Expressive language and grammar impairment

Characteristics of Expressive language and grammar impairment

Poor at learning new vocab - effecting auditory memory, phonological perceptions, word reteival
Cannot use syntactic inference
Comprehension defecits
Need more examples and repetitions for new words
Morphological (plurals) dev is late
Grammatical markers are later - auxiliaries, questions forms

Intervention

Providing optimal envirnments
Directly develop skills in a specifc way

Mapping defecits

Arise from phonological memory deficit
Inability o effectively use imitation to store grammatical forms

Syntactic bootstrapping

Inferring meaning of a word from syntactic and Sentence information

Morphological dveelopment difficulties

Past tenses
3rd person singular
Auxiliary do
Copula be
Subject/verb agreement
Tense related syntactic knowledge morphemes

Appropriate assessments

Pre school language scales - comprehension and expression
Early grammatical impairment- morphological markers production
CELF
Non standardised- RAPT, STASS

Appropriate therapy approaches

Grammatical techniques
- elicited imitation
- modelling
- recasting
- focused stimulation

Metalinguistic techniques
- colourful semantics
- shape coding
- narrative therapy

Grammatical facilitation strategies

Aim to increase frequency of target Norms
- and awareness of the function of target norms

Achieved through repetition

Elicited imitation approach

Presenting non-verbal stimulus alongside a verbal request to respond
A stimulus form to be imitated (the target form)
Reinforcement contingent on correct target form being produced
Adult chooses target form, acceptable response and stimulus materials (verbal and non-verbal)
• Intensive production practice provided
- can involve shaping
- is based on operant learning theory

Imitative modelling

Adult produces target in responses to stimulus and child listens
Childs asked to respond to stimuli- same or different
Aims to enhance their recognition of grammatical similarities/ differences
- by confining request to produce utterance to initial position child has uninterrupted productions - reduced cognitive demands

Sentence recasting process

modifying a child's sentence while maintaining the meaning
- Immediate adult response that mirrors child's utterance (major lexical items, meaning) BUT modifies 1+ sentence constituent or changes sentence modality e.g. statement to question

- gives child opportunity to compare their production with adult model
- focuses on child's attention on specific grammatical features
- has low interactional demands

Focused stimulation weismer and Robertson 2006 study

Simplified condition\= clinicians produced target words in 1-2 phrases
Expanded condition\= clinician produced target words in naturalistic speech

Results- more vocab was acquired in simplified it still acquired in both
- more expressive lang in expanded

Colourful semantics- functional level

Semantic relationship between form and meaning
Major nouns and verbs are chosen and semantic relationship between them is assigned
What doing
What
Who
Where
What like

Colourful semantics stage 1

Putting together agent and verb
Reception age +

Colourful semantics stage 2

Introduce theme - the what
SVO pictures with agent verb and heme

Colourful semantics stage 3

Interlude location- the where
Introduce copula in verb role

Copula

A linking verb between subject and complement

Colourful semantics stage 4

Develop a sentence with a verb and all 3 thematic roles

Colourful semantics stage 5

Introduce an inanimate object in the role of agent
- doesn't answer who

Colourful semantics stage 6

Introduce complement role
- answering Q what's it like

Colourful semantics stage 7

Introducing a coordination role

Shape coding

Used after colourful semantics
Supports literacy comprehension and expression and teach auxiliary and modals
Aimed for teenagers age range
Includes verb morphology- tensest shown by arrows

Shape coding builds on Colourful semantics through including colours

Red- Noun/pronoun
Pink- Det/possessive pronouns
Yellow- Verb
Green- Adjective
Blue- Preposition
Purple- Coordinating conjunction
Orange- Subordinating conjunction

Shapes are used for coding phrases-

Noun phrase - subject \= oval - who, what
Object \= rectangle- who what
Verb phrase - hexagon- what doing
Prepositional phrase - semicircle Adjective phrase - cloud- what like, how feel

Narrative therapy- Becky shanks 2011

For expressive and receptive lang difficulties
Taught to use. Story framework through colour coding, symbol and sign
Is easily adaptable for differing levels of ability
Story components are broken to: who where when what happened