Browsing by Author "Hilliard, Lisa"

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    Reliability of Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) to Evaluate Grammatical Skills of Individuals with DS or FXS
    (2021-06) Hilliard, Lisa
    Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) provide complex information about child language profiles, but are time consuming to score by hand. Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) is a software that automatically scores these measures based on a transcribed language sample. However, research on the reliability of CLAN to accurately score these measures is limited. The current study compares hand-scored DSS and IPSyn data with CLAN scoring to determine CLAN’s reliability in scoring these measures. Data was extracted from language samples completed by 36 adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome, 20 adolescents and young adults with fragile X syndrome, and 21 typically developing children. Clinicians and researchers should consider using CLAN as a time-efficient tool to derive IPSyn measures for evaluation, treatment planning, and research. CLAN scoring of DSS is less reliable, and only be recommended after CLAN updates demonstrate more accurate scoring of DSS sub-scores.
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    Verbs Matter: Verb Frequency and Phonological Complexity in Four Morphosyntactic Contexts
    (2022-10-06) Finestack, Lizbeth H.; Linert, Jamie; Ancel, Elizabeth; Hilliard, Lisa; Kuchler, Kirstin; Matthys, Olivia; finestack@umn.edu; Finestack, Lizbeth H.; University of Minnesota Child Language Intervention Lab
    Research indicates that when teaching grammatical forms to children, the verbs used to model specific grammatical inflections matter. When learning grammatical forms, children have higher performance when they hear many unique verb forms that vary in their frequency and phonological complexity. This dataset includes verbs derived from the language samples of English-speaking children aged 5 to 8.9 years used in one of the following four contexts: regular past tense -ed, third person singular -s, is/are + verb+ing, and do/does questions. We ranked verbs based on frequency and phonological complexity using the Word Complexity Measure developed by Stoel-Gammon (2010). We used this data to identify verbs to use when assessing the grammatical skills of children and when providing interventions for the targeted forms.