This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interacti... more This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interactions and investigated how four input categories related to children's production of diverse, simple sentences. Of primary interest was parent use of responsive, simple declarative input sentences. Responsive and linguistic features of parent input to 20 typically developing toddlers at 1;9 were coded during play in a laboratory playroom, then classified into four input categories: responsive, declarative, responsive declarative, and neither responsive nor simple declarative. The percentage of each input category was related to child sentence diversity at 2;6 using Spearman correlations. Parent use of responsive declarative and declarative utterances were both rare. Responsive input was positively correlated with child sentence diversity, and the neither category was negatively correlated with child sentence diversity. The findings provide new support for the importance of balanced conversational turns. Implications for defining both how input is delivered and its linguistic content are discussed.
Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 1990
The Social Interactive Coding System was designed to describe the continuous verbal interactions ... more The Social Interactive Coding System was designed to describe the continuous verbal interactions of preschool children as a function of play areas, addressees, script codes, and play levels. The targeted verbal dimension is assertiveness/responsiveness, indexed by initiations versus responses for conversational turns. SICS can be completed in a minimum amount of time, without access to special equipment or time-consuming transcription. It provides a helpful supplement to conventional communication assessment tools, for the purposes of determining treatment goals, describing baseline and treatment progress.
The purpose of this study was to determine if children acquire grammatical case as a unified syst... more The purpose of this study was to determine if children acquire grammatical case as a unified system or in a piecemeal fashion. In English language acquisition, many children make developmental errors in marking case on subject position pronouns (e.g., Me do it, Him like it). It is unknown whether children who produce pronoun case errors with first person pronouns also produce errors with third person pronouns. This finding would be expected if case were acquired uniformly across person through building a paradigm for an abstract case feature. Spontaneous pronoun case errors were collected from language samples of 43 typically developing toddlers at 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, and 36 months of age. A chi-square test was used to determine whether children were more likely to make both first and third person errors, indicating an association. The uniformity of the case marking system was further investigated by asking whether pronoun case errors in first and third person occurred at the same time using a Wilcoxon signed-ranks test. Most children treated case uniformly across person, producing both first and third person pronoun case errors or producing no case errors at all, resulting in a significant association. Additionally, errors were not significantly different in timing. The results of this investigation are compatible with the notion that children systematically extend case marking in a unified paradigm. Pronoun case is not acquired separately for each grammatical person in a piecemeal fashion.
Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of lan... more Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of language production, structured protocols have the potential to elicit many different exemplars of language structures in a shorter amount of time. We created a structured elicitation protocol, the Sentence Diversity Priming Task (SDPT), to efficiently assess sentence diversity in toddlers via video chat platforms. Sentence diversity is operationalized as the number of different subject–verb combinations in active declarative sentences. The task is presented as an animated picture book, with parents serving as the child's primary partner during administration. In this article, we provide the rationale for assessing sentence diversity, describe the task, and present preliminary analyses of compliance and developmental associations for 32 typically developing toddlers, 30–35 months old, with average language abilities. The preliminary findings suggest that the SDPT is an engaging task tha...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2022
Purpose: Sentence diversity is a measure of early language development that has yet to be applied... more Purpose: Sentence diversity is a measure of early language development that has yet to be applied to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary aim of this study was to identify whether children with ASD show change in sentence diversity over 6 months of treatment with Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention (NDBI). The secondary aim was to examine possible predictors of changes in children's sentence diversity, including caregiver use of NDBI strategies, naturally occurring instances of caregiver Toy Talk, and child characteristics. Method: Fifty children with ASD (ages 2–4 years) and their caregivers, who were receiving NDBI, engaged in two 10-min video-recorded play interactions, 6 months apart. Child speech was transcribed and coded for sentence diversity. Caregiver input was transcribed and coded for naturally occurring Toy Talk . Zero-inflated negative binomial mixed models were used to explore predictors of change in child sentence diversity. ...
Promoting language abilities, including early word learning, in children with neurogenetic disord... more Promoting language abilities, including early word learning, in children with neurogenetic disorders with associated language disorders, such as Down syndrome (DS) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), is a main concern for caregivers and clinicians. For typically developing children, the quality and quantity of maternal language input and maternal gesture use contributes to child word learning, and a similar relation is likely present in DS and FXS. However, few studies have examined the combined effect of maternal language input and maternal gesture use on child word learning. We present a multidimensional approach for coding word-referent transparency in naturally occurring input to children with neurogenetic disorders. We conceptualize high-quality input from a multidimensional perspective, considering features from linguistic, interactive, and conceptual dimensions simultaneously. Using case examples, we highlight how infrequent the moments of word-referent transparency are for three t...
The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., tui dao "push fall" and pa shang "climb ascend... more The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., tui dao "push fall" and pa shang "climb ascend") encodes complex events composed of an initiating action and resulting activity or state. This study investigated when Mandarinspeaking children acquired this language-specific device. Specifically, we focused on children's production of RVCs with two infixes,-bu-"not able" and-de-"be able." Because the infixes intervene between the two verbs of RVC (e.g., tui-bu-dao "push-not able-fall" and tui-de-dao "push-be able-fall"), being able to produce RVC infixation indicates that children have a morphological separation between the action and the result verbs. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 is a corpus analysis. We examined the use of plain RVCs versus RVCs with infixes in parent input and children's spontaneous speech using a cross-sectional corpus and a longitudinal corpus. RVCs with infixes were found to be very rare in both parent input and child production. Study 2 is an experimental elicitation task targeting RVC infixation. Children between 3;0 and 5;0 performed exceptionally well, producing target responses when primed with structurally related probes in discourseappropriate contexts. There was no difference in children's performance related to age or the type of infix (i.e.,-bu-vs-de-). Children's early competence with RVC infixation, which is infrequent in input, runs counter to the usagebased approach that emphasizes item-based learning. Rather, by age three, Mandarin-speaking children have developed a representation of the RVC as two distinct morphemes for encoding complex event structure. This representation facilitates acquisition of the infixes with very little input data.
The purpose of this article is to identify areas of grammatical development that can he incorpora... more The purpose of this article is to identify areas of grammatical development that can he incorporated into risk-factor assessment models for toddlers between the ages of 2 and 3. A simple framework is presented for conceptualizing three early grammatical accomplishments: the acquisition of an initial verb lexicon, production of early sentence types, and the onset of tense marking. Strategies for using parent-report instruments and structurespecific language sampling to assess these areas in a time-efficient manner are provided.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2014
Purpose In this response to Kamhi (2014), a sentence-focused framework is presented to help clini... more Purpose In this response to Kamhi (2014), a sentence-focused framework is presented to help clinicians select treatment targets as part of a comprehensive approach to early grammatical intervention. Method The literature on the relationship between lexical verbs, sentence structure, and tense/agreement morphemes is reviewed, and developmental expectations are summarized for each. Conclusion Given that the sentence is the basic unit of grammar, the author concludes that early grammatical intervention should promote sentence development for young children at risk for language disorders. Recommendations for selecting and facilitating grammatical objectives in early childhood are provided.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2014
Purpose The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction ... more Purpose The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction in toy talk would change grammatical properties of adult language, specifically 3rd person lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects. Method Eighteen college students participated in the study. The use of 3rd person subjects was examined before and after instruction on toy talk strategies (i.e., talk about the toys, give the item its name ). Change in the input informativeness for tense (i.e., the proportion of verb forms marked for tense out of all verb forms) was also examined, although adults were not instructed on use of tense/agreement morphemes. Results Following instruction, statistically significant increases with large effect sizes were observed for use of 3rd person subjects, lexical NP subjects, and input informativeness for tense (Cohen's d = 1.20, 2.08, and 0.89, respectively). Conclusions These findings demonstrate that young adults can learn these simple strategies with relati...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2012
Purpose The relatedness of tense morphemes in the language of children younger than 3 years of ag... more Purpose The relatedness of tense morphemes in the language of children younger than 3 years of age is a matter of controversy. Generativist accounts predict that the morphemes will be related, whereas usage-based accounts predict the absence of relationships. This study focused on the increasing productivity of the 5 morphemes in the tense productivity score (copula BE, third-person singular present – 3s, past – ed, auxiliary DO, auxiliary BE; Hadley & Short, 2005) and their relationship to one another. Method Twenty typically developing children were observed longitudinally from 21 to 33 months of age. One hour of naturalistic caregiver–child interaction sampled every 3 months was analyzed. Results Copula BE was more productive than all other morphemes from age 27 months onward. Auxiliary BE was significantly less productive than – 3s, – ed, and DO from age 27 months onward. Evaluation of third-person singular tense morphemes at age 33 months revealed that the productivity scores o...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2017
Purpose This follow-up study examined whether a parent intervention that increased the diversity ... more Purpose This follow-up study examined whether a parent intervention that increased the diversity of lexical noun phrase subjects in parent input and accelerated children's sentence diversity (Hadley et al., 2017) had indirect benefits on tense/agreement (T/A) morphemes in parent input and children's spontaneous speech. Method Differences in input variables related to T/A marking were compared for parents who received toy talk instruction and a quasi-control group: input informativeness and full is declaratives. Language growth on tense agreement productivity (TAP) was modeled for 38 children from language samples obtained at 21, 24, 27, and 30 months. Parent input properties following instruction and children's growth in lexical diversity and sentence diversity were examined as predictors of TAP growth. Results Instruction increased parent use of full is declaratives (η p 2 ≥ .25) but not input informativeness. Children's sentence diversity was also a significant tim...
To facilitate language development, clinicians often encourage parents and teachers to follow the... more To facilitate language development, clinicians often encourage parents and teachers to follow the child’s attentional lead and to model vocabulary and basic sentence structure using comments or descriptive talk. Language modeling strategies are intended to help children connect words in the language input to corresponding objects, actions, and events in the world. Common strategies include responsive labeling, self-talk, and parallel talk.
We appreciate this opportunity to discuss the potential benefits of incorporating the theoretical... more We appreciate this opportunity to discuss the potential benefits of incorporating the theoretical construct of proceduralization into language assessment and intervention. We concur with Dr. Kamhi (Kamhi, 2019) that assessment should differentiate proceduralized processes from reflective processes. We agree that complementing norm-referenced measures with those that capture the effort needed for accurate language performance would be very useful, especially real-time language processing measures that take proceduralization into account. We also share his concern that "future research is clearly needed to develop operationalized criteria that define the line of demarcation between deliberative and proceduralized speech-language operations" (p. 6). Dr. Kamhi proposes that "maze behaviors" may be good indicators of proceduralization. However, it is not clear how mazes are to be interpreted for individual children. He writes "One might expect that individuals with language impairments will exhibit higher frequencies of mazes because it takes them longer to proceduralize various grammatical structures" (p. 3, italics added), but he also notes that mazes may be influenced by differences in communicative tasks, the complexity of the ideas children attempt to express, and whether some children with speech-language disorders simply avoid challenging communicative situations. Therefore, we must be precise about our measurement approach and hold factors such as the communicative task constant before we can use mazes as an indicator of proceduralization. Our own research provides an example of using mazes as an indicator of proceduralization (Rispoli, 2003; Rispoli et al., 2008). Our measurement was precise, limiting the syntactic structures we examined to active declarative sentences. Based on models of adult sentence production (Bock & Levelt, 2002), we also separated revisions from stalls. Revisions are a type of sentence disruption in which an initially produced morpheme, word or phrase is replaced by another before the sentence is completed. The replacement is linguistically equivalent to the initial item which it replaces, thus providing evidence of the child's knowledge of lexical and syntactic categories. We hypothesized that revisions are related to the presence of a set of morphemes, words or structures that receive activation in common and are maintained in a labile state during sentence production. On the other hand, stalls are sentence disruptions in which no morphemes, words or phrase are altered. We posited that stalls could arise from a heterogeneous number of sources, including but not limited to retrieval difficulty. As we applied this dichotomy to the language samples of toddlers, one developmental trend became obvious: revisions increase with grammatical development, whereas stalls have no relationship to grammatical development whatsoever. If language development is dependent on proceduralization, then revisions are related to proceduralization and stalls are not. Our focus on a single syntactic structure and use of a theoretically motivated classification system for maze behaviors has revealed new insights about proceduralization in developing grammars. We encourage researchers and clinicians to move towards similar precision. This may provide more consistent findings across future studies. Most recently, we reported that word level revisions were positively related to structurally specific lexical diversity (Rispoli, 2018). Specifically, revisions in the sentence subject position were more likely to occur in toddlers who produced a larger number of different words as a sentence subject. This finding tells us that revising during development is associated with an increasingly large pool of lexical items that can fill a syntactically defined position. Because these pools contain only grammatically equivalent items,
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, Jan 19, 2018
The purpose of this letter is to clarify the psycholinguistic underpinnings of the tense marker t... more The purpose of this letter is to clarify the psycholinguistic underpinnings of the tense marker total and tense agreement productivity score and to extend the discussion of when composite diversity and productivity measures are best used. We encourage the use of composite diversity and productivity measures when assessing grammar early in development, but we discourage the use of composite accuracy measures until children demonstrate emergence of diverse tense/agreement morphemes across a sufficient number of low-frequency sentence frames.
This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interacti... more This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interactions and investigated how four input categories related to children's production of diverse, simple sentences. Of primary interest was parent use of responsive, simple declarative input sentences. Responsive and linguistic features of parent input to 20 typically developing toddlers at 1;9 were coded during play in a laboratory playroom, then classified into four input categories: responsive, declarative, responsive declarative, and neither responsive nor simple declarative. The percentage of each input category was related to child sentence diversity at 2;6 using Spearman correlations. Parent use of responsive declarative and declarative utterances were both rare. Responsive input was positively correlated with child sentence diversity, and the neither category was negatively correlated with child sentence diversity. The findings provide new support for the importance of balanced conversational turns. Implications for defining both how input is delivered and its linguistic content are discussed.
Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 1990
The Social Interactive Coding System was designed to describe the continuous verbal interactions ... more The Social Interactive Coding System was designed to describe the continuous verbal interactions of preschool children as a function of play areas, addressees, script codes, and play levels. The targeted verbal dimension is assertiveness/responsiveness, indexed by initiations versus responses for conversational turns. SICS can be completed in a minimum amount of time, without access to special equipment or time-consuming transcription. It provides a helpful supplement to conventional communication assessment tools, for the purposes of determining treatment goals, describing baseline and treatment progress.
The purpose of this study was to determine if children acquire grammatical case as a unified syst... more The purpose of this study was to determine if children acquire grammatical case as a unified system or in a piecemeal fashion. In English language acquisition, many children make developmental errors in marking case on subject position pronouns (e.g., Me do it, Him like it). It is unknown whether children who produce pronoun case errors with first person pronouns also produce errors with third person pronouns. This finding would be expected if case were acquired uniformly across person through building a paradigm for an abstract case feature. Spontaneous pronoun case errors were collected from language samples of 43 typically developing toddlers at 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, and 36 months of age. A chi-square test was used to determine whether children were more likely to make both first and third person errors, indicating an association. The uniformity of the case marking system was further investigated by asking whether pronoun case errors in first and third person occurred at the same time using a Wilcoxon signed-ranks test. Most children treated case uniformly across person, producing both first and third person pronoun case errors or producing no case errors at all, resulting in a significant association. Additionally, errors were not significantly different in timing. The results of this investigation are compatible with the notion that children systematically extend case marking in a unified paradigm. Pronoun case is not acquired separately for each grammatical person in a piecemeal fashion.
Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of lan... more Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of language production, structured protocols have the potential to elicit many different exemplars of language structures in a shorter amount of time. We created a structured elicitation protocol, the Sentence Diversity Priming Task (SDPT), to efficiently assess sentence diversity in toddlers via video chat platforms. Sentence diversity is operationalized as the number of different subject–verb combinations in active declarative sentences. The task is presented as an animated picture book, with parents serving as the child's primary partner during administration. In this article, we provide the rationale for assessing sentence diversity, describe the task, and present preliminary analyses of compliance and developmental associations for 32 typically developing toddlers, 30–35 months old, with average language abilities. The preliminary findings suggest that the SDPT is an engaging task tha...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2022
Purpose: Sentence diversity is a measure of early language development that has yet to be applied... more Purpose: Sentence diversity is a measure of early language development that has yet to be applied to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary aim of this study was to identify whether children with ASD show change in sentence diversity over 6 months of treatment with Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention (NDBI). The secondary aim was to examine possible predictors of changes in children's sentence diversity, including caregiver use of NDBI strategies, naturally occurring instances of caregiver Toy Talk, and child characteristics. Method: Fifty children with ASD (ages 2–4 years) and their caregivers, who were receiving NDBI, engaged in two 10-min video-recorded play interactions, 6 months apart. Child speech was transcribed and coded for sentence diversity. Caregiver input was transcribed and coded for naturally occurring Toy Talk . Zero-inflated negative binomial mixed models were used to explore predictors of change in child sentence diversity. ...
Promoting language abilities, including early word learning, in children with neurogenetic disord... more Promoting language abilities, including early word learning, in children with neurogenetic disorders with associated language disorders, such as Down syndrome (DS) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), is a main concern for caregivers and clinicians. For typically developing children, the quality and quantity of maternal language input and maternal gesture use contributes to child word learning, and a similar relation is likely present in DS and FXS. However, few studies have examined the combined effect of maternal language input and maternal gesture use on child word learning. We present a multidimensional approach for coding word-referent transparency in naturally occurring input to children with neurogenetic disorders. We conceptualize high-quality input from a multidimensional perspective, considering features from linguistic, interactive, and conceptual dimensions simultaneously. Using case examples, we highlight how infrequent the moments of word-referent transparency are for three t...
The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., tui dao "push fall" and pa shang "climb ascend... more The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., tui dao "push fall" and pa shang "climb ascend") encodes complex events composed of an initiating action and resulting activity or state. This study investigated when Mandarinspeaking children acquired this language-specific device. Specifically, we focused on children's production of RVCs with two infixes,-bu-"not able" and-de-"be able." Because the infixes intervene between the two verbs of RVC (e.g., tui-bu-dao "push-not able-fall" and tui-de-dao "push-be able-fall"), being able to produce RVC infixation indicates that children have a morphological separation between the action and the result verbs. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 is a corpus analysis. We examined the use of plain RVCs versus RVCs with infixes in parent input and children's spontaneous speech using a cross-sectional corpus and a longitudinal corpus. RVCs with infixes were found to be very rare in both parent input and child production. Study 2 is an experimental elicitation task targeting RVC infixation. Children between 3;0 and 5;0 performed exceptionally well, producing target responses when primed with structurally related probes in discourseappropriate contexts. There was no difference in children's performance related to age or the type of infix (i.e.,-bu-vs-de-). Children's early competence with RVC infixation, which is infrequent in input, runs counter to the usagebased approach that emphasizes item-based learning. Rather, by age three, Mandarin-speaking children have developed a representation of the RVC as two distinct morphemes for encoding complex event structure. This representation facilitates acquisition of the infixes with very little input data.
The purpose of this article is to identify areas of grammatical development that can he incorpora... more The purpose of this article is to identify areas of grammatical development that can he incorporated into risk-factor assessment models for toddlers between the ages of 2 and 3. A simple framework is presented for conceptualizing three early grammatical accomplishments: the acquisition of an initial verb lexicon, production of early sentence types, and the onset of tense marking. Strategies for using parent-report instruments and structurespecific language sampling to assess these areas in a time-efficient manner are provided.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2014
Purpose In this response to Kamhi (2014), a sentence-focused framework is presented to help clini... more Purpose In this response to Kamhi (2014), a sentence-focused framework is presented to help clinicians select treatment targets as part of a comprehensive approach to early grammatical intervention. Method The literature on the relationship between lexical verbs, sentence structure, and tense/agreement morphemes is reviewed, and developmental expectations are summarized for each. Conclusion Given that the sentence is the basic unit of grammar, the author concludes that early grammatical intervention should promote sentence development for young children at risk for language disorders. Recommendations for selecting and facilitating grammatical objectives in early childhood are provided.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2014
Purpose The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction ... more Purpose The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction in toy talk would change grammatical properties of adult language, specifically 3rd person lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects. Method Eighteen college students participated in the study. The use of 3rd person subjects was examined before and after instruction on toy talk strategies (i.e., talk about the toys, give the item its name ). Change in the input informativeness for tense (i.e., the proportion of verb forms marked for tense out of all verb forms) was also examined, although adults were not instructed on use of tense/agreement morphemes. Results Following instruction, statistically significant increases with large effect sizes were observed for use of 3rd person subjects, lexical NP subjects, and input informativeness for tense (Cohen's d = 1.20, 2.08, and 0.89, respectively). Conclusions These findings demonstrate that young adults can learn these simple strategies with relati...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2012
Purpose The relatedness of tense morphemes in the language of children younger than 3 years of ag... more Purpose The relatedness of tense morphemes in the language of children younger than 3 years of age is a matter of controversy. Generativist accounts predict that the morphemes will be related, whereas usage-based accounts predict the absence of relationships. This study focused on the increasing productivity of the 5 morphemes in the tense productivity score (copula BE, third-person singular present – 3s, past – ed, auxiliary DO, auxiliary BE; Hadley & Short, 2005) and their relationship to one another. Method Twenty typically developing children were observed longitudinally from 21 to 33 months of age. One hour of naturalistic caregiver–child interaction sampled every 3 months was analyzed. Results Copula BE was more productive than all other morphemes from age 27 months onward. Auxiliary BE was significantly less productive than – 3s, – ed, and DO from age 27 months onward. Evaluation of third-person singular tense morphemes at age 33 months revealed that the productivity scores o...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2017
Purpose This follow-up study examined whether a parent intervention that increased the diversity ... more Purpose This follow-up study examined whether a parent intervention that increased the diversity of lexical noun phrase subjects in parent input and accelerated children's sentence diversity (Hadley et al., 2017) had indirect benefits on tense/agreement (T/A) morphemes in parent input and children's spontaneous speech. Method Differences in input variables related to T/A marking were compared for parents who received toy talk instruction and a quasi-control group: input informativeness and full is declaratives. Language growth on tense agreement productivity (TAP) was modeled for 38 children from language samples obtained at 21, 24, 27, and 30 months. Parent input properties following instruction and children's growth in lexical diversity and sentence diversity were examined as predictors of TAP growth. Results Instruction increased parent use of full is declaratives (η p 2 ≥ .25) but not input informativeness. Children's sentence diversity was also a significant tim...
To facilitate language development, clinicians often encourage parents and teachers to follow the... more To facilitate language development, clinicians often encourage parents and teachers to follow the child’s attentional lead and to model vocabulary and basic sentence structure using comments or descriptive talk. Language modeling strategies are intended to help children connect words in the language input to corresponding objects, actions, and events in the world. Common strategies include responsive labeling, self-talk, and parallel talk.
We appreciate this opportunity to discuss the potential benefits of incorporating the theoretical... more We appreciate this opportunity to discuss the potential benefits of incorporating the theoretical construct of proceduralization into language assessment and intervention. We concur with Dr. Kamhi (Kamhi, 2019) that assessment should differentiate proceduralized processes from reflective processes. We agree that complementing norm-referenced measures with those that capture the effort needed for accurate language performance would be very useful, especially real-time language processing measures that take proceduralization into account. We also share his concern that "future research is clearly needed to develop operationalized criteria that define the line of demarcation between deliberative and proceduralized speech-language operations" (p. 6). Dr. Kamhi proposes that "maze behaviors" may be good indicators of proceduralization. However, it is not clear how mazes are to be interpreted for individual children. He writes "One might expect that individuals with language impairments will exhibit higher frequencies of mazes because it takes them longer to proceduralize various grammatical structures" (p. 3, italics added), but he also notes that mazes may be influenced by differences in communicative tasks, the complexity of the ideas children attempt to express, and whether some children with speech-language disorders simply avoid challenging communicative situations. Therefore, we must be precise about our measurement approach and hold factors such as the communicative task constant before we can use mazes as an indicator of proceduralization. Our own research provides an example of using mazes as an indicator of proceduralization (Rispoli, 2003; Rispoli et al., 2008). Our measurement was precise, limiting the syntactic structures we examined to active declarative sentences. Based on models of adult sentence production (Bock & Levelt, 2002), we also separated revisions from stalls. Revisions are a type of sentence disruption in which an initially produced morpheme, word or phrase is replaced by another before the sentence is completed. The replacement is linguistically equivalent to the initial item which it replaces, thus providing evidence of the child's knowledge of lexical and syntactic categories. We hypothesized that revisions are related to the presence of a set of morphemes, words or structures that receive activation in common and are maintained in a labile state during sentence production. On the other hand, stalls are sentence disruptions in which no morphemes, words or phrase are altered. We posited that stalls could arise from a heterogeneous number of sources, including but not limited to retrieval difficulty. As we applied this dichotomy to the language samples of toddlers, one developmental trend became obvious: revisions increase with grammatical development, whereas stalls have no relationship to grammatical development whatsoever. If language development is dependent on proceduralization, then revisions are related to proceduralization and stalls are not. Our focus on a single syntactic structure and use of a theoretically motivated classification system for maze behaviors has revealed new insights about proceduralization in developing grammars. We encourage researchers and clinicians to move towards similar precision. This may provide more consistent findings across future studies. Most recently, we reported that word level revisions were positively related to structurally specific lexical diversity (Rispoli, 2018). Specifically, revisions in the sentence subject position were more likely to occur in toddlers who produced a larger number of different words as a sentence subject. This finding tells us that revising during development is associated with an increasingly large pool of lexical items that can fill a syntactically defined position. Because these pools contain only grammatically equivalent items,
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, Jan 19, 2018
The purpose of this letter is to clarify the psycholinguistic underpinnings of the tense marker t... more The purpose of this letter is to clarify the psycholinguistic underpinnings of the tense marker total and tense agreement productivity score and to extend the discussion of when composite diversity and productivity measures are best used. We encourage the use of composite diversity and productivity measures when assessing grammar early in development, but we discourage the use of composite accuracy measures until children demonstrate emergence of diverse tense/agreement morphemes across a sufficient number of low-frequency sentence frames.
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Papers by Pamela Hadley