations is briefly discussed.
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Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera F., M. Adelaida Restrepo, Lisa Bedore, Elizabeth Peña, and Raquel Anderson. "Language Sample Analysis in Spanish-Speaking Children." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 31, no. 1 (January 2000): 88–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.3101.88.
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The purposes of this article are (a) to discuss issues related to the selection and development of language assessment procedures for children who speak Spanish and English based on spontaneous language samples and (b) to show how available procedures can be applied to research and clinical aims with these children. Sociolinguistic influences in the language performance of Spanish-speaking children, including patterns of language shift, differences in the amount of exposure to each of a bilingual's languages, and contextual effects of different language-learning environments, are discussed. Methodological issues and effects of codeswitching and dialect are examined concerning use of the Developmental Assessment of Spanish Grammar (DASG), mean length of response in words (MLR-w), mean length of terminable unit (MLTU), and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m). Measures of Spanish grammar with diagnostic potential are proposed. Clinical suggestions for the language assessment of Spanish-speaking children with different levels of English proficiency and research implications are discussed.
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Southwood, Frenette, and Ann F. Russell. "Comparison of Conversation, Freeplay, and Story Generation as Methods of Language Sample Elicitation." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, no. 2 (April 2004): 366–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2004/030).
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The spontaneous language sample forms an important part of the language evaluation protocol (M. Dunn, J. Flax, M. Sliwinski, & D. Aram, 1996; J. L. Evans & H. K. Craig, 1992; L. E. Evans & J. Miller, 1999) because of the limitations of standardized language tests and their unavailability in certain languages, such as Afrikaans. This study examined 3 methods of language elicitation, namely conversation (CV), freeplay (FP), and story generation (SG), on the following 5 measures to determine which method is best for clinical practice: number of utterances, variety of syntactic structures, mean length of the utterance (MLU), number of syntactic errors, and proportion of complex syntactic utterances as elicited from ten 5-year-old, Afrikaans-speaking boys. FP elicited significantly more utterances than did SG but elicited a smaller proportion of complex syntactic structures than did CV and SG. Furthermore, SG elicited longer utterances than did CV or FP. It is recommended that SG be used in clinical practice with 5-year-olds if the clinician wishes to observe maximum behavior. Where typical behavior is to be evaluated, the clinician can select a language elicitation method that best suits the client’s personality and communication style, bearing in mind that FP does elicit a larger language sample.
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STICH, MELANIE, LUIGI GIROLAMETTO, CARLA J. JOHNSON, PATRICIA L. CLEAVE, and XI CHEN. "Contextual effects on the conversations of mothers and their children with language impairment." Applied Psycholinguistics 36, no. 2 (April 19, 2013): 323–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716413000258.
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ABSTRACTTwenty-four mothers and their preschool children with language impairment participated in two 12-min sessions of toy play and book reading that were transcribed to yield maternal mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m), type token ratio (TTR), and maternal interaction style (directive vs. responsive). Maternal MLU-m was significantly longer during book reading than during toy play, whereas TTR was similar across contexts. In contrast, children's MLU-m was similar across contexts, whereas TTR was higher during book reading. Mothers used an eliciting style characterized by more commands and questions during toy play than during book reading. Only maternal MLU-m predicted children's expressive language skills (i.e., a composite score of two standardized language tests). The implications include sampling both book reading and play interactions because they provide differential opportunities for conversation and language productivity.
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Fromm, Davida, Margaret Forbes, Audrey Holland, Sarah Grace Dalton, Jessica Richardson, and Brian MacWhinney. "Discourse Characteristics in Aphasia Beyond the Western Aphasia Battery Cutoff." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 26, no. 3 (August 15, 2017): 762–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2016_ajslp-16-0071.
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Purpose This study examined discourse characteristics of individuals with aphasia who scored at or above the 93.8 cutoff on the Aphasia Quotient subtests of the Western Aphasia Battery–Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2007). They were compared with participants without aphasia and those with anomic aphasia. Method Participants were from the AphasiaBank database and included 28 participants who were not aphasic by WAB-R score (NABW), 92 participants with anomic aphasia, and 177 controls. Cinderella narratives were analyzed using the Computerized Language Analysis programs (MacWhinney, 2000). Outcome measures were words per minute, percent word errors, lexical diversity using the moving average type–token ratio (Covington, 2007b), main concept production, number of utterances, mean length of utterance, and proposition density. Results Results showed that the NABW group was significantly different from the controls on all measures except MLU and proposition density. These individuals were compared to participants without aphasia and those with anomic aphasia. Conclusion Individuals with aphasia who score above the WAB-R Aphasia Quotient cutoff demonstrate discourse impairments that warrant both treatment and special attention in the research literature.
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Lahey, Margaret, Jacqueline Liebergott, Marie Chesnick, Paula Menyuk, and Janet Adams. "Variability in children's use of grammatical morphemes." Applied Psycholinguistics 13, no. 3 (July 1992): 373–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400005683.
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AbstractThe authors analyzed 104 language samples, obtained from 42 different normal language learning children at 25, 29, and 35 months of age, for the proportional use of 11 grammatical morphemes: plural -s, possessive 's, progressive -ing, regular and irregular past, and regular and irregular present, as well as the contractible and uncontractible forms of the copula and auxiliary to be. Wide variability was found among the samples in the proportional use of each morpheme, whether the samples were grouped by age or mean length of utterance (MLU). At ages 25 and 29 months, the range of proportional use was over .95 for 9 of the 11 morphemes, and at 35 months, it was .50 or greater for 8. At an MLU level of 2.50–2.99, the range of scores was .90 or greater for 8 of the morphemes, and over .65 for the remaining 3. By MLUs of 4.00 or more, ranges had narrowed but were still .50 or greater for 4 of the morphemes. Rank order of acquisition by MLU level varied somewhat from that previously reported in the literature (e.g., contractible copula was ranked higher and irregular past was ranked lower than has been reported in other studies). Correlations of MLU and morpheme use ranged from .11 to .74, with rho > .60 for only 3 and <.35 for 4 morphemes. Comparisons of these data with those reported in the literature on specifically language-impaired (SLI) children indicated that group means were generally lower for SLI children, but that many of the SLI children's scores overlapped with those of the children studied here.
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Craig, Holly K., and Julia L. Evans. "Pragmatics and SLI." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 36, no. 4 (August 1993): 777–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3604.777.
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Selected discourse behaviors of children with specific language impairment (SU) presenting expressive (E:SLI) or combined expressive-receptive deficits (E-R:SLI) were compared to each other and to chronological age-mates and younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children with normal-language skills. The two SLI subgroups varied from each other on specific measures of tum-taking and cohesion. These findings imply the need for future normative work with SLI subgroups differing in receptive skill, and indicate that, in the interim, pragmatic research with this population will need to consider potential effects of receptive language status when interpreting variations in outcomes for discourse-based variables.
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Félix, Juliana, Maria Emília Santos, and Antonio Benítez-Burraco. "Spontaneous language of preterm children aged 4 and 5 years." Revista CEFAC 19, no. 6 (December 2017): 742–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1982-021620171968017.
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ABSTRACT Purposes: to evaluate spontaneous language development through the Mean Length of Utterance in words (MLU-w) of children with gestational age between 28 and 36 weeks. This research also aims to study if the gestational age, birth weight, gender, and parents’ level of formal education can influence that measurement. Methods: nineteen premature children (9 males, 10 females), in the age range 4-5 years old, enrolled on Lisbon area kindergartens, and considered as having typical development, participated in this research. Spontaneous speech of each child was recorded for 30 minutes and transcribed afterwards. Results: mean values of MLU-w of Portuguese premature children were significantly lower than those with typical development. A positive and significant correlation between the gestational age and the birth weight with the MLU-w was also found. The gender of the children and the parents’ level of formal education showed no influence on the results. Conclusion: these results reinforce the need to identify, on these children, possible deficits, in order to prevent negative impacts in school education, and stimulate their psychosocial development.
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Haebig, Eileen, Audra Sterling, and Jill Hoover. "Examining the Language Phenotype in Children With Typical Development, Specific Language Impairment, and Fragile X Syndrome." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 59, no. 5 (October 2016): 1046–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2016_jslhr-l-15-0185.
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Purpose One aspect of morphosyntax, finiteness marking, was compared in children with fragile X syndrome (FXS), specific language impairment (SLI), and typical development matched on mean length of utterance (MLU). Method Nineteen children with typical development (mean age = 3.3 years), 20 children with SLI (mean age = 4.9 years), and 17 boys with FXS (mean age = 11.9 years) completed the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI; Rice & Wexler, 2001), and other cognitive and language assessments. Quantitative comparisons on finiteness marking and qualitative comparisons of unscorable (i.e., nontarget) TEGI responses were conducted. Results Children with typical development and FXS performed better on finiteness marking than children with SLI. Although unscorable responses were infrequent, boys with FXS produced more unscorable responses than children with typical development and SLI. Conclusions Although boys with FXS have language deficits, they performed similarly to MLU-matched typically developing children on finiteness marking. This language profile differs from children with SLI, who present with a delay-within-a-delay profile with finiteness marking delays that exceed delays in MLU. Unscorable responses produced by the boys with FXS may reflect pragmatic deficits, which are prominent in this population. Assessment procedures should be carefully considered when examining language in boys with FXS.
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Rice, Mabel L., JoAnn C. Buhr, and Mary Nemeth. "Fast Mapping Word-Learning Abilities of Language-Delayed Preschoolers." Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 55, no. 1 (February 1990): 33–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshd.5501.33.
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The fast mapping skills of language-delayed 5-year-old children were investigated. Children viewed a video presentation in which four kinds of unfamiliar words (object, action, attribute, and affective state) were incorporated into a narrative script. The pre- and postviewing comprehension of the targeted words was measured. The language-delayed children were compared to two groups, one matched for chronological age (CA) and the other matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Children were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. All three groups indicated fast mapping of unfamiliar words, although the language-delayed children scored lower than the MLU-matched group, who in turn scored lower than the CA-matched group. The experimental effects were most pronounced for object and attribute words. The limited fast mapping of the language-delayed group was not accounted for by a restricted general vocabulary nor by a general delay in grammatical development.
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Koch, Nikolas, Antje Endesfelder Quick, and Stefan Hartmann. "Individual differences in discourse priming." Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Volume 34 (2020) 34 (December 31, 2020): 186–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00045.koc.
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Abstract In this paper we use corpora of four monolingual German-speaking children at 2 years of age to analyze the effect of input on the activation of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. For this purpose, we first investigate to what extent chunks and patterns can be traced back to the direct input compared to input which is not part of the immediate discourse situation. Second, we take mean length of utterance (MLU) into account to see how the level of proficiency influences the amount of priming in each child. Results indicate that children with a lower MLU rely more on priming than children who are more proficient. This conclusion is consistent with the usage-based assumption that children’s linguistic development starts with a strongly item-based reproduction of input patterns that gradually gives rise to increasingly creative and productive uses of constructions.
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Roberts, Julie, Leslie Rescorla, Jennifer Giroux, and Lisa Stevens. "Phonological Skills of Children With Specific Expressive Language Impairment (SLI-E)." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, no. 2 (April 1998): 374–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4102.374.
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Naturalistic speech samples of 29 3-year-olds diagnosed with specific expressive language delay (SLI-E) were compared to those produced by 19 age-matched normally developing peers in order to determine their improvement in phonological skills since age 2, when Rescorla and Ratner (1996) studied them. Specifically, the groups were compared with regard to vocalization rate, verbalizations, fully intelligible utterances, phonetic inventories, percentages of consonants correct (PCC), phonological processes, and mean length of utterance (MLU). Results revealed that there was no significant difference between the groups in their numbers of vocalizations (as there had been at age 2), although there continued to be differences in their phonetic inventories, PCC scores, and overall intelligibility. These findings suggest that at age 2 the children with SLI-E were not only less phonologically skilled but less talkative, whereas by age 3 they were equally vocal. Analysis of the phonetic inventories of the children demonstrated that for most consonants, the SLI-E group followed the same pattern of development as the comparison children, but more of the normally developing group had productive control of each consonant, consistent with findings of Rescorla and Ratner. There continued to be differences in intelligibility as measured by rates of verbalization (those utterances with at least one intelligible word) and fully intelligible utterances. Using these measures, we found that approximately half the SLI-E children had caught up with their normally developing peers in terms of articulation, whereas half of them continued to be significantly delayed. Finally, although some of the late-bloomer group had caught up to the comparison children in language skills, as measured by MLU, many had not, suggesting that there was a tendency for the children to catch up in some articulation skills before catching up in language abilities.
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Ko, Eon-Suk. "Nonlinear development of speaking rate in child-directed speech." LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts 2 (July 6, 2011): 18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/exabs.v0i0.552.
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The current study investigated if the speaking rate in Child-Directed Speech (CDS) changes over the course of child language development, and, if so, what the nature of that change is. The developmental path of CDS speaking rate was analyzed in 25 mother-child pairs from longitudinal corpora in CHILDES database. The results were then compared with the developmental pattern of speaking rate in child-produced speech. A parallel analysis was made on the development of mean length of utterance (MLU) in mother and child. The findings suggest that CDS speaking rate dynamically changes with shifts occurring around the onset of child speech production and again during the multiword stage. A parallel pattern of nonlinearity was also observed in the speaking rate of the child and the MLU of both mother and child. Phonological precision effects in CDS (e.g. exaggerated VOT) are explained as a by-product of varying speaking rate. Implications of the findings for studies of language acquisition are discussed.
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Condouris, Karen, Echo Meyer, and Helen Tager-Flusberg. "The Relationship Between Standardized Measures of Language and Measures of Spontaneous Speech in Children With Autism." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 12, no. 3 (August 2003): 349–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2003/080).
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This study investigated the relationship between scores on standardized tests (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals [CELF], Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition [PPVT-III], and Expressive Vocabulary Test) and measures of spontaneous speech (mean length of utterance [MLU], Index of Productive Syntax, and number of different word roots [NDWR]) derived from natural language samples obtained from 44 children with autism between the ages of 4 and 14 years old. The children with autism were impaired across both groups of measures. The two groups of measures were significantly correlated, and specific relationships were found between lexical-semantic measures (NDWR, vocabulary tests, and the CELF lexical-semantic subtests) and grammatical measures (MLU, and CELF grammar subtests), suggesting that both standardized and spontaneous speech measures tap the same underlying linguistic abilities in children with autism. These findings have important implications for clinicians and researchers who depend on these types of language measures for diagnostic purposes, assessment, and investigations of language impairments in autism.
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Tomblin, J. Bruce, Cynthia M. Shonrock, and James C. Hardy. "The Concurrent Validity of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory as a Measure of Young Children's Language Development." Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 54, no. 1 (February 1989): 101–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshd.5401.101.
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The extent to which the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI), could be used to estimate levels of language development in 2-year-old children was examined. Fifty-seven children between 23 and 28 months were given the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD), and at the same time a parent completed the MCDI. In addition the mean length of utterance (MLU) was obtained for each child from a spontaneous speech sample. The MCDI Expressive Language scale was found to be a strong predictor of both the SICD Expressive scale and MLU. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale, presumably a receptive language measure, was moderately correlated with the SICD Receptive scale; however, it was also strongly correlated with the expressive measures. These results demonstrated that the Expressive Language scale of the MCDI was a valid predictor of expressive language for 2-year-old children. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale appeared to assess both receptive and expressive language, thus complicating its interpretation.
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Brundage, Shelley B., and Hannah Rowe. "Rates of Typical Disfluency in the Conversational Speech of 30-Month-Old Spanish–English Simultaneous Bilinguals." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 27, no. 3S (October 19, 2018): 1287–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2018_ajslp-odc11-17-0200.
Full textAbstract:
Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the typical disfluency rates at 30 months old in a large group of simultaneous bilingual children and also investigate the relationships between disfluency rates and linguistic complexity (mean length of utterance in words [MLU-W]), vocabulary diversity (VocD), and speaking rate (utterances per unit time). Method Fifty-three typically developing children who had been exposed to Spanish and English from birth participated in this descriptive study. The average percent input at home was 46% in English and 54% in Spanish. Outside the home, the children averaged 9 hr of exposure per week in each language. Spontaneous speech samples in both languages were obtained during play sessions between the children and a parent. Results Nonparametric tests revealed a significant difference in typical disfluency rates across languages, with more children being disfluent in English and with a larger range of disfluency rates in English. The effect size for this difference was small. The children had significantly higher MLU-W in English; there were no differences in VocD or speaking rate between the 2 languages. Typical disfluency rate in Spanish was not significantly correlated with MLU-W, VocD, or speaking rate. Typical disfluency rates in English were correlated with MLU-W and VocD, but not with speaking rate. Conclusion This article described the typical disfluency rates of a large group of simultaneous Spanish–English bilingual children at 30 months of age. The typical disfluency rates reported here are lower than those reported in the literature for monolingual children of similar ages. Clinical implications of these findings are addressed.