A technology-assisted language intervention for children who are deaf or hard of hearing: A randomized clinical trial

Meinzen-Derr, J., Sheldon, R., Altaye, M., Lane, L., Mays, L., &Wiley, S. (2021). A technology-assisted language intervention for children who are deaf or hard of hearing: A randomized clinical trial. Pediatrics, 147(2). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds/2020-025734

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children typically experience ongoing difficulties with language, even though many advances have been made in identifying hearing loss earlier and providing early intervention. DHH children face difficulties across many areas of their lives, which may lead to negative social, behavioural, educational, and even employment outcomes.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is the use of ways of communicating other than spoken language in order to share a message with others. This may include the use of gestures, facial expressions, signs, writing, or using an app to say your message for you. AAC is one approach shown by research to be effective for supporting individuals with communication difficulties.

Meinzen-Derr et al. (2021) shared the results of a study comparing the spoken language skills of DHH children in two groups:

1) a group receiving weekly speech-language therapy without the use of AAC, and

2) a group receiving weekly speech-language therapy with the use of AAC.

The authors collected language samples (recorded conversations between the child and the speech-language pathologist) and measured specific language skills including sentence complexity, average length of turn in the conversation, and vocabulary size, as well as overall receptive language (ability to understand language) and expressive language (ability to use language).

The authors found that the group of DHH children receiving speech-language therapy with the use of AAC showed greater increases in sentence complexity, turn length in conversations, and vocabulary growth. This group also showed greater increases in overall receptive (understanding of) and expressive (use of) language skills.

This research suggests that the use of AAC as a support within speech and language therapy sessions could be an effective and evidence-based approach to supporting receptive and expressive spoken language skills in DHH children. The use of AAC as a support in speech and language therapy sessions may be beneficial for use with other children as well.

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

Language and Repetition Performance in Autism Spectrum Disorder Versus Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence From Turkish-Speaking Children

Kaçar Kütükçü, D., Karalı, F. S., & Çınar, N. (2026). Language and Repetition Performance in Autism Spectrum Disorder Versus Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence From Turkish-Speaking Children. Autism Research: Official Journal of the International Society for Autism Research, e70236. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70236

Many brain-based childhood conditions, also called neurodevelopmental conditions, involve difficulties with language. Although these language difficulties may present similarly, children often show differences in overall language profiles. The ability to repeat made up words or nonwords (nonword repetition) and sentences (sentence repetition) are tasks that can be used to assess skills related to the language’s sound system (phonology), meaning units (morphology), and the ability to hold information in mind (working memory). The linguistic profiles of children with autism, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and other neurodevelopmental conditions have been compared in previous studies but results are often unclear and inconsistent.

Kütükçü and colleagues compared Turkish-speaking children with autism, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), and typical development (TD) on language and repetition tasks. Overall, typically developing children scored significantly higher than both the DLD and autistic groups. The DLD and autistic groups did not significantly differ on the majority of measures (exception: DLD group scored higher than autistic group on a morpheme completion task).

Overall, the findings suggest that language profiles of autism and DLD are similar. Future work with larger sample sizes and across cultural and linguistic differences is needed to further explore the questions posed in this study. 

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

A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention

Montgomery, J. W., Gillam, R. B., & Evans, J. L. (2021). A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(2), 449–466. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_lshss-20-00128 

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle with understanding complex sentences, but this difficulty is not due to language alone. In this article, Montgomery, Gillam, and Evans propose a new way of understanding sentence comprehension by examining how multiple cognitive factors work together. Children with DLD tend to have weaknesses in vocabulary, grammar, memory, and attention, all of which can impact their ability to interpret sentences, especially those with more complex structures. The authors introduce a model that highlights four key contributors: working memory, language knowledge stored in long-term memory, controlled attention, and fluid reasoning. Importantly, the results show that working memory plays a central “conduit” role, meaning it is the system through which the other factors influence sentence comprehension. For typically developing children, language knowledge and reasoning indirectly support comprehension through working memory, whereas children with DLD rely more heavily on controlled attention to support their understanding. This suggests that children with DLD may use different strategies to process language. Overall, the study emphasizes that sentence comprehension difficulties are best understood as the result of interacting cognitive processes, with working memory at the center, and highlights the importance of focusing on strengthening language—through both implicit and explicit approaches—when supporting sentence comprehension.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a second year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald.

A randomized controlled trial of an oral inferential comprehension intervention for young children with developmental language disorder

Dawes, E., Leitão, S., Claessen, M., & Kane, R. (2019). A randomized controlled trial of an oral inferential comprehension intervention for young children with developmental language disorder. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 35(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265659018815736

Inferential comprehension involves making connections between what you already know and new information to you. These connections allow you to draw conclusions or deepen understanding beyond just what is stated. Although inferencing is a skill that develops throughout childhood, children with a persistent language learning difficulty known as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) tend to have weaker inferencing skills as compared to their peers. One way to help improve inferencing skills could be to work with stories, which require lots of inferencing.

In this study, 5-6 year old children with DLD either participated in a small group intervention based on retelling stories and making inferences (inferencing group) or participated in an intervention targeting phonemic awareness or the awareness of speech sounds in words (control group). Inferencing scores for the inferencing group improved significantly as compared to the control group. The improvements made by the inferencing group remained higher even after the intervention was completed (i.e., during the maintenance phase). Both groups displayed an increase in literal comprehension across the intervention, which was still seen at follow-up. To measure if children could apply skills developed in the intervention sessions to stories not included in the study, an additional story retell task was measured  after the intervention. Results revealed significantly better understanding of inferences for the inferencing group as compared to the control. 

These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of intervention for inferencing skills in children with DLD. The differences in skill-building between the inferential and literal comprehension suggests that both of these skills need to be specifically targeted in intervention. Inferencing skills are important for many social and academic contexts and their development should encouraged during early school-aged years.

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

The effect of retrieval practice on vocabulary learning for DHH children

Reimer, C.K., Grantham, H., & Butler, A.C. (2024). The effect of retrieval practice on vocabulary learning for DHH children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 29, 377-387. https;//doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enae005

Most children begin building their word knowledge or vocabulary in infancy, and this process continues into adulthood. Hearing children often learn vocabulary simply by overhearing it in use by those around them. This process is called incidental learning. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children typically have smaller vocabularies than their hearing peers. Even if they have access to hearing technology, they are more likely to miss opportunities for incidental learning. DHH children learn words more slowly than their hearing peers. It can be challenging to find effective strategies to support word learning amongst DHH children who themselves differ in their word learning.

Reimer et al. (2024) present retrieval practice as a potential strategy for supporting vocabulary development in DHH children. Retrieval practice is the process of retrieving or recalling newly acquired information – in this case, vocabulary – from one’s memory, and has been shown to lead to better retention long term. While retrieval practice has been studied across various populations and various domains, including for vocabulary learning, its use for vocabulary learning with DHH children has not been explored. The authors set out to examine whether DHH children would retain more new words in one of two conditions:

1) if learned with retrieval practice (e.g., hearing the new words and being asked to recall them), or

2) if learned through exposure (e.g., hearing new words and repeating them immediately).

Following phases of acquisition (e.g., learning to correctly match new vocabulary to picture scenes) and practice (e.g., either retrieval practice or exposure), an assessment phase took place in which the child was asked to recall the new vocabulary words two days later.

Reimer et al. (2024) found that most DHH children recalled more words learned through retrieval practice than through exposure, and that they were twice as likely to be able to recall the new vocabulary word two days later if they had learned it through retrieval practice, compared to exposure. The authors also explored whether specific factors impacted a child’s ability to recall new vocabulary words. They found that DHH children who required additional practice rounds to accurately recall a vocabulary word were less likely to recall the word two days later, and that DHH children with additional diagnoses were less likely to recall new vocabulary words.

Implications of this study include the potential for retrieval practice to serve as one possible specific, direct strategy for supporting vocabulary learning in DHH children. Retrieval practice, however, may not be sufficient for all DHH children, who may need additional strategies and support beyond this.

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

Are narrative macrostructure skills shared in bilingual children’s two languages, and what predicts them?

Lipner, M., Armon-Lotem, S., Fichman, S., Walters, J., & Altman, C. (2026). Are narrative macrostructure skills shared in bilingual children’s two languages, and what predicts them? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 57, 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-25-00049

When we think about how to support bilingual children’s language development, we often assume that the best approach is to just increase their exposure to the school or societal language. However, a recent study offers a more encouraging and practical message for families and educators: reading at home may be one of the most powerful tools we have. In this study, researchers worked with 40 English–Hebrew bilingual preschoolers aged 5–6. The children were individually told short, picture-based stories in each language and were then asked to retell them. Their stories were carefully analyzed based on key story elements, such as introducing characters, describing a problem, expressing emotions, and including goals and outcomes. Parents also completed questionnaires about their child’s language background, including when the child was first exposed to Hebrew and how often they read books with their child in each language.

Overall, children told more detailed and well-organized stories in their home language, English, than in Hebrew. They were more likely to clearly introduce characters, describe emotions, and include important parts of a story. What stood out most, however, was that the strongest predictor of how well children told stories in Hebrew was not how early they were exposed to Hebrew, or even how strong their Hebrew vocabulary was. Instead, it was how often their parents read to them and even more surprising was that the parents read mostly in English. This suggests that shared book reading in the home language can help children develop an understanding of how stories work, and this knowledge can transfer across languages. In other words, learning story structure in one language supports storytelling in another. These findings send an important message to parents about the importance of simply reading together regularly—especially in the language parents feel most comfortable using. These experiences can play a meaningful role in strengthening bilingual children’s language and literacy skills in both languages.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a second year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald.

Changes in production of complex syntax by elementary-aged school children

Pavelko, S.L., Owens, R.E., & Hahs-Vaughn, D.L. (2025). Changes in production of complex syntax by elementary-aged school children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56, 1002-1010. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00141

As language skills develop, a child’s length of spoken utterance increases in length. There is an assumption that as utterance length increases, the sentences spoken also become more complex. Complex sentences include (1) compound (2 simple sentences joined by a conjunction like ‘and’), (2) complex (a sentence and a clause, which is not a full sentence), or (3) compound-complex (2 simple sentences joined with a conjunction and at least 1 clause). It’s reasonable to expect that the proportion of complex sentences spoken would change as children age, but past research has not found such a difference.

The present study examined children’s language samples for how age (5-10 years) predicted (1) the proportion of complex sentences with different types of clauses and (2) the proportion of compound sentences with different types of conjunctions. Findings revealed no age-related differences in the proportion of complex sentences across all clause types. An age-related difference in the proportion of compound sentences was found for the conjunctions but and so, but not and.

The modest age-related differences in complex and compound sentences reported in this study were surprising. The findings provide limited guidance for intervention. Further research is needed examining complex and compound sentence use by children with language difficulties such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Blogger: Lisa Archibald

Fit for purpose. Co-production of complex behavioural interventions: A practical guide and exemplar of co-producing a telehealth-delivered exercise intervention for people with stroke

Ramage, E.R., Burke, M., Galloway, M., Graham, I.D., Janssen, H., Marsden, D.L., Patterson, A.J., Pollack, M., Said, C.M., Lynch, E.A., English, C. (2022). Fit for purpose. Co-production of complex behavioural interventions. A practical guide and exemplar of co-producing a telehealth-delivered exercise intervention for people with stroke. Health Research Policy and Systems, 20(2). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00790-2

Ramage and colleagues set out to develop an intervention protocol for people living with stroke that was to be delivered via telehealth. To increase the real-world application of the intervention, the authors used an approach in which the intervention protocol was co-produced by people living with stroke, caregivers of people living with stroke, and clinicians who would implement the intervention (these individuals referred to collectively as knowledge users).

Ramage, et al. used a 4-stage process including stages of:

• Start-up and planning – the research team met to determine the scope of the project and the essential components to be included in the intervention, such as timeline and the groups of knowledge users to be involved,
• Content development – recruitment of the knowledge users, facilitating workshops to discuss the intervention, outcomes, barriers, and enablers,
• Protocol development – refining the intervention protocol based on input from the knowledge users and identifying areas requiring further input, and
• Adaptation – demonstrating aspects of the intervention protocol, providing examples of materials and equipment for the intervention, and identifying further revisions to intervention.

Challenges with this process included competing time pressures, frequency and duration of meetings, power imbalance, and clear communication. Practical tips for supporting this process included involving more than one individual in each knowledge user group so that the weight of the role is shared by multiple individuals and allows for multiple opinions/experiences, ensuring clear and consistent expectations, providing materials and information about the workshops to knowledge users ahead of time so they can prepare, and being flexible with meeting frequency and duration.

The authors provide reflections on the sharing of power in co-production projects and the process of collaborative decision making, expressing the importance of all team members having a chance to voice their opinions and experiences. At the point of publication, the telehealth-delivered intervention protocol for individuals living with stroke was in a phase of testing prior to implementation.

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

Story generation and narrative retells in children who are hard of hearing and hearing children

Walker, E. A., Harrison, M., Baumann, R., Moeller, M. P., Sorensen, E., Oleson, J. J., & McCreery, R. W. (2023). Story generation and narrative retells in children who are hard of hearing and hearing children. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 66(9), 3550–3573. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00084

Narrative ability refers to the ability to generate and retell stories and is a vital part of language and literacy development. Narrative ability is measured in 2 ways: Story generation is when a story is narrated with or without prompts such as pictures and story retelling is when a story is first narrated and then is to be retold in the similar manner.

Walker et al. (2023) investigated how children who are hard of hearing (HH) perform on story generation and retelling tasks compared to hearing children and examined which underlying factors best explain these differences. The researchers studied a large cohort of school-age children. The researchers examined whether factors such as grammar, vocabulary, and phonological memory mediated the relationship between hearing status and story generation or story retelling. This approach allowed them to determine whether the impact of hearing loss on storytelling was direct, or whether it operated indirectly through language development and auditory experience. Children who are hard of hearing scored lower overall than hearing children on both story generation and retell measures. Their narratives were often shorter, less syntactically complex, and contained fewer complete story elements. However, when language ability was considered as a mediator, the effect of hearing status on narrative skills was substantially reduced or even non-significant. This finding indicates that language ability is the key pathway linking hearing status to narrative performance. In other words, children who are hard of hearing do not struggle with storytelling because of hearing loss per se, but rather because hearing loss can influence the development of language skills that are foundational for narrative expression. Children with stronger expressive and receptive language abilities—whether hard of hearing or hearing—produced more coherent and detailed stories.

Walker et al. (2023)’s findings highlight that language proficiency mediates the relationship between hearing loss and narrative skill, suggesting that appropriate language support and early intervention will help children who are hard of hearing achieve better narrative skills. This research reinforces the need for comprehensive language-focused educational approaches to promote literacy and communication success in all children.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a second year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald.

Narrative identity formation: Rethinking speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) impact through a critical lens

Mayo, L (2025). Narrative identity formation: Rethinking speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) impact through a critical lens. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 34, 3025-3033. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_AJSLP-24-00460

Narrative language refers to the ability to tell stories. Narratives are a common communicative activity and also are an excellent language task often used by SLPs to assess language skills. Narrative structure has been described as 'story grammar', that is the sequence of essential narrative components in a story including elements such as character, setting, initiating event, problem, resolution. Many assessment tools and interventions are based on story grammar structure.

Mayo offers a critical lens to this practice. She argues that there is a presumption that story grammar elements are universal but that they actually represent Westernized narrative structure. Using tools based on Westernized narrative structure to assess a child whose cultural and linguistic context is non-Westernized could result in misinterpretation and misidentification. Mayo calls for SLPs to co-construct narratives with children and to consider the child’s cultural and linguistic context. 

Mayo does acknowledge the challenges here. Further research is needed to understand different narrative styles. But SLPs can take a ‘code switching’ rather than a ‘code overwriting’ approach where they support the child’s narrative identity but also prepare them for academic success in a system that prioritizes Western narrative style.

Blogger: Lisa Archibald

Perception versus comprehension of bound morphemes in children who are deaf and hard of hearing: The pivotal role of form-meaning mapping

Barcroft, J., Mauzé, E., Sommers, M., Spehar, & Tye-Murray, N. (2025). Perception versus comprehension of bound morphemes in children who are deaf and hard of hearing: The pivotal role of form-meaning mapping. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 68, 1024-1037. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00271

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) often fall behind their hearing peers with language development, have reduced vocabularies, and weaker syntax skills. In particular, morphemes (the smallest parts of words that carry meaning) at the end of words are especially difficult for DHH children. One factor contributing to this difficulty is that word-final morphemes are often quieter when produced, and often consist of high frequency sounds, which are commonly more difficult to perceive by DHH children. Many of these morphemes are learned in part through hearing them in use, which may also make learning them more difficult for DHH children.

Barcroft et al. discuss two factors that impact the acquisition of these morphemes: input (i.e., the words the individual is exposed to) and intake (i.e., the information processed by the individual). Many DHH children might face compound difficulties with these morphemes due to having reduced input (e.g., lower exposure to the morphemes) and reduced intake (e.g., due to reduced ability to perceive the morphemes). Another consideration is that there may be a discrepancy between perception and comprehension of these morphemes. That is, some individuals might perceive (hear) the morpheme, but may not actually comprehend (understand) its meaning.

In their paper, Barcroft and colleagues asked:

1. How well can DHH children perceive morphemes?
2. How well can DHH children comprehend morphemes?
3. Do DHH children acquire these morphemes in a particular order?
4. Is perception and/or comprehension in DHH children impacted by vocabulary size or modality (i.e., auditory only vs. audiovisual presentation of information)?

DHH children between the ages of 5 and 12 years participated in a series of tasks including a bound morpheme assessment testing the perception and comprehension of 4 types of morphemes (i.e., contractions, plurals, possessives, past tense), and standardized vocabulary measures.

Barcroft et al. found that DHH children overall had better performance on measures of perception than of comprehension, and that higher performance with one type of morpheme did not mean high performance on all morphemes. The authors found that DHH children with higher vocabulary scores (i.e., those with larger vocabularies) did better with morpheme tasks, and that there did not seem to be a difference between auditory only vs. audiovisual information.

This research demonstrates the importance of vocabulary knowledge for the development of other linguistic skills (i.e., use and comprehension of morphemes), and shows the importance of connecting morphemes to meaning to support comprehension. Barcroft et al. emphasize the need to address both the perception and comprehension of morphemes in DHH children, reminding us that access does not = understanding.

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

Collaborative working with parents of children with DLD in speech and language therapy: Identifying Dutch speech and language therapists’ barriers to enhancing practice

Klatte et al. (2025). Collaborative working with parents of children with DLD in speech and language therapy: Identifying Dutch speech and language therapists’ barriers to enhancing practice. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 156, 104882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104882

It is generally accepted that it is important to involve families in decision-making in the context of health and wellbeing interventions for young children. Such family-centred care requires collaboration between families and the professionals providing the services. This collaboration involves joint input on goals, planning, implementation and evaluation. In some contexts, a move to family-centred care requires practice change. Past studies by this author group have focused on identifying collaboration in behavioural terms, choosing select behaviours to target for change, and how to implement the behaviour for change. The current study focused on what needed to change in order to adopt the target behaviours.

In this study, focus groups were conducted with speech-language therapists (SLTs) in the Netherlands. Either in preparation for or during the focus groups, participants completed three assignments focused on (1) describing a challenging collaboration, (2) identifying parent priorities, or (3) establishing goals. Participants placed figures to position the parent, child and themselves for collaboration. They also wrote down their thoughts, feelings and actions. Participants then discussed their responses as a group. Results revealed two types of beliefs: beliefs about how SLTs can be supported in collaborating with parents (i.e., need for confidence, knowledge, skills) and (2) beliefs that are in conflict with collaborative working with parents (i.e., related to professional identity, consequences, emotion, environmental context and resources, social influences). More specifically, SLTs reported feeling pressure from parents, society and health insurances to spend their time on working directly with children, which hinders collaborating with parents.

It can be challenging for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and SLTs to work collaboratively with parents in the context of high service demands. One important goal in this area would be to increase SLP/SLTs confidence in collaboration skills. 

Blogger: Lisa Archibald

Quantity and Complexity of Speech-Language Pathologists’ Talk During School-Based Therapy

Sun, J., Justice, L. M., Jhuo, R.-A., & Jiang, H. (2025). Quantity and Complexity of Speech-Language Pathologists’ Talk During School-Based Therapy. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00303

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulties learning language for no obvious reasons. Speech and language therapy is critical in helping children with DLD develop their language skills. One way speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can promote language growth is by using child-directed speech (e.g., how SLPs talk to children) to create a language rich-environment. We know from previous work that how parents and teachers talk to children influences children’s language growth, but this has not yet been studied in SLPs. Based on a previous study from this same research group (Sun et al., 2023), SLP talk was measured in the following ways: 1) Quantity – the volume of talk was characterized by number of utterances and number of words; 2) Grammatical complexity – based on auxiliary verbs/copulas, conjunctions; and 3) Lexical complexity – based on verbs, adjectives, and different words used. 

There are also SLP-specific and session-specific factors that may contribute to language growth. The current study focuses on 5 SLP characteristics: years of experience, caseload size, job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and time pressure; and 9 session characteristics: number of children in session, session duration, child’s age, grade, gender, family income, and measures on language, phonological awareness, and intelligence. The aim was to determine these factors predicted SLPs’ talk (e.g., quantity, grammatical complexity, lexical complexity).

The study involved observing 75 SLPs and 281 children (kindergarten to grade 2) across 209 business-as-usual therapy sessions. The findings showed wide variability in SLP talk. For example, number of words used (indexing quantity) ranged from 167-4000 per session. Further, some characteristics studied were related to SLPs’ quantity and complexity of talk, but not others. In terms of SLP characteristics: 1) SLPs with more years of experience produced less quantity of talk; 2) higher time pressure was positively linked to all dimensions (e.g., more quantity, greater lexical and grammatical complexity). In terms of session characteristics: 1) longer sessions led to more talk and more complex talk; 2) the older the child, the more complex the SLP’s talk; 3) lower phonological awareness score was linked to greater quantity and complexity too.  

Overall, the findings serve as a starting point for understanding how SLP talk can serve as a source of rich language input during therapy sessions, and what factors potentially influence the quantity and quality of talk. More research is needed to understand how we can leverage on SLPs’ and other professionals’ (e.g., educators) talk as a means to improve language outcomes for children with DLD.

 Blogger: Theresa Pham is a Postdoctoral Associate.

Sharing stories versus explaining facts: Comparing African American children’s microstructure performance across fictional narrative, informational, and procedural discourse

Gardner-Neblett, N., & Alvarez, D. L. (2024). Sharing stories versus explaining facts: Comparing African American children’s microstructure performance across fictional narrative, informational, and procedural discourse. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67(11), 4431–4445. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00579

Discourse refers to the ability to put spoken (or written) utterances / statements together in communicative tasks. Fictional stories (or narratives) are one type of discourse. Young children often hear and are encouraged to tell stories. Other types of discourse involve explanations or descriptions. For example, information discourse refers to telling factual information about something (e.g., dinosaurs) and procedural discourse is when the steps of a task are described. A key feature of effective discourse is microstructure, or the sentence level grammatical features. Microstructure can be measured in terms of how many words or different words are produced (i.e., productivity) or the grammatical structure of sentences (i.e., complex sentence structures).

In this study, 130 African American kindergarten through second-grade students were shown wordless picture books to elicit three types of spoken discourse: narrative, procedural, informational. The findings showed that children produced longer and more diverse language in fictional narratives compared to informational and procedural discourse. Fictional narratives and procedural discourse also demonstrated more complex sentence structures than informational discourse. Additionally, older children generally outperformed younger ones in productivity and complexity, particularly in fictional and informational discourse.

The findings suggests that educators and speech-language pathologists should consider different discourse types when assessing and supporting children’s language development. Expository discourse is often used in teaching, so children may benefit from targeted strategies to develop their expository language skills.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a first year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald

Oral and written discourse skills in deaf and hard of hearing children: The role of reading and verbal working memory

Arfé, B. (2015). Oral and written discourse skills in deaf and hard of hearing children: The role of reading and verbal working memory. Topics in Language Disorders, 35(2), 180-197. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000054

Discourse skills include a person’s ability to organize and communicate information, such as a narrative or story. Storytelling requires one to use linguistic skills (e.g., knowledge of what words mean and how to combine them into a sentence) and cognitive-linguistic skills (e.g., using word knowledge to make connections between different parts of a story). How one uses these storytelling skills can look different depending on whether they tell the story aloud (orally) or in writing. For example, a written story can be revised, allowing for more control of the story being told. However, written storytelling also requires that attention is given to the writing process, which uses greater cognitive resources. Both written and oral storytelling requires holding information in one’s memory, which can challenge one’s working memory as well (e.g., with the need to hold onto information, and/or the need to hold information while performing other tasks). One important discourse skill for storytelling is the ability to tie together pieces of a story, or to generate coherence relations – meaningful links between parts of a story. These storytelling skills are difficult for children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). DHH children have varied language backgrounds but often have limited access to spoken language and limited experience with storytelling in sign language. 

In a study addressing the discourse skills of DHH children, Arfé compared the written and oral narrative skills of DHH children (aged 7-15) to a group of school-age matched hearing peers (aged 7-13). Children were asked to tell a story (both orally and in writing) based on the wordless picture storybook. A standardized reading comprehension task and measures of working memory (forward and backward digit span tasks) were also used. Researchers considered the productivity (the number of words and clauses produced), story structure (the number of story grammar elements included; e.g., setting, initiating event, two or more episodes, and conclusion), and coherence (the meaningful relations between clauses within the story) as measures of discourse.

Arfé found that the hearing children scored higher than the DHH children on reading skills and measures of working memory. For oral stories, hearing and DHH children produced stories of similar number of words and used the same number of story structure elements. DHH children produced more clauses than hearing children, while hearing children produced more coherence relations than DHH children. For written stories, hearing and DHH children produced an equivalent number of clauses, but hearing children outperformed DHH children on measures of number of words, story structure elements included, and coherence relations.

Overall, the discourse skills of DHH children were poorer than those of their hearing peers, but this difference was more pronounced in written storytelling. DHH children need support in the classroom for the development of both oral and written discourse skills, and may benefit from addressing poor working memory skills as well. Exposing DHH children to narratives or teaching them how to construct stories may not be enough to help develop these skills. Additional support will likely be needed, for example, through scaffolding and collaborative writing, story elaboration, and story retelling, both in oral and written language.

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

Internal state terms in the narratives of bilingual children with developmental language disorder: The role of microstructure and macrostructure

Altman, C., Fichman, S., Perry, N., Osher, P., & Walters, J. (2024). Internal state terms in the narratives of bilingual children with developmental language disorder: The role of microstructure and macrostructure. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 55(4), 1039–1053. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_LSHSS-23-00170

"Internal state terms" or ISTs are words and phrases that describe thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and physiological states, such as "think," "happy," or "see." These terms are crucial in storytelling as they help explain characters' motivations, feelings, and reactions, making narratives richer and more coherent. Stories also have a macrostructure and microstructure. Microstructure refers to the use of language at the word and sentence level, including grammar. Macrostructure, on the other hand, involves the overall organization of the story, including key narrative elements like setting, character goals, and emotional responses. The ability to tell a story is important as it supports the development of vocabulary, complex language, and later academic skills.  Children’s narrative ability or the ability to tell a story develops as early as 2 years and is refined by the age of 8. Children with a persistent difficulty learning language known as developmental language disorder (DLD) have been found to tell stories with fewer macro- and microstructure elements than their typically developing peers. Much of the research on narratives focuses on monolingual speakers. Research with bilingual speakers is very much needed. 

This study explored how bilingual children with DLD use language in storytelling. Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschoolers (n=58) with and without DLD were asked to create stories using a wordless picture book, and ISTs, microstructure and macrostructure were analyzed. Results revealed that children with DLD produced fewer ISTs and showed limited diversity in the types of ISTs used. Their narratives were often shorter, with less variation in vocabulary and simpler sentence structures, reflecting weaker microstructure skills. On the macrostructure level, they also struggled to include essential storytelling elements such as describing characters' goals, emotional reactions, and outcomes, leading to less coherent stories overall.

These findings suggest that bilingual children with DLD face challenges at the level of ISTs, microstructure and macrostructure. The study highlights the importance of language intervention strategies that target macrostructure, microstructure, and use of ISTs to help children build stronger narrative skills. 

Blogger: Diya Nair is a first year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald

Measuring the Effects of Cognitive Capacity on Sentence Comprehension: Evidence From Elementary School-Age Children

Magimairaj, B.M., Nagaraj, N.K., & Gillam, R.B. (2024). Measuring the effects of cognitive capacity on sentence comprehension: Evidence from elementary school-age children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67(10), 3778-3793.

Sentence comprehension in children is a complex process involving various cognitive mechanisms beyond vocabulary and syntax. One critical aspect of this process is working memory (WM) capacity, which refers to the ability to hold and manipulate information in the mind over short periods. Additionally, retrieval from long-term memory (LTM) plays a significant role in how children understand sentences. This study aimed to explore these cognitive predictors of sentence comprehension in elementary school-age children, focusing on how WM and LTM interact during comprehension tasks.

In this study, children with typical development or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) completed a sentence comprehension task by choosing a picture corresponding to a spoken sentence. Comprehension of adjectives included in the sentences either was or was not required to choose the right picture creating sentences of high or low cognitive load, respectively. Children also completed working memory tasks involving digit recall and a long-term memory task requiring categorizing or judgement of meaning relationships. The DLD group had lower comprehension accuracy, particularly when processing sentences requiring higher cognitive effort. As well, working memory was found to be a stronger predictor of comprehension accuracy than long-term memory. 

The findings suggest that children with DLD may struggle more with the demands placed on their WM capacity when interpreting complex sentences.

Blogger: Niloufar Ansari Dezfuly is a PhD Candidate working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald.

Supporting literacy development in kindergarten through teacher-facilitated play

Pyle, A., Wickstrom, H., Gross, O., & Kraszewski, E. (2024). Supporting literacy development in kindergarten through teacher-facilitated play. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 22(3), 428–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X231221363

Play-based learning is essential for supporting children’s learning during the early years. In fact, playful pedagogy is mandated as part of the current Ontario kindergarten curriculum. While it may sound simple to teach language and literacy skills in play, educators have expressed challenges related to (lack of) knowledge and confidence in knowing how and when to teach goals during play in a balanced way. The current study seeks to understand how different types of play may support different types of literacy skills. 

This study involved observing 30 kindergarten classrooms in Ontario. Observations were coded for the type of play observed and literacy skills targeted during play.

Play was defined as:

• Free play – Child-directed play with minimal educator involvement
• Teacher-direct play – Teacher-led activities with direct instruction and explicit steps that children follow
• Guided play – Educators create a context to focus on specific learning goals, while children direct play. Guided play is a combination of free play and teacher-directed play

Literacy skills were defined as:

• Alphabetics – Alphabet knowledge and decoding skills
• Fluency – Reading with speed and accuracy
• Comprehension – Understanding text and vocabulary
• Text conventions – Playing with books; book handling 
• Writing – Games with writing
• Oral language – Form (e.g., structure, grammar) and use (non-literal language) of language as well as storytelling skills

Results found that different types of play lend themselves well to targeting different types of literacy skills. Free play was the most common type of play in Ontario kindergarten classrooms. Free play targeted skills like text conventions and oral language. Teacher-directed play was the second most common form of play, targeting alphabetics, fluency, and writing skills. While guided play was the least common, all literacy skills were targeted during guided play. The authors advocate for enhancing guided play practice to support literacy skills in a more comprehensive way. 

We are also interested in the potential of guided play to support the full spectrum of oral language skills including grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure and length, and verbal reasoning. Another consideration is that talk during play may be good for good talkers, but those with weak oral language skills (English language learners, developmental language disorders) would require intentional instruction. 

 Blogger: Theresa Pham is a Postdoctoral Associate.

A meta-analytic review of the relations between motivation and reading achievement for K–12 students

Toste, J. R., Didion, L., Peng, P., Filderman, M. J., & McClelland, A. M. (2020). A meta-analytic review of the relations between motivation and reading achievement for K–12 students. Review of Educational Research, 90(3), 420-456.

Developing proficiency in reading is crucial to success for students at school and beyond. Growing evidence indicates that motivation plays a significant role in predicting reading performance over and above what is explained by cognitive and academic skills. Consequently, increasing knowledge on the relations between motivation constructs and reading has the potential to improve understanding of reading development and achievement. It can also inform investigations into how motivation might be applied to reading intervention.

In this meta-analysis, the authors sought to build on the previous literature by investigating the relations between motivational processes and reading in students across the school years (kindergarten through to grade 12). One of the issues identified was that motivation is complex and multidimensional, and research has been based on a range of theories which can be overlapping. This has led to inconsistency in the terminology and definitions used by researchers, creating challenges in understanding in the area. The authors used Conradi et al.’s (2014) hierarchy for categorizing and defining motivation constructs to, firstly, investigate the relationship between ‘a broad construct’ of motivation and reading in the literature. This hierarchy defines three constructs (goal orientation, beliefs, and disposition), with subconstructs under each of these. Intrinsic motivation was also included in the analysis. The authors then explored other potential moderators of interest -

(a) reading domain (code vs meaning focused)

(b) reading ability (typically developing vs students with learning disabilities or at risk)

(c) grade (elementary vs secondary)

Interactions between these moderators was examined, along with the influence of year of publication and motivation measure type (domain specific vs general). Directionality between motivation and reading in longitudinal investigations was also examined.

The search of the literature identified 132 peer-reviewed articles with 185 independent samples. Results indicated a significant, moderate relation between motivation and reading (r= .22, p< .001) with beliefs and disposition showing a stronger relation to reading than goal orientation. The authors propose that this suggests that motivation constructs can be different for different students, rather than a simple dichotomy of students being motivated or unmotivated.

No other significant interactions were found between the three motivation constructs, nor with the other moderating factors (reading domain, reading ability, grade) or between the moderating factors themselves. The authors found it surprising that the findings of the meta-analysis did not support the literature or the authors’ hypotheses that (a) struggling readers would have lower motivation than typically developing students, and (b) motivation decreases as students get older. The possible reasons for this are discussed. The longitudinal studies identified in the sample, all with typically developing students, suggested earlier reading is a stronger predictor of later motivation than motivation is of reading, reinforcing the importance of early reading instruction and intervention.

Reference:

Conradi, K., Jang, B. G., & McKenna, M. C. (2014). Motivation terminology in reading research: A conceptual review. Educational Psychology Review, 26, 127-164.

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

Lexical-semantic organization as measured by repeated word association in children who are deaf and hard of hearing who use spoken language

Rush et al. (2023). Lexical-semantic organization as measured by repeated word association in children who are deaf and hard of hearing who use spoken language. JSLHR, 66, 3925-39.

Word knowledge is usually measured in terms of quantity, that is, the number of words a child knows. However, the way a child links and stores words for retrieval is another important component of word knowledge called lexical-semantic organization. There are 3 subprocesses involved in word learning: (1) Triggering – recognition that a word is new and must be learned, (2) configuration – recognizing and mapping a phonological (speech sound) and semantic (meaning-based) representation of a new word to what it refers to, and (3) engagement – the necessary interaction between a new word and the child’s existing word knowledge to facilitate organization of stored words. Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) tend to know fewer words than their hearing peers. Available research suggests that children who are DHH may have difficulty with the triggering and engagement subprocesses of word learning, although research addressing configuration is limited. One task used to study lexical-semantic organization is a repeated word association task. In this task, an individual prompt (e.g., the word turtle) is repeated multiple times and an individual is expected to provide a different single word response each time. Responses can be analyzed in terms of their relation to the target, for example, whether responses are semantically related, clang (share sounds or rhyme with the target word), or error responses. With development, hearing children typically provide more semantically related response.

In this study, kindergarten and grade 1 children who were typical hearing, wearing hearing aids, or with cochlear implants completed a repeated word association measure including 24 stimuli words (12 nouns, 12 verbs, included in text). Each word was presented 3 different times and the child was asked to verbally respond with the first word that comes to mind but to tell a new word each time they heard the same word. No differences in responses were noted between the hearing aid and cochlear implant groups, and so these groups were collapsed for further analysis. Results indicated a developmental increase in semantically related responses to target words regardless of hearing status. The younger DHH group produced more errors and when those errors were not semantically related, they produced more errors that were not clearly in the semantic network of the target word. The authors argued that this result could suggest that young children who are DHH may not organize their words using the most efficient strategies when learning new words. Over time, however, children with DHH showed similar lexical-semantic organization as typically hearing peers.

Measuring lexical-semantic organization may provide important information about a child’s lexical organization and flexible use of words. This information could help to understand a child’s word knowledge in more depth.

Blogger: Lisa Archibald