Individual Differences in Learning the Regularities Between Orthography, Phonology and Semantics Predict Early Reading Skills

Siegelman, N., Rueckl, J.G., Steacy, L.M., Frost, S.J., van den Bunt, M., Zevin, J.D., Seidenberg, M.S., Pugh, K.R., Compton, D.L., & Morris, R.D. (2020). Individual differences in learning the regularities between orthography, phonology and semantics predict early reading skills. Journal of Memory and Language, 114, 104145. 

Written language is made of many repeating patterns, or ‘regularities’. There are different types of regularities. Some are related to the connections between sounds (phonology) and letters (orthography), referred to in this study as orthographic-phonological consistency. Others are related to the connection between a word’s meaning (semantics) and written form. This orthographic-semantic consistency might be related to how easily a word can be pictured in your mind, that is, a word’s imageability. When reading words, orthographic-phonological regularities tend to be relatively systematic cues, whereas imageability is a relatively arbitrary cue. The authors of this study hypothesized that better readers were likely to display greater sensitivity to orthographic-phonological regularities while performing a word naming task (i.e., word reading), and rely less on other regularities such as imageability. 

In the first part of the study, the participants were 123 children aged 7-11 years old recruited from a larger study of children reading disability. As a result, 101 of these participants had been identified with reading disability. Children completed standardized measures of single word reading, nonword reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension, as well as a word naming task in which children read single monosyllabic words aloud. The stimuli on the word naming task varied in their imageability, orthographic-phonological consistency, and frequency of occurrence in written language. The authors used logistic regression models to examine how orthographic-phonological regularity and imageability impacted each child’s accuracy on the word naming task, and how this relationship was related to individual differences in reading ability. They found that better reading abilities were associated with greater sensitivity to orthographic-phonological regularity and lower sensitivity to imageability, suggesting that better readers tend to rely more on orthographic-phonological regularities than imageability during word naming tasks. The authors also replicated these findings in a second sample of 282 children who represented a more normal distribution of reading ability, as well as in a third set of analyses in which they aggregated data from the two samples. 

Overall, these findings suggest better readers tend to be more sensitive to associations between print and speech during word naming, whereas poor readers tend to rely more on associations between print and meaning. Importantly, the authors note that this does not represent sensitivity to these regularities in general, rather, this is specific to the particular task being measured. In line with this, the authors suggest that early reading success relies on developing an efficient division of labour to different types of regularities based on which regularities are most useful to the task at hand. 

Blogger: Alex Cross is an M.Cl.Sc. and Ph.D. Candidate in Speech-Language Pathology, supervised by Dr. Lisa Archibald and Dr. Marc Joanisse.

“Tell Me About Your Child”: A Grounded Theory Study of Mothers' Understanding of Language Disorder

Ash, A. C., Christopulos, T. T., & Redmond, S. M. (2020). “Tell me about your child”: A grounded theory study of mothers' understanding of language disorder. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(2), 819-840.

A mother who is concerned about her child’s language development and consults a speech-language pathologist (SLP) might expect to find out if the child has a language disorder, the name of the language disorder, and gain a better understanding of language disorders. “Disclosure” refers to the first instance that a diagnosis is communicated to parents. Previous work with children with a variety of development disabilities indicates that parents are typically unhappy with disclosure conversations. The disclosure process for language disorder in particular, however, has yet to be studied. 

In this study, twelve mothers of children receiving SLP services for the study were engaged in a semi-structured interview about the diagnostic process. Interview transcripts were coded and checked, and saturation was reached. Data analysis revealed four main themes relating to (1) confusion regarding diagnosis, related to the use of unclear or irrelevant labels for language disorder, (2) maternal distress regarding the language problem, (3) lack of trust or understanding of SLP and (4) general satisfaction with SLP services received. 

There are a number of important clinical applications of this work, although more research is undoubtedly needed. These results add to the growing body of evidence to suggest that one widely used label for language disorder, such as “Developmental Language Disorder” as proposed by the CATALISE consortium, would prove helpful to parents in understanding their child’s diagnosis and seeking resources accordingly. This may also alleviate some of the mistrust and misunderstanding participants’ reference in regards to working with an SLP. Additionally, the distress described by mother’s in regards to their child’s language difficulties long after therapy was initially recommended suggests more research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to this distress and how SLPs could help to mitigate it.   

Blogger: Taylor Bardell is a combined MClSc/PhD student in Speech-Language Pathology, supervised by Dr. Lisa Archibald. 

  

Verbal Working Memory as Emergent from Language Comprehension and Production

Steven C. Schwering, & Maryellen C. Macdonald. (2020). Verbal Working Memory as Emergent from Language Comprehension and Production. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14, 68. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00068

This review paper discusses current models of verbal working memory. Verbal working memory is the ability to temporarily hold aspects of language in mind (speech sounds, meaning-based information, grammar). Traditionally, verbal working memory is considered to be separate from long-term memory, that is, the information or knowledge stored in the brain over an extended period. The key issue considered in this paper is how long-term knowledge of the language influences verbal working memory.

There are two ways that long-term language knowledge might impact verbal working memory:

1.   Redintegration. Imagine you are asked to remember 3 words: ant, chair, birthday. A short time later you’re asked to recall the words and you realize you’ve forgotten the first word. You kind of remember that it was a short word for an insect, maybe starting with the “a” sound. After searching your long-term memory, you remember that the word was ant. In this way, you have used knowledge held in long-term memory to fill in the gaps in your verbal working memory. This is called redintegration.

2.   Integrated Language Model. According to more integrated accounts, verbal working memory is the temporary activation of long-term memory (rather than a separate memory store). It might be that when a word is encountered, full knowledge of the word is activated and available in working memory. This full activation is the rich emergent view. It could also be that only some of the information is activated from long-term memory whereas other information is held in working memory. This more restrictive view is the limited emergentaccount. 

There is growing evidence in favour of integrated language models. For instance, it is easier to repeat nonwords containing familiar sound sequences or familiar parts of words (e.g., -ing). Consider also the nature of language. In most sentences we say and hear, living things occur earlier than non-living things. This experience impacts the accuracy of word list recall both in terms of the likelihood of remembering a word and the order it appeared in the list. In line with the rich emergent account, memory for an item in a list and its order cannot be easily separated. Instead, it is important to understand how different aspects of a linguistic representation influence each other and are integrated during language processing.  

Viewing verbal working memory from an integrated perspective has implications for clinical tools and research moving forward. For instance, tools used to measure verbal working memory may be tapping higher language skills (encoding, maintenance, and ordering) beyond memory span or capacity. Language use (turn-taking) may draw on domain-general resources (attention, cognitive control), in addition to more language-based knowledge (understanding and planning speech). Finally, knowing that language production and comprehension involves interactions of all aspects of a linguistic representation will inform future research questions such as how interference among similar words affects verbal output or how language experience influences comprehension difficulty.

Blogger: Theresa Pham is a student in the combined SLP MClSc/PhD program, supervised by Dr. Lisa Archibald.

Efficacy of a Knowledge Translation Approach in Changing Allied Health Practitioner Use of Evidence-Based Practice with Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Before and After Longitudinal Study

Imms, C., Kerr, C., Bowe, S. J., Karlsson, P., Novak, I., Shields, N., Reddihough, D., & Best Service Best Time Author Group. (2020). Efficacy of a knowledge translation approach in changing allied health practitioner use of evidence-based practices with children with cerebral palsy: A before and after longitudinal study. Disability and Rehabilitation, 1-14.

Early intervention programs provide on-going evidence-based assessment and intervention to support children who born with developmental delays and disabilities, and their families. During the time of this research an early intervention assessment program was being implemented in Australia for children with cerebral palsy. The program involved on-going and comprehensive assessment and monitoring of musculoskeletal functioning, pain, sleep, and communication of children with cerebral palsy. The introduction of a new early intervention requires change in clinician and organizational behaviours which can be difficult to accomplish without the use of behaviour changing strategies. Knowledge translation (KT) approaches can be used to support the implementation of the early intervention and facilitate behaviour change. KT approaches incorporate activities that support the movement of research into practice.

The present study reported outcomes related to the KT strategies that were adopted to increase the use of evidence-based assessment behaviours by clinicians. Four KT strategies were implemented into 4 hospitals (commencing group) and outcomes were compared to a 5th hospital (comparison group) where the KT strategies and early intervention had already been implemented for 2 years. The strategies included: the introduction of knowledge brokers to identify barriers to implementation, targeted education to increase clinician knowledge, an online library to provide easy access to scholarly evidence, and an online database for clinicians to record assessment results. Researchers were interested in (1) whether these tailored KT strategies increased the number of children receiving routine assessments, (2) if clinicians’ knowledge of evidence-based interventions would increase, and (3) how the outcomes from the commencing group were related to the comparison group. Data were collected from knowledge quizzes and the online database of assessments. Results revealed that there was not a significant increase in the number of assessments completed over time for the commencing group. However, more assessments were completed as a result of the intervention, which narrowed the gap between the commencing group and the comparison group. Knowledge scores did not change over time for either group, however, the clinicians reported an increase in the frequency that they communicated evidence-based expectations.

These results underscore the challenge of changing clinical practice. Nevertheless, even without knowledge change, the use of KT strategies increased evidenced-based assessment behaviours among clinicians in a hospital setting. This research demonstrates the complexity of a KT intervention and suggests the need for a multicomponent KT intervention in supporting clinician and organizational behaviour change.

Blogger: Meghan Vollebregt is a student in the combined SLP MClSc/PhD program working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald.