Browsing by Subject "Language impairment"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    A comparison between nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment and traditional language treatment for bilingual children with primary language impairment
    (2011-07) Ebert, Kerry Danahy
    Background: Children with Primary Language Impairment (PLI) show subtle weaknesses in nonlinguistic cognitive processing (NCP) skills such as attention, memory, and speed of processing. It is possible that these weaknesses contribute causally to the language delays that characterize PLI. For bilingual children with PLI, NCP weaknesses would underlie language learning ability for both languages. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between NCP skills and language skills in bilingual children with PLI by treating processing speed and attention. Methods: A total of 24 participants in three groups (NCP treatment, English language treatment, and delayed treatment control) completed the study protocol. All participants were Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI between the ages of 6 and 10 years. All participants completed an extensive battery of assessments indexing NCP, English language, and Spanish language skills both before and after a treatment cycle. Analyses examined change for individuals, for each group separately, and for the three groups in comparison to one another. Results: Children who completed the NCP treatment showed significant change in processing speed and in overall English language skills. However, children who completed the English language treatment tended to make greater gains, both in English and in NCP skills. Few comparisons between the three groups reached significance, in part because the delayed treatment control group tended to make positive change and in part because of the small sample size. Individual variability was apparent across all three groups, but particularly pronounced for Spanish. Conclusions: The results support a connection between NCP and language skills in children with PLI. Language-based treatment programs may effectively alter NCP skills, and NCP treatment programs may alter language skills.
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    Metalinguistic Skills of Children with Varying Language Abilities
    (2018-05-06) Kriegel, Ashlyn N
    This study examined the differences between the performance on metalinguistic tasks between children with typical language development and those with weak language skills. Research Bilingual children will be used as a base for stronger metalinguistic abilities and I will discuss what bilingual children’s metalinguistic abilities taught researchers and how it applies to monolinguals and monolinguals with language impairment. Studies also typically use normal language acquiring monolingual children as a control group to compare to bilinguals and/or monolinguals with language impairment. Results indicate that bilinguals have the strongest metalinguistic abilities and monolinguals with language impairment the lowest. I then will include my own research done in Dr. Lizbeth Finestack’s Child Language Lab, comparing monolingual typically developing and low language skilled children between the ages of 4-8 years. This study will use a variety of examinations, looking at verbal skills, nonverbal skills, low-language skills, and metalinguistic skills. The paper concludes that monolinguals with low language skills have impaired metalinguistic skills which influences the strength of their verbal language abilities.