Examining the association between language, expository discourse and offending behaviour: an investigation of direction, strength and independence.

BACKGROUND: A high prevalence of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is reported in the population of Young Offenders (YO). However, little is known about the extent of the association between language and offending behaviour relative to social disadvantage, education attendance and non-verbal intelligence (IQ), and neither has this association been investigated with particular reference to the expository discourse abilities of YOs on community orders in the UK. AIMS: This study aimed to examine the direction and strength of the association between language and offending behaviour by comparing the receptive and expressive language and expository discourse abilities of male and female YOs and non-offenders in the UK, relative to the confounds of social disadvantage, years of education attended and non-verbal IQ. Examining expository discourse provided a measure of the YOs. ability to verbally communicate complex information; a communication ability that is fundamental to engaging effectively in youth offending services and secondary education. METHODS: An opportunity sample of 52 YOs was recruited from a youth offending service. The YO group was matched on years of education, social disadvantage and non-verbal IQ to a purpose selected comparison group of 25 non-offenders. All participants had English as their first language and were not currently receiving any speech and language intervention. Participants completed standardised measures of receptive and expressive language and an expository discourse measure. The incidence of DLD was identified and compared across offender group using scores from the language and expository discourse measures and gender differences were also explored. Finally, logistical regression analysis was used to test the association between language performance and offending status relative to the confounds of social disadvantage, education attendance and non-verbal IQ. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: A large proportion of YOs scored below test norms for the language and expository discourse measures, which indicated a high incidence of DLD that was much larger than that displayed by the non-offenders. No differences were found on language performance between male and female YOs. Logistic regression analyses found that as language performance increased, the probability of being a non-offender significantly increased. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Participants were over 1 to 5 times more likely to be classified as a non-offender for every unit increase in the language and expository discourse scores. The statistically significant positive association found between language and offending behaviour relative to other confounds, highlights the important role of language in understanding offending behaviour. YOs displayed high incidences of DLD in their language and expository discourse abilities despite having not received any speech and language intervention prior to their involvement in this study. This has implications for their effective engagement in education and in youth offending and criminal justice services (CJS). Professionals in education, health and social care and youth justice should be made aware of the language needs of both YOs and children with emotional behavioural difficulties, and these language needs should be identified and targeted as early as possible to enable them to be effective communicators who can engage effectively in their provision.

Increasing adolescents' depth of understanding of cross-curriculum words: an intervention study.

BACKGROUND: There is some evidence that vocabulary intervention is effective for children, although further research is needed to confirm the impact of intervention within contexts of social disadvantage. Very little is known about the effectiveness of interventions to increase adolescent knowledge of cross-curriculum words. AIMS: To evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention programme designed to develop adolescents' knowledge of cross-curriculum words. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Participants were 35 adolescents aged between 12 and 14 years who were at risk of educational underachievement with low scores on a range of assessments. Participants received a 10-week intervention programme in small groups, targeting 10 cross-curriculum words (e.g., 'summarize'). This was evaluated using a bespoke outcome measure (the Word Knowledge Profile). The study involved an AABA design, with a repeated baseline, delayed intervention cohort and blind assessment. Intervention included both semantic and phonological information about the target words and involved the adolescents using the words in multiple contexts. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Results were promising and participants' knowledge of the targeted words significantly increased following intervention. Progress was demonstrated on the Word Knowledge Profile on the item requiring participants to define the word (for the summer intervention group only). This increase in depth of knowledge was seen on taught words but not on matched non-taught words. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Cross-curriculum words are not consistently understood by adolescents at risk of low educational attainment within a low socio-economic context. A 10-week intervention programme resulted in some increases to the depth of knowledge of targeted cross-curriculum words.

Phonological awareness development in children with and without spoken language difficulties: A 12-month longitudinal study of German-speaking pre-school children.

PURPOSE: There is strong empirical evidence that English-speaking children with spoken language difficulties (SLD) often have phonological awareness (PA) deficits. The aim of this study was to explore longitudinally if this is also true of pre-school children speaking German, a language that makes extensive use of derivational morphemes which may impact on the acquisition of different PA levels. METHOD: Thirty 4-year-old children with SLD were assessed on 11 PA subtests at three points over a 12-month period and compared with 97 four-year-old typically developing (TD) children. RESULT: The TD-group had a mean percentage correct of over 50% for the majority of tasks (including phoneme tasks) and their PA skills developed significantly over time. In contrast, the SLD-group improved their PA performance over time on syllable and rhyme, but not on phoneme level tasks. Group comparisons revealed that children with SLD had weaker PA skills, particularly on phoneme level tasks. CONCLUSION: The study contributes a longitudinal perspective on PA development before school entry. In line with their English-speaking peers, German-speaking children with SLD showed poorer PA skills than TD peers, indicating that the relationship between SLD and PA is similar across these two related but different languages.

Contribution of spoken language and socio-economic background to adolescents' educational achievement at age 16 years.

BACKGROUND: Well-documented associations exist between socio-economic background and language ability in early childhood, and between educational attainment and language ability in children with clinically referred language impairment. However, very little research has looked at the associations between language ability, educational attainment and socio-economic background during adolescence, particularly in populations without language impairment. AIMS: To investigate: (1) whether adolescents with higher educational outcomes overall had higher language abilities; and (2) associations between adolescent language ability, socio-economic background and educational outcomes, specifically in relation to Mathematics, English Language and English Literature GCSE grade. METHOD & PROCEDURES: A total of 151 participants completed five standardized language assessments measuring vocabulary, comprehension of sentences and spoken paragraphs, and narrative skills and one nonverbal assessment when between 13 and 14 years old. These data were compared with the participants' educational achievement obtained upon leaving secondary education (16 years old). Univariate logistic regressions were employed to identify those language assessments and demographic factors that were associated with achieving a targeted A* -C grade in English Language, English Literature and Mathematics General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) at 16 years. Further logistic regressions were then conducted to examine further the contribution of socio-economic background and spoken language skills in the multivariate models. RESULTS & OUTCOMES: Vocabulary, comprehension of sentences and spoken paragraphs, and mean length utterance in a narrative task along with socio-economic background contributed to whether participants achieved an A* -C grade in GCSE Mathematics and English Language and English Literature. Nonverbal ability contributed to English Language and Mathematics. The results of multivariate logistic regressions then found that vocabulary skills were particularly relevant to all three GCSE outcomes. Socio-economic background only remained important for English Language, once language assessment scores and demographic information were considered. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Language ability, and in particular vocabulary, plays an important role for educational achievement. Results confirm a need for ongoing support for spoken language ability throughout secondary education and a potential role for speech and language therapy provision in the continuing drive to reduce the gap in educational attainment between groups from differing socio-economic backgrounds.

Implications of Untreated Cleft Palate in the Developing World: Adaptation of an Outcome Measure.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the implications of living with untreated cleft palate and develop an outcome measure which reflects the broad impact of surgery but is sensitive to the physical impact, speech changes, and psychosocial implications of late intervention. Design, Participants, Setting: Focus groups and individual interviews were used to gather information on the implications of living with untreated cleft palate and the impact of subsequent surgery. Participants included 11 individuals attending a cleft department in India whose cleft had persisted into adolescence or adulthood, as well as 16 of their family members. The findings were used to assess whether the Therapy Outcome Measure (TOM) could capture the implications of untreated cleft palate and the impact of surgery beyond that of speech alone. RESULTS: The findings indicated that the implications of living with untreated cleft palate revolved around difficulties with communication, reduced autonomy, and nasal regurgitation. These issues are encapsulated within the third and fourth domains of the TOM, but there is a need for an adapted version (TOM-clp) to use in the developing world, incorporating areas specific to cleft palate. CONCLUSION: The TOM has potential as a global tool for measuring the broad impact, including the psychosocial benefit, from attending to untreated cleft palate.

Young offenders' perspectives on their literacy and communication skills.

BACKGROUND: Research has revealed that the youth offending population has low language ability when assessed on standardized language measures. However, little is known about the perceptions young offenders (YOs) have of their own literacy ability and their communicative interactions with others. Such knowledge might further our understanding of the possible association between language, literacy and offending behaviour. AIMS: This study investigates the perceptions and experiences YOs have of using literacy and communicating with others. It addresses the following questions. How satisfied are YOs with their own literacy and communication skills and how important do YOs perceive these to be? How much do YOs believe they understand others in their communicative interactions? How satisfied are YOs with their communicative interactions with others and how does this influence conflict at home, school, and in the youth justice system? METHODS & PROCEDURES: An opportunity sample of 31 YOs on court orders were recruited from a local youth offending service, excluding any who did not have English as a first language or were in receipt of current speech and language therapy provision. Twenty-six qualitative individual semi-structured interviews and two focus group interviews were carried out and analysed using a framework analysis method. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Themes revealed participants were dissatisfied with their communication and literacy ability. Other themes identified were difficulty in understanding others, a perceived lack of support and respect gained from others, and a negative impact of communication on self-esteem. The findings suggest that YOs often found themselves in disputes with authority figures, but that they avoided using positive communication to solve such conflicts and also avoided confiding in others. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings support the results found from quantitative research on the language abilities of YOs. This emphasizes the value in adopting qualitative methodology to understand the relationship between literacy, communication skills and offending behaviour in YOs. The findings highlight a need for increased language, literacy and communication training, and support for YOs, and for the staff who work alongside them.

The development of phonological representations in Mandarin-speaking children: Evidence from a longitudinal study of phonological awareness.

Two competing approaches to the analysis of the phonological structure of Mandarin syllables have been put forward. The first and more traditional approach is that a syllable can be segmented into initial consonant, medial glide, nucleus plus coda and tone. The second approach does not distinguish the non-compulsory medial glide as an independent element. To compare and evaluate these two different approaches, the development of phoneme-level awareness was investigated in 67 Mandarin-speaking children in Year 1 of school (mean age: 6;9) and Year 5 (mean age: 10;1). Results showed that at school entry some children were sensitive to glides and to a lesser extent to codas; their number increased by Year 5. This suggests that spoken language experience is enough for some children to acquire the representation of glides and codas; this is consistent with the traditional model of the Mandarin syllable, with both glides and codas as independent elements. However, the children's task performance was generally rather poor, even in Year 5, suggesting that development of phonemic sensitivity in Mandarin speaking children is not substantially improved by increased literacy experience.

Tracking change in children with severe and persisting speech difficulties.

Standardised tests of whole-word accuracy are popular in the speech pathology and developmental psychology literature as measures of children's speech performance. However, they may not be sensitive enough to measure changes in speech output in children with severe and persisting speech difficulties (SPSD). To identify the best ways of doing this, we compared a range of commonly used procedures for perceptual phonological and phonetic analysis of developmental speech difficulties. Data are drawn from four children with SPSD, recorded at 4 years and again at 6 years old performing naming and repetition tasks. Measures of speech output included percentage of whole words correct (PWC), percentage of consonants correct (PCC), proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP), phonological pattern (process) analysis and phonetic inventory analysis. Results indicate that PWC captures change only when identical stimuli are used across time points. PCC is a more robust indicator of change, being less affected by the choice of stimuli. PWP also captures change across time and tasks, while appearing to be more sensitive than PCC to psycholinguistic variables. PCC and PWP are thus both potentially useful tools for evaluating speech outcomes.

Developmental communication impairments in adults: outcomes and life experiences of adults and their parents.

PURPOSE: This study identifies the outcomes and documents the longitudinal life experiences of adults who attended a specialist residential school for children with pervasive and complex developmental communication impairments. METHOD: Semistructured interviews were carried out with 26 adult ex-pupils who had attended the school and the parents of 15 of the ex-pupils. RESULTS: Seven key themes were identified from the data, including (a) lack of appropriate support and the impact of this in early childhood, (b) advantages and disadvantages of specialist educational provision compared to mainstream and other provision, (c) changing impact of developmental communication impairments over time, (d) challenging transition away from specialist educational provision, (e) absence of appropriate support for adults with developmental communication impairments, (f) persisting impact of developmental communication impairments on social and emotional functioning in adult life, and (g) differences in perspective between the adult ex-pupils and their parents. CONCLUSION: Across the adult ex-pupils and their parents, the perceived reported benefits of early intervention, parental support, specialist educational provision, and guidance at times of transitions should inform current service provision for this vulnerable group of individuals and their families.

Language and disadvantage: a comparison of the language abilities of adolescents from two different socioeconomic areas.

BACKGROUND: It is recognized that children from areas associated with socioeconomic disadvantage are at an increased risk of delayed language development. However, so far research has focused mainly on young children and there has been little investigation into language development in adolescence. AIMS: To investigate the language abilities of adolescents from two different socioeconomic areas. The paper aims to determine if a higher proportion of adolescents from an area of socioeconomic disadvantage have low language scores when compared with adolescents from a relatively advantaged area. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Six standardized language assessments were used to measure expressive and receptive language skills across vocabulary, syntax and narrative in two cohorts of 13 and 14 year olds: one cohort attending a school in an area of socioeconomic disadvantage (103 participants) and the other cohort attending a school in an area of relative socioeconomic advantage (48 participants). OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The cohort from the area of disadvantage performed significantly lower than the assessments' normative mean on all measures of language ability. There were significant differences between the two cohorts on four of the six language measures. More adolescents from the school in the area of socioeconomic disadvantage had standardized assessment scores that suggest hitherto undetected language difficulties. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Results suggest that socioeconomic background is associated with language ability in adolescence as measured by standardized tests. In particular, adolescents from an area of socioeconomic disadvantage were at risk of low vocabulary scores. The advantages and disadvantages of using standardized language assessments are discussed and the implications for clinical and educational practice and for school level policies are highlighted.

Development of a test battery for assessing phonological awareness in German-speaking children.

The development of phonological awareness (PA), the ability to reflect on the sound structure of words independent of their meaning, has been extensively explored in English-speaking children. However, this is not the case for other languages. The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive PA test battery for German-speaking preschool children, considering psycholinguistic, linguistic, and cognitive aspects and to carry out analyses of its psychometric properties. Cross-sectional data from a sample of 55 children (CA 4;0-6;11 years) were collected. Preliminary findings confirm validity and reliability of the test battery, and support previous findings that PA develops from larger to smaller linguistic units. Phoneme-level tasks were consistently associated with letter knowledge. The new instrument is a promising tool for basic research (e.g. cross-linguistic comparisons of PA development) as well as for clinical and educational practice (e.g. planning speech and language therapy or literacy-oriented intervention).

Phonological therapy within a psycholinguistic framework: promoting change in a child with persisting speech difficulties.

BACKGROUND: Single case studies are a valuable means of providing information about the outcomes of speech and language intervention. Many previous studies have used phonological analysis as a theoretical basis, while others have used psycholinguistic models. The present study combines these approaches to assessment, intervention and evaluation of outcomes. AIMS: The aim of the research was to determine if intensive psycholinguistically based intervention could result in (a) specific and (b) generalized improvements in the speech production of a child with severe and persisting phonological difficulties. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: A single subject research design was used with pre- and post-intervention assessment carried out. Assessment took place at two levels: the macro level focused on global change in the child's speech processing system using psycholinguistic speech profiling and phonological analyses; the micro assessment focused on specific, treated (and matched control) stimuli. There were three phases of intervention with a total of 30 hours of therapy. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Micro evaluation showed significant changes in Katy's single word and connected speech production--as well as in other areas such as spelling and auditory discrimination of closely related real word pairs. Macro evaluation revealed significant improvement in speech severity indices (PCC, PPC), and gains in her ability to discriminate between closely related real word pairs. These changes were maintained at follow-up seven months after intervention had ceased. CONCLUSIONS: Specific and intensive intervention brought about significant improvements in this child's speech, spelling and auditory discrimination at the micro level, and in speech and auditory discrimination at a macro level. The macro level assessments reveal persisting core deficits requiring further focused intervention before changes can be observed more widely. When carefully defined and evaluated, speech and language intervention can have positive outcomes for children with severe and persisting speech difficulties.

Speech-production skills in children aged 3-7 years.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, clinicians have been using a psycholinguistic approach to the assessment and remediation of children's developmental speech disorders. This requires the comparison of a child's performance across a range of speech-production tasks. AIMS: To describe the profile of performance across different speech-production tasks in normal development and to discuss the application of such data to clinical findings. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Three speech-production tasks, picture naming, word repetition and non-word repetition, were presented to 100 children with normal speech development, aged between 3 and 7 years of age. The speech-processing demands of the different tasks were considered using a developmental speech-processing model. Stimuli used in the three task paradigms were carefully matched so that children's performance across the tasks could be directly compared. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Within the context of normal speech development, there were significant improvements in performance for all three tasks as children get older. There were also significant differences in performance across the three tasks, and the pattern of these relationships changed with age. Significant differences were found in the accuracy of production of words of increasing length. CONCLUSIONS: Profiles of speech-production task performance are presented within the context of normal development. Comparison of performance across three different speech-production tasks might provide useful insight into the nature of a child's speech disorder.

Educational consequences of developmental speech disorder: Key Stage 1 National Curriculum assessment results in English and mathematics.

BACKGROUND: Children with speech difficulties may have associated educational problems. This paper reports a study examining the educational attainment of children at Key Stage 1 of the National Curriculum who had previously been identified with a speech difficulty. AIMS: (1) To examine the educational attainment at Key Stage 1 of children diagnosed with speech difficulties two/three years prior to the present study. (2) To compare the Key Stage 1 assessment results of children whose speech problems had resolved at the time of assessment with those whose problems persisted. SAMPLE(S): Data were available from 39 children who had an earlier diagnosis of speech difficulties at age 4/5 (from an original cohort of 47) at the age of 7. A control group of 35 children identified and matched at preschool on age, nonverbal ability and gender provided comparative data. METHODS: Results of Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) in reading, reading comprehension, spelling, writing and maths, administered to children at the end of Year 2 of school were analysed. Performance across the two groups was compared. Performance was also compared to published statistics on national levels of attainment. RESULTS: Children with a history of speech difficulties performed less well than controls on reading, spelling and maths. However, children whose speech problems had resolved by the time of assessment performed no differently to controls. Children with persisting speech problems performed less well than controls on tests of literacy and maths. Spelling performance was a particular area of difficulty for children with persisting speech problems. CONCLUSIONS: Children with speech difficulties are likely to perform less well than expected on literacy and maths SAT's at age 7. Performance is related to whether the speech problem resolves early on and whether associated language problems exist. Whilst it is unclear whether poorer performance on maths is because of the language components of this task, the results indicate that speech problems, especially persisting ones, can affect the ability to access the National Curriculum to expected levels.

The development of early literacy skills among children with speech difficulties: a test of the "critical age hypothesis".

This article presents a longitudinal study of the early literacy development of 47 children with speech difficulties from ages 4 to 7 years. Of these children, 19 with specific speech difficulties were compared with 19 children with speech and language difficulties and 19 normally developing controls. The risk of literacy difficulties was greater in the group with speech and language difficulties, and these children displayed deficits in phoneme awareness at 6 years. In contrast, the literacy development of children with isolated speech problems was not significantly different from that of controls. A path analysis relating early speech, language, and literacy skills indicated that preschool language ability was a unique predictor of phoneme awareness at 5;8 (years; months), which, together with early reading skill, predicted literacy outcome at 6;9. Once the effects of phoneme awareness were controlled, neither speech perception nor speech production processes predicted variation in literacy skills. However, it is noteworthy that children with persisting speech difficulties at 6;9 were particularly vulnerable to deficits in reading-related processes.

Attitudes of speech and language therapists towards stammering: 1985 and 2000.

BACKGROUND: Past research has indicated that speech and language therapists hold some negative attitudes towards people who stammer, their parents and the treatment of stammering. However, studies on attitudes towards stammering have predominantly focussed on therapists in the USA. Recent trends towards earlier intervention suggest that more therapists in the UK will be involved in working with stammering. AIMS: This study aimed to gather current attitudes of therapists in the UK and to compare them with attitudes measured 15 years previously. It also considered the impact of postgraduate training on attitudes and examined the attitudes of therapists trained in the Lidcombe Programme. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The attitudes of 261 speech and language therapists were measured in a postal survey using the Clinician Attitudes Toward Stuttering (CATS) Inventory. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The survey revealed an increase in positive attitudes towards early intervention and a reduction in negative attitudes towards people who stammer since the CATS inventory was carried out in 1985. An analysis of generalist and specialist attitudes revealed that generalists were unsure about appropriate treatments to use with people who stammer. Therapists trained in the Lidcombe Programme held some different attitudes about early intervention, people who stammer and the treatment of stammering; however, they continued to view parental counselling as a critical factor in the treatment of the preschool child. CONCLUSIONS: The survey indicated that although therapists were more positive about some aspects of stammering, the treatment of stammering remains a complex issue. All therapists working with clients who stammer would therefore benefit from undertaking ongoing professional development in this area such as additional training, liaison with colleagues and joining a special interest group.

Speech, language, and cognitive development in children with isolated sagittal synostosis.

This study investigated the occurrence, nature, and severity of speech, language, and cognitive impairment in 76 children (61 males, 15 females) with isolated sagittal synostosis (ISS) aged 9 months to 15 years 7 months. There was no increased prevalence of global cognitive impairment in the group but there was a high prevalence rate of speech and/or language impairment with 28 (37%) displaying impairment of whom 20 (71%) had moderate or severe impairments that fulfilled the criteria for specific impairments. Prevalence rates were only increased for children over two years of age. Expressive language impairment occurred most frequently. Raised intracranial pressure, peri-neonatal risk factors, otitis media, or being operated were not associated with impairment. Surgery at a later age and a family history of speech and language impairment were both associated with impairments but numbers were small. The findings suggest that children with ISS are at an increased risk of developing speech and language impairment.

From phonological therapy to phonological awareness.

Children with speech difficulties often have delayed phonological awareness development and associated literacy problems. Speech-language pathologists (S-LPs) typically use phonological and articulatory approaches in their treatment of such children. However, it is unclear to what extent phonological awareness training, originally designed to promote literacy skills, might also improve children's speech output. This article adopts a psycholinguistic approach to examine the nature and development of phonological awareness and to explore the relationship between phonological awareness training and phonological therapy. The role of phonological awareness in predicting literacy development in children is discussed, and principles for analyzing the psycholinguistic properties of therapy tasks are presented. Phonological awareness cannot be dealt with independently as it is an integral part of articulation and phonological intervention. Further, phonological awareness is a necessary "on-line" skill in the dynamic communication process between therapist and child. Failure to take this into account will result in inappropriately targeted therapy and pragmatic breakdown between the child and S-LP.