Sunday, December 17, 2023

Higher-Level Language Strategy-Based Intervention for Poor Comprehenders: A pilot single case experimental design


Kelso, K., Whitworth, A., & Leitão, S. (2022). Higher-Level Language Strategy-Based Intervention for Poor Comprehenders: A pilot single case experimental design. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 38(2), 151-165. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590211071003

Poor comprehenders are a subgroup of poor readers who can read accurately and fluently at a level appropriate for their age but struggle to comprehend what they read. The current consensus is that 7-8% of children in middle primary can be classified as poor comprehenders, with this number increasing across school grades. While there is far less research on children with specific comprehension difficulties, compared with word reading accuracy difficulties, there is now a sizeable body of research on the language and cognitive profiles of poor comprehenders, with intact phonological processing skills being a key feature. There is also limited research into reading comprehension instruction more broadly, and even less on effective instruction for poor comprehenders, although there is some evidence to suggest that strategy-based instruction to improve inference making can be effective.

This pilot study used a single case series design to explore whether an intervention designed to target higher-level language skills was effective in improving the oral inference making and comprehension monitoring skills of poor comprehenders and, in turn, their reading comprehension. Participants were 11 children in grades 3 – 6 (aged 7;8 −12;1 years) who presented with a profile of adequate vocabulary and grammar skills but higher-level language difficulties. The intervention consisted of 10, 45 minute weekly sessions, presented in two blocks of five weeks. Testing was completed at four time points: two prior to intervention, one immediately following intervention, and a fourth 4-5 months post-intervention. In the first block of sessions, five strategies were introduced for use across the reading cycle (before, during , after). The second five sessions focused on applying the strategies taught and making inferences during reading of longer fiction and non-fiction texts.

The results of the study showed that oral inference making improved post-intervention for most participants, as did the ability to identify inconsistencies in texts (comprehension monitoring) for eight of the 11 participants. Transfer to improvement on standardised reading comprehension measures was more limited, consistent with previous research findings, particularly for nonfiction texts. However, the majority of participants had improved in the number of literal and inference questions answered correctly at the 4-5 month follow-up. The authors concluded by suggesting that the preliminary findings indicated that the 10-session intervention has the potential to improve children's comprehension during reading, and that examining responses to different types of questions may be beneficial to identify poor comprehenders, rather than just looking at overall reading comprehension test scores.




Blogger: Katrina Kelso is a Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Lisa Archibald.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Complex language use in children with hearing loss: A scoping review

Klieve, S., Eadie, P., Graham, L., Leitao, S. (2023). Complex language use in children with hearing loss: A scoping review. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66, 688-719. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00270

In a review of the research spanning the years since 1990, Klieve and colleagues aimed to determine what is known about the use of complex language, specifically complex syntax (the ability to form complex sentences), by children with hearing loss. The authors sought to determine if there is a profile (a typical distribution of strengths and weaknesses) of complex language use for these children, which could help guide more effective intervention practices.

Despite technological advances, many children with hearing loss still face significant difficulties with language in comparison to their hearing peers. Complex syntax supports literacy activities (such as oral and written expression and reading comprehension) and overall academic achievement. Much of the available research on complex language use in children with hearing loss focuses on the early elementary school years, even though complex syntax continues to develop past this stage. An important shift takes place around the age of 8 or 9 when students move from learning to read, to reading to learn. This shift aligns with an increase in the use of complex language and results in a widened gap between the skills of children with hearing loss and their hearing peers.

This review looked at research with a focus on complex syntax use at the sentence or discourse level (language made up of more than single words) by children (ages 4-18) with a moderate or greater hearing loss who use spoken language as their main method of communication.

The authors’ findings revealed the following characteristics of the complex language of children with hearing loss: use of more simple sentences, simple clauses and connectors, and use of fewer conjunctions and fewer complex conjunctions. Children with hearing loss used a comparable number of units of content in sentences but with fewer grammatically correct units.

Overall, the authors found that children with hearing loss experience difficulties across many aspects of complex syntax, and that difficulty with earlier developing complex syntax resulted in difficulty with later syntax development. This information can be used to develop an effective intervention approach for children with hearing loss that addresses a broad range of complex syntax, with the aim of supporting not only the development of complex language use in children with hearing loss, but ultimately supporting their overall academic success. More research into this area is needed in order to determine effective approaches to intervention for these children.


Blogger: Rachel Benninger is a combined MClSc/PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald



Monday, October 16, 2023

Promoting rich discussions in mathematics classrooms: Using personalized, automated feedback to support reflection and instructional change

Jacobs, J. Scornavacco, K., Harty, C., Suresh, A., Lai, V., & Sumner, T. (2022). Promoting rich discussions in mathematics classrooms: Using personalized, automated feedback to support reflection and instructional change. Teaching and Teacher Education, 112, 103631–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103631

Oral language plays an important role in a child’s everyday life. Oral language is needed for learning to read and participating in classroom activities. Children’s oral language can be supported in the classroom through classroom talk. But ‘just getting students to talk’ can be challenging. One way to promote rich classroom talk is through the use of talk moves. Talk Moves are sentence starters that teachers and students can use to engage in conversations. For example, if a student gives a confusing response to a question, the teacher can use the ‘Say More’ move to ask the student to “Say more about that…”. This move gives the student an opportunity to clarify their thinking. However, providing professional development on talk moves could be time-consuming and expensive, requiring expert coaching and human coders.

In this study, researchers evaluated the TalkMoves application that they designed to automatically detect talk moves after teachers uploaded their classroom recording. Participants included 21 grade 4-12 teachers and their classroom. The teachers recorded a total of 233 math lessons (mean = 10; range = 3 – 21) over a four-month period. The feedback provided from the application would inform teachers on the type and frequency of talk moves used, the percentage of teacher and student talk, and a word cloud showing the most used words.

Results revealed that teachers found the application to be user-friendly but they felt the recording underestimated the amount of student talk. Teachers were more interested in feedback about teacher vs. student talk than use of talk moves, possibly due to a lack of familiar with talk moves. In fact, one teacher noted that although the feedback was useful in helping her try to change practice (e.g., use more talk moves), she was still unsure what talk moves meant and that examples and explicit teaching would have been beneficial. The most commonly used talk moves were “keeping everyone together” (e.g., asking yes/no questions, asking students to repeat) and “press for accuracy” (e.g., asking students to use mathematical vocabulary). The least used were “getting students to relate” (e.g., commenting on ideas, agreeing/disagreeing with ideas) and “press for reasoning” (e.g., asking students to explain their ideas). Teachers nominally increased their use of talk moves over time, but results were not significant. Overall, while the TalkMoves application has the potential to provide teachers with automated and individualized feedback about their classroom talk, it seems crucial that teachers have a solid understanding of talk moves. This way, when teachers are interpreting feedback from application, they can understand what they are looking at and how they could change practice. 


Blogger: Theresa Pham is a Postdoctoral Associate.


Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Design, implementation, and evaluation of dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education

van der Veen, C., Michaels, S., Dobber, M., van Kruistum, C., & van Oers, B. (2021). Design, implementation, and evaluation of dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 29, 100515–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2021.100515

Classroom discussions offer opportunities for developing learning, reasoning, and language skills. However, often times, classroom talk uses the Initiation-Response-Evaluation sequence, limiting opportunities for students to think and talk together, for example:

Teacher: How do plants grow?

Student: Photosynthesis

Teacher: Correct

One promising approach to involve students in classroom talk is called talk moves. Talk moves are conversational strategies that teachers can use to encourage students to (a) share, expand, and clarify their thinking (Let’s take time to think); (b) listen to others (Can you repeat what John just said?); (c) deepen reasoning (What evidence did you use?); (d) and think with others (Do you agree or not? Why?). Students themselves could also use talk moves to invite others into the conversation. It would follow that understanding how talk moves could affect classroom culture is warranted.

The present study consisted of two cycles, each lasting about 8 weeks. At the start of each cycle, teachers met with the researchers to learn about talk moves and co-design classroom discussions incorporating talk moves. Baseline observations were completed before the first workshop. After which, observations of their classroom (92 students total) were coded for the following outcome measures. Teacher talk was coded for mean length turn (number of words/turn) and types of talk moves used. Student turns were coded for oral communicative competence assessed with a standardized test of pragmatics, child participation, mean length turn, and key linguistic words used (e.g., because, Why?, I think).

Overall, preliminary results were promising. Teachers increased their use of talk moves, especially the share, expand, clarify (Let’s take time to think) and metacommunication moves (What talk moves did we agree upon?). As for students, their oral communicative competence scores increased throughout the intervention, they took longer turns, and used more key linguistic words. Taken together, supporting the use of talk moves in the classroom could be beneficial for student’s oral language development and engagement more broadly.

Blogger: Theresa Pham is a Postdoctoral Associate working with Drs. Lisa Archibald and Janis Cardy.


Friday, March 24, 2023

Camouflaging in Developmental Language Disorder: The Views of Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) and Parents

Hobson, H.M., & Lee, A. (2022). Camouflaging in Developmental Language Disorder: The Views of Speech and Language Pathologists and Parents. Communication Disorders Quarterly, OnlineFirst, https://doi.org/10.1177/152574012211209

Camouflaging is a term used to describe behaviours or strategies that a neurodiverse person uses either knowingly (consciously) or unknowingly (unconsciously) to minimize their neurodivergent characteristics. Camouflaging has been studied in the context of autism. Autistic individuals report that camouflaging is emotionally draining and exhausting because the camouflaging behaviours require additional cognitive effort to maintain.

This present study is the first to examine camouflaging in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Using a qualitative descriptive design, the authors interviewed 6 SLPs and 6 parents of children with DLD. A wide variety of behaviours considered to reflect were noted including conversational tools (e.g., scripts; saying they understood when they had not), relying on others (e.g., pausing and allowing others to fill in), avoidance (e.g., playing by themselves; saying ‘I don’t know’), nonverbal behaviours (e.g., smiling, nodding), disruptive behaviours (e.g., acting silly), other cognitive abilities (e.g., using good problem solving skills to work around a language difficulty), and copying (e.g., doing what the other children are doing). Some impacts of camouflaging were that intervention strategies might not be employed because the problem is not recognized or the child prefers not to have to use the strategy. Exhaustion was commonly reported with reports of children ‘holding it together at school and then having a meltdown at home’. Personality factors influenced motivation for camouflaging for the children but also people’s responses. For example, children might be perceived as being difficult or rude. The authors indicate that there are likely more camouflaging behaviours than were captured in the current study.

Children with DLD may knowingly or unknowingly camouflage their language struggles. Understanding camouflaging could help in understanding a child’s presenting profile.


Blogger: Lisa Archibald

Monday, January 23, 2023

Reading, writing, and spoken language assessment profiles for students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing compared with students with language learning disabilities

Wolf Nelson, N. & Crumpton, T. (2015). Reading, writing, and spoken language assessment profiles for students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing compared with students with language learning disabilities. Topics in Language Disorders, 35(2), pp. 157-179.

Despite the many advances that have been made technologically and in terms of early identification, Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children still face a lag in the development of spoken and written communication in comparison to their hearing peers. Hearing loss, even when aided, interferes with language learning. For children with language learning disabilities (LLD; referred to as Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) in more recent years), similar phonological skills can be impacted. The possible areas of impairment for both groups include nonword repetition, difficulties with mapping spoken and written language at the word- and sub-word levels, difficulties with vocabulary, syntax, and discourse-level skills.

In their study, Wolf Nelson and Crumpton investigated whether specific language profiles could assist with the diagnosis of co-occurring LLD and hearing loss. Using data from the national standardization study for the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS) to search for patterns (in vocabulary, word structure, auditory memory, sentence-/discourse-level abilities), the researchers compared and contrasted the language and literacy skills of three groups of school-age students:

  • DHH children
  • Chronological age-matched hearing peers with typical language development
  • Chronological age-matched hearing peers with primary LLD

The authors found the following:

    1. The typically developing hearing group performed significantly better on most language and literacy skills than the DHH children (all areas except for written expression – discourse).
    2. The DHH group performed similarly to the LLD group in many areas, but significantly more poorly than the LLD group in some areas (including both oral and written measures at the sound/word level and multiple oral measures at the sentence/discourse level).
    3. Additional analyses indicated that for the DHH children, vocabulary awareness predicted the language patterns, and that phonemic awareness predicted word reading.

The findings were taken as evidence for concern about the language and literacy learning needs in DHH students. The authors emphasize the importance of documenting actual performance rather than falling into the tendency to believe students “sound okay” and “seem to be doing well.” Wolf Nelson and Crumpton make two clinical recommendations: to ensure the best possible access to sound, and to provide explicit individualized language intervention (targeting areas such as vocabulary, phonemic awareness, morphemic awareness, phonics, and narrative discourse).


Blogger: Rachel Benninger is a combined MClSc/PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald



Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Narrative dialogic reading with wordless picture books: A cluster-randomized intervention study

Grolig, L., Cohrdes, C., Tiffin-Richards, S. P., & Schroeder, S. (2020). Narrative dialogic reading with wordless picture books: A cluster-randomized intervention study. Early Childhood Research Quarterly51, 191–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2019.11.002

Did you know that shared (dialogic) reading shows great promise for helping children develop oral language skills, which in turn improves reading? Shared reading refers to a child and adult talking about stories from books. Shared reading involves extratextual talk, where an adult asks different types of questions to the child during shared reading. Extratextual talk can help a child learn vocabulary and gain understanding. The questions asked during extratextual talk can broadly be categorised into inferential questions that focus on thoughts, inferences and feelings, and literal questions that focus on characters, setting and events of a story.

Grolig along with his team of researchers conducted an extensive study to investigate the impact of dialogic reading on literal and inferential comprehension, and vocabulary breadth (knowledge of words) and depth (knowledge of word meaning). At the level of the child care centre, 201 German-speaking preschoolers were randomly assigned to complete a dialogic reading intervention, an alternative treatment and a third no treatment group in twice weekly, 45-minute, small group sessions over 6 months (42 sessions). Results revealed positive effects on narrative comprehension, production and vocabulary breadth and depth for the children in the dialogic reading group, with inferential comprehension effects maintained after 5 months. Children in the other 2 groups did eventually catch up but the study clearly showed an advantage for the dialogic reading group.

These results add to the growing evidence base for the positive effects of dialogic reading. If you want to find out more about dialogic reading, watch this video: https://youtu.be/0FUdTAHa0W0

Blogger: Diya Nair is an MSc student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald.