Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Medicine and Health Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 46

Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Sociability In Children With Developmental Language Disorder, Miranda Elizabeth Miller Jun 2019

Sociability In Children With Developmental Language Disorder, Miranda Elizabeth Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This study employed the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to investigate two aspects of sociability, likeability and prosocial behavior, in 143 children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and 131 of their typically developing peers. Initially, measurement invariance analysis was performed to determine if teachers evaluated likeability and sociability in a similar manner for both children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Likeability items on the TBRS were invariant, and 4 of the 5 prosociability items were invariant. Subsequent analysis revealed that teachers rated children with DLD lower in both likeability and prosociability in comparison to their typically developing peers. …


The Ability Of Children With Developmental Language Disorder (Dld) To Infer Emotions From Pictures: Where's The Breakdown?, Mary Rebekah Forbes Apr 2019

The Ability Of Children With Developmental Language Disorder (Dld) To Infer Emotions From Pictures: Where's The Breakdown?, Mary Rebekah Forbes

Theses and Dissertations

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with social and emotional learning, including emotion understanding and inferencing. Five children with DLD, ages 6;4 to 11;9, identified emotions depicted in pictured scenarios over a period of 10 weeks. Emotion categories included happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each child's responses were analyzed and plotted on a confusion matrix. In a few cases, children did not interpret the scenario accurately. Even when they interpreted the scenario accurately, all of the children misapplied, overgeneralized, or confused emotion labels in some cases. These errors represented limitations in social and emotional learning …


The Effect Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words In Children With Language Impairment, Annelise Luddington Jun 2018

The Effect Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words In Children With Language Impairment, Annelise Luddington

Theses and Dissertations

Children diagnosed with Language Impairment (LI) often have difficulty with aspects of social communication. This thesis evaluates the effects of a social communication intervention focused on facilitating the correct production of emotion words in four elementary school-aged children with LI. Researchers monitored changes from pretreatment baseline data, through the intervention, and ended with posttreatment follow-up data for the emotions happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Based on baseline measures, emotion categories in which the child showed limited proficiency were targeted for the 20 intervention sessions. The emotions targeted were different for each child. Each intervention session contained a combination …


The Effects Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words For Children With Language Impairment, Julia Vincent Hetherton Apr 2018

The Effects Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words For Children With Language Impairment, Julia Vincent Hetherton

Theses and Dissertations

Many school-age children with language impairment (LI) have difficulties with aspects of social and emotional learning. This study was structured to evaluate one aspect of the effectiveness of a social communication intervention, the appropriate production of emotion words. Four school-aged children with LI participated in 20 sessions of story-based intervention targeting understanding and usage of emotion-based words. Emotions targeted included the emotion word categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Because the knowledge of the emotion word categories varied from child to child, each child had different target words. The percentage of correct production of targeted emotion …


The Efficacy Of A Literature-Based Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Withdrawal For Children With Language Impairment, Cammy G. Peterson Jul 2017

The Efficacy Of A Literature-Based Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Withdrawal For Children With Language Impairment, Cammy G. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that children with language impairment (LI) often have deficits in social communication. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a social communication intervention targeting emotion understanding on teacher perceptions of withdrawal in six elementary-aged boys with LI. The intervention incorporated four elements into treatment sessions: a) Story sharing of children's literature that was rich in emotional content and prosocial behaviors; b) Story enactment of the same children's literature; c) identification and discussion of pictures of facial expressions; and d) journaling to help internalize and reflect on emotions and social behaviors targeted. Two withdrawal subscales …


The Ability Of Five Children With Language Impairment To Describe Mental State In Story Narratives In Spontaneous And Prompted Conditions: Does It Help To Ask?, Naomi Asai Jul 2017

The Ability Of Five Children With Language Impairment To Describe Mental State In Story Narratives In Spontaneous And Prompted Conditions: Does It Help To Ask?, Naomi Asai

Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies have shown that children identified with Language Impairment (LI) have marked difficulty with producing story narratives compared to their typically developing peers. One particular area of weakness seen in the narratives of children with LI is their ability to incorporate internal states, specifically internal response, internal plan, and emotion words. The current study examines five children with LI and their descriptions of mental and emotional states of characters in story narratives under spontaneous and prompted conditions. Participants produced story retells based on a series of wordless picture books taken from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. Story retells were …


Using A Social Communication Intervention To Increase Emotion Word Use In Children With Language Impairment, Breeana Lee Bell Jun 2017

Using A Social Communication Intervention To Increase Emotion Word Use In Children With Language Impairment, Breeana Lee Bell

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention to increase the production of emotion words in five children with language impairment. Participants were between the ages of 5;11 (years; months) and 11;3 (at the onset of enrollment in treatment) and had been identified with language impairment. Each participant completed between three and six baseline sessions, 20 twenty-minute intervention sessions, and three follow-up sessions. Tasks included story reading, story enactment, and journaling. Each session was recorded and then coded for emotion category (sadness, anger, fear, and surprise), errors made, type of production, and valence agreement. Total …


Solitary-Pretend Play In Children With Language Impairment And Their Typically-Developing Peers, Mallory Paige Scofield Apr 2017

Solitary-Pretend Play In Children With Language Impairment And Their Typically-Developing Peers, Mallory Paige Scofield

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) are more likely to be socially withdrawn than their typically-developing peers. This withdrawal can lead to negative outcomes later in life. This study focuses on a subtype of withdrawal labeled as solitary-pretend play, which involves parallel play and solitary-dramatizing. The effectiveness of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to measure the construct of solitary-pretend play was considered in a group of 256 children. First, confirmatory factor analysis was used on the entire sample to assess the TBRS questions. The TBRS ratings of 128 children with LI and 128 typically developing peers were then compared, with …


Measuring Subtypes Of Withdrawal In Children With Language Impairment, Emma Maille Coombs Apr 2017

Measuring Subtypes Of Withdrawal In Children With Language Impairment, Emma Maille Coombs

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate increased levels of withdrawal, specifically the reticent and solitary-passive subtypes. Although it is recognized that there are several subtypes of withdrawal, the relationship between withdrawal and children with LI is complex and unclear. The aim of this study was to examine items on the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to better understand the nature of withdrawal in children with LI. A factor analysis of TBRS scores of 355 participants was conducted to ensure that individual items on each subscale were measuring the same construct. An invariance analysis was also performed to ensure items …


The Ability Of Six Children With Language Impairment To Generate Stories From Pictured Stimuli: A Pilot Study, Molly Roxanne Alldredge Dec 2016

The Ability Of Six Children With Language Impairment To Generate Stories From Pictured Stimuli: A Pilot Study, Molly Roxanne Alldredge

Theses and Dissertations

Narrative production and comprehension is a difficult task for children with language impairment (LI). Their stories are typically shorter and contain more grammatical errors than the stories of typically developing age-matched peers. This pilot study describes the abilities of six children with LI to produce stories from pictured stimuli. Stories were elicited from each child during a 10-week period. Stimulus pictures and coding procedures from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument were employed to analyze the participants' story grammar (SG). Eight SG elements were assessed including character introduction, setting, initiating event (IE), internal response (IR), internal plan (IP), attempt, and outcome. …


Topic Manipulation In Five Children With Language Impairment In Response To Topic Probes, Kimberly Kasey Baker Dec 2016

Topic Manipulation In Five Children With Language Impairment In Response To Topic Probes, Kimberly Kasey Baker

Theses and Dissertations

This study describes a series of case studies on topic management patterns of five children (ages 5 to 10 years) with language impairment. The children participated in semi-structured topic tasks that assessed conversational abilities on topics that were verbally introduced and topics that were introduced both verbally and with an object. Although there was considerable variability among participants, the children generally responded to most introductions by acknowledging and maintaining the topic. With the exception of one child, however, the children in this study demonstrated immature topic manipulation patterns that could be expected to have negative social ramifications.


Story Retell Narratives In Five School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Megan Bradshaw Deere Jul 2016

Story Retell Narratives In Five School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Megan Bradshaw Deere

Theses and Dissertations

Many children identified with Language Impairment (LI) demonstrate difficulty comprehending and producing narratives. Their narratives are often structurally less complex and of overall poorer quality than those produced by their typically developing peers. These difficulties may negatively impact the academic and social success of children with LI. This thesis evaluates the performance of five school-aged children with LI on a story retell probe embedded within an intervention designed to address their social and emotional language abilities. During the 10-week intervention, participants completed a series of story retell probes using wordless picture books. The story stimuli were taken from the Edmonton …


The Efficacy Of A Literature-Based Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Sociability For Children With Language Impairment, Mnisa Lyn Harlow Jun 2016

The Efficacy Of A Literature-Based Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Sociability For Children With Language Impairment, Mnisa Lyn Harlow

Theses and Dissertations

Recent research indicates that children with language impairment (LI) often experience difficulties with social communication. Although the empirical basis for general social communication intervention is growing, information documenting the efficacy of these interventions for children with LI remains limited. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a social communication intervention on teacher perceptions of sociability in five elementary-aged children with LI. The intervention focused on the presentation and use of children's stories to target aspects of emotion understanding. The two sociability subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS), impulse control/likeability and prosocial behavior, were used …


The Effects Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Production Of Emotion Words For Children With Language Impairment, Emilee Anne Longmore Jun 2016

The Effects Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Production Of Emotion Words For Children With Language Impairment, Emilee Anne Longmore

Theses and Dissertations

Many school-age children with a diagnosis of Language Impairment (LI) also have social communication difficulties. Some of these difficulties are related to deficits in emotion understanding. This thesis evaluates the effects of a social communication intervention designed to increase the production of emotion-based words as an indicator of emotional competence. For five elementary school-aged children with LI, the production of emotion-based words was analyzed by first determining the frequency of words produced in preintervention sessions for the following categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Following these measures, the participants received 20 intervention sessions over the course of treatment. …


The Influence Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Syntactic Complexity Of Three Children With Language Impairment, Alyse Wheeler Apr 2016

The Influence Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Syntactic Complexity Of Three Children With Language Impairment, Alyse Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that children with language impairment (LI) exhibit difficulties with both social communication and syntax. This study analyzed the effect of a social communication intervention on syntactic development, focusing on grammatical complexity in three children with LI when enacting stories. The intervention included reading and enacting stories, playing games with picture emotion cards and journaling. Each child's mean length of terminal unit (t-unit), the number and type of subordinate clauses they produced per t-unit, and the grammaticality of their complex sentences was analyzed. While none of the children increased their mean length of t-unit or the grammaticality of …


Story Generation In Five School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Suzanne Tutt Jones Dec 2015

Story Generation In Five School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Suzanne Tutt Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This project examined the story generations of five children with language impairment (LI) between the ages of 5;11 and 10;1 across the treatment sessions of a narrative-based intervention program designed to improve social communication. These stories were analyzed to find whether the participants would approach the task by describing the stimulus pictures or if their stories would reflect an episodic structure containing cause and effect relationships. Additionally, the stories were analyzed for inclusion of emotion words to discern the participants' awareness of the characters' emotions. There was a high degree of variability in the participants' performance; however, the majority of …


Increasing Emotion Word Productions In Children With Language Impairment With A Social Communication Intervention, Madelane Kate Dixon Jul 2015

Increasing Emotion Word Productions In Children With Language Impairment With A Social Communication Intervention, Madelane Kate Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the efficacy of a social communication intervention in increasing the emotion word productions in school-aged children with language impairment (LI). The study had a multiple baseline single subject design in which 5 children between the ages of 6 and 11 received 20 intervention sessions, each lasting 20 minutes. Intervention activities included reading and discussing children's books, enacting the stories using toys, and journal writing to reflect on experiences in each session. Emotion word productions during intervention sessions were coded for total productions within the categories of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. Productions were also coded …


Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Clinical Language Samples With And Without Salt Coding, Andrea Nielson Hughes Jun 2015

Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Clinical Language Samples With And Without Salt Coding, Andrea Nielson Hughes

Theses and Dissertations

Language samples are naturalistic sources of information that supersede many of the limitations found in standardized test administration. Although language samples have clinical utility, they are often time intensive. Despite the usefulness of language samples in evaluation and treatment, clinicians may not perform language sample analyses due to the necessary time commitment. Researchers have developed language sample analysis software that automates this process. Coding schemes such as that used by the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software were developed to provide more information regarding appropriate grammatical tag selection. The usefulness of SALT precoding in aiding automated grammatical tagging accuracy …


The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Withdrawal For Children With Language Impairment, Allyson Roscher May 2015

The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Withdrawal For Children With Language Impairment, Allyson Roscher

Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies and literature regarding children with language impairment (LI) indicate that these children have difficulty with social communication skills. This study assessed the effect of a social communication intervention on teacher perceptions of withdrawal in six elementary school age participants with LI. The social communication intervention included story sharing, identifying pictures of facial expressions, and journaling to target emotion understanding. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) was utilized to measure teacher perception of withdrawal. The TBRS examined three subscales of social withdrawal: solitary-active withdrawal, solitary-passive withdrawal, and reticence. Following treatment, teacher ratings of withdrawn behavior decreased for all six …


The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention To Increase Syntactic Complexity In Narratives Of Children With Language Impairment, Alexandra Smith May 2015

The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention To Increase Syntactic Complexity In Narratives Of Children With Language Impairment, Alexandra Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that children with Language Impairment (LI) struggle with social communication skills in addition to their characteristic syntactic difficulties. This pilot study analyzed the potential change in grammatical complexity in narratives of five children with LI when enrolled in a social communication intervention. The intervention itself focused on teaching emotion understanding by reading and reenacting children’s stories and journaling. Grammatical limitations were indirectly addressed by clinician modeling of complex forms during the intervention sessions. Each child’s productions were assessed and analyzed for grammatical complexity during retelling a book in the Mercer Mayer “a boy, a dog, and a …


Story Generation Ability In Four Children With Language Impairment, Monica Leroy Chamberlain Jul 2014

Story Generation Ability In Four Children With Language Impairment, Monica Leroy Chamberlain

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project focused on the complexity of story generations produced by four children with language impairment across treatment sessions. Specifically, the participants' utterances were analyzed to determine if the children produced simple story elements and/or more complex cause/effect story elements. The children's utterances were also analyzed to identify emotion words in order to consider the children's awareness of the emotions experienced by characters in the stories. All participants approached the story generation task by describing characters and actions based on pictures from the book. Two participants did not express any causal relationships and two participants expressed some awareness of …


The Efficacy Of Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Sociability For Children With Language Impairment, Julianne Grover Smith Guerra Jun 2014

The Efficacy Of Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Sociability For Children With Language Impairment, Julianne Grover Smith Guerra

Theses and Dissertations

Recent research indicates that many children with Language Impairment (LI) have difficulty with social communication skills. This study assessed the impact of a social communication intervention on teacher perceptions of social withdrawal in children who received the treatment. The intervention targeted emotion understanding using the presentation of children's stories, facial picture cards, and journaling. Teacher perception was measured using the three withdrawal subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS): Solitary-Active withdrawal, Solitary-Passive withdrawal, and Reticence. Following treatment all five participants received lower ratings of withdrawn behavior on some of the subscales. Only one participant received a rating indicting increased …


The Accurate Productions Of Emotion Words During A Social Communication Intervention In Children With Language Impairment, Emily Marie Gibbons Jan 2014

The Accurate Productions Of Emotion Words During A Social Communication Intervention In Children With Language Impairment, Emily Marie Gibbons

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a social communication intervention that targets the emotional competence of children with language impairment (LI). Three elementary school-aged children with LI received twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing. The emotion-based word productions were counted and analyzed. Categorized words belonged to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Emotion word productions that did not match the intended …


Social Networks Of Children With Language Impairment, Serena Marita Louisa Mickelson Jul 2013

Social Networks Of Children With Language Impairment, Serena Marita Louisa Mickelson

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also …


Brain Imaging Of Event Related Potentials In Children With Language Impairment, Hillary Ann Benton Jun 2013

Brain Imaging Of Event Related Potentials In Children With Language Impairment, Hillary Ann Benton

Theses and Dissertations

Event related potentials (ERPs) may provide specific information about how particular aspects of language are processed by the brain over time. This study investigated the electrophysiology of language processing in two children with language impairment (LI) when compared to five typically developing children. The N400, P600, and the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) were analyzed after participants listened to linguistically correct, syntactically incorrect, and semantically incorrect sentences. Participants were instructed to indicate whether the sentences were correct or incorrect. Latency and amplitude of the ERP components were compared between the two groups of participants and sentence types. Results from the …


Automated Identification Of Adverbial Clauses In Child Language Samples, Brittany Cheree Brown Feb 2013

Automated Identification Of Adverbial Clauses In Child Language Samples, Brittany Cheree Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Adverbial clauses are grammatical constructions that are of relevance in both typical language development and impaired language development. In recent years, computer software has been used to assist in the automated analysis of clinical language samples. This software has attempted to accurately identify adverbial clauses with limited success. The present study investigated the accuracy of software for the automated identification of adverbial clauses. Two separate collections of language samples were used. One collection included 10 children with language impairment, with ages ranging from 7;6 to 11;1 (years;months), 10 age-matched peers,and 10 language-matched peers. A second collection contained 30 children ranging …


Outcomes Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Use Of Emotion Words, Amy Tucker Cornett Jul 2012

Outcomes Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Use Of Emotion Words, Amy Tucker Cornett

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) have often been identified as having social communication breakdowns. A number of these problems are likely the result of deficits in emotional competence. This thesis examines a social communication intervention designed to target the emotional competence of children with LI. Three elementary school-aged children with LI were recruited to receive twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over the course of four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing using story retell, story exploration, story enactment, perspectives charts, journal entries, emotion labeling, and personalization. These activities revolved around Mercer Mayer's …


Social Circles Of Children With Language Impairment, Erin Whitworth Jun 2012

Social Circles Of Children With Language Impairment, Erin Whitworth

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in …


The Effects Of A Literature-Based Emotion Recognition Program On Teacher Report Of Sociability Withdrawal For Six Children With Social Communication Difficulties, Jennifer Lynn Harris Jul 2011

The Effects Of A Literature-Based Emotion Recognition Program On Teacher Report Of Sociability Withdrawal For Six Children With Social Communication Difficulties, Jennifer Lynn Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. Although a number of general social communication interventions have been suggested, there is relatively little work done to examine the efficacy of these interventions for school-age children with LI, and none reported to target general emotional competence. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects on teacher perception of an intervention designed to improve emotion understanding. The intervention was centered on the presentation and use of children's stories to introduce and practice aspects of emotion understanding. The withdrawn and sociable subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale …


The Influence Of Language Production, Comprehension, And Pragmatic Judgment On Prosocial Behavior In Children With Language Impairment, Nicole Yvette Weber Sep 2010

The Influence Of Language Production, Comprehension, And Pragmatic Judgment On Prosocial Behavior In Children With Language Impairment, Nicole Yvette Weber

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between language skills and prosocial behavior in 37 children with language impairment (LI) and 37 typically developing peers matched for age (ranging from 6;11 to 11;1 years). The influence of gender on this relationship was also considered. Three different subtests of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999) were used to evaluate language ability in the areas of language comprehension, language production and pragmatic judgment skills. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (C. H. Hart & Robinson, 1996) was used to evaluate prosocial behavior. The current study replicated previous research …