Dataset Information

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

This study investigated the effects of a complex sentence treatment at 2 dosage levels on language performance of 30 school-age children ages 10-14 years with specific language impairment.

Method

Three types of complex sentences (adverbial, object complement, relative) were taught in sequence in once or twice weekly dosage conditions. Outcome measures included sentence probes administered at baseline, treatment, and posttreatment phases and comparisons of pre-post performance on oral and written language tests and tasks. Relationships between pretest variables and treatment outcomes were also explored.

Results

Treatment was effective at improving performance on the sentence probes for the majority of participants; however, results differed by sentence type, with the largest effect sizes for adverbial and relative clauses. Significant and clinically meaningful pre-post treatment gains were found on a comprehensive oral language test, but not on reading and writing measures. There was no treatment advantage for the higher dosage group. Several significant correlations indicated a relationship between lower pretest scores and higher outcome measures.

Conclusions

Results suggest that a focused intervention can produce improvements in complex sentence productions of older school children with language impairment. Future research should explore ways to maximize gains and extend impact to natural language contexts.

Supplemental material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5923318.

SUBMITTER: Balthazar CH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6195070 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study.

Balthazar Catherine H CH Scott Cheryl M CM

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR 20180301 3

<h4>Purpose</h4>This study investigated the effects of a complex sentence treatment at 2 dosage levels on language performance of 30 school-age children ages 10-14 years with specific language impairment.<h4>Method</h4>Three types of complex sentences (adverbial, object complement, relative) were taught in sequence in once or twice weekly dosage conditions. Outcome measures included sentence probes administered at baseline, treatment, and posttreatment phases and comparisons of pre-post performa ...[more]

PMID: 29490376

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Project description:Weak central coherence (processing details over gist), poor oral language abilities, poor suppression, semantic interference, and poor comprehension monitoring have all been implicated to affect reading comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study viewed the contributions of different supporting skills as a collective set of skills necessary for context integration-a multi-component view-to examine individual differences in reading comprehension in school-age children (8-14 years) with ASD (n = 23) and typically developing control peers (n = 23). Participants completed a written ambiguous sentence comprehension task in which participants had to integrate context to determine the correct homonym meaning via picture selection. Both comprehension products (i.e., offline representations after reading) and processes (i.e., online processing during reading) were evaluated. Results indicated that children with ASD, similar to their TD peers, integrated the context to access the correct homonym meanings while reading. However, after reading the sentences, when participants were asked to select the meanings, both groups experienced semantic interference between the two meanings. This semantic interference hindered the children with ASD's sentence representation to a greater degree than their peers. Individual differences in age/development, word recognition, vocabulary breadth (i.e., number of words in the lexicon), and vocabulary depth (i.e., knowledge of the homonym meanings) contributed to sentence comprehension in both children with ASD and their peers. Together, this evidence supports a multi-component view, and that helping children with ASD develop vocabulary depth may have cascading effects on their reading comprehension. Autism Res 2017, 10: 2002-2022. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Lay summaryLike their peers, children with ASD were able to integrate context, or link words while reading sentences with ambiguous words (words with two meanings). After reading the sentences, both groups found it hard to pick the correct meaning of the ambiguous sentence and this decision was more difficult for the participants with ASD. Older children, children with better word reading abilities, and children with higher vocabularies were better at understanding ambiguous sentences. Helping children with ASD to develop richer vocabularies could be important for improving their reading comprehension.

Dataset Information

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study.

Purpose

Method

Results

Conclusions

Supplemental material

Publications

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study.

Similar Datasets

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