Purpose

To identify, integrate, and summarize evidence from empirical studies of the language abilities of children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS).

Method

Candidate studies were identified through electronic databases, the tables of contents of speech-language journals, and reference lists of relevant articles and literature reviews. The 22 included studies met the following criteria: studied both children who did and did not stutter between ages 2;0 (years;months) and 8;0, and reported norm-referenced language measures and/or measures from spontaneous language samples amenable to effect size calculation. Data were extracted using a coding manual and were assessed by application of general and specialized analytical software. Mean difference effect size was estimated using Hedges’s g (Hedges, 1982).

Results

Findings indicated that CWS scored significantly lower than CWNS on norm-referenced measures of overall language (Hedges’s g = −0.48), receptive (Hedges’s g = −0.52) and expressive vocabulary (Hedges’s g = −0.41), and mean length of utterance (Hedges’s g = −0.23).

Conclusions

Present findings were taken to suggest that children’s language abilities are potentially influential variables associated with childhood stuttering.

Purpose

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to systematically evaluate the effects of parent-implemented language interventions on the language skills of children between 18 and 60 months of age with primary and secondary language impairments.

Method

A systematic literature search yielded 18 studies that met the predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Effect sizes for each study were calculated for 7 language outcome variables and analyzed using a random effects model. Separate analyses were conducted for each language outcome and for each comparison group. Outcomes were compared for children with and without intellectual disabilities and for parent report and direct observational language measures.

Results

The results indicate that parent-implemented language interventions have a significant, positive impact on receptive and expressive language skills of children with and without intellectual disabilities. Effect sizes (g) for child measures ranged from −0.15 to 0.82 depending on the outcome measure and comparison group.

Conclusion

The results of this review indicate that parent-implemented language interventions are an effective approach to early language intervention for young children with language impairments. Critical features of parent-implemented interventions are discussed in terms of implications for practice and future research.

Purpose

The Preschool Language Scale, Fourth Edition (PLS–4; Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 2002) was used to examine syntactic and semantic language skills in preschool children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to determine its suitability for use with this population. We expected that PLS–4 performance would be better in more intellectually able children and that receptive skills would be relatively more impaired than expressive abilities, consistent with previous findings in the area of vocabulary.

Method

Our sample consisted of 294 newly diagnosed preschool children with ASD. Children were assessed via a battery of developmental measures, including the PLS–4.

Results

As expected, PLS–4 scores were higher in more intellectually able children with ASD, and overall, expressive communication was higher than auditory comprehension. However, this overall advantage was not stable across nonverbal developmental levels. Expressive skills were significantly better than receptive skills at the youngest developmental levels, whereas the converse applied in children with more advanced development.

Conclusions

The PLS–4 can be used to obtain a general index of early syntax and semantic skill in young children with ASD. Longitudinal data will be necessary to determine how the developmental relationship between receptive and expressive language skills unfolds in children with ASD.

Purpose

To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children.

Method

Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables, total number of clauses, utterance complexity (i.e., containing no clauses, simple clauses, or subordinate and/or conjoined clauses), and grammatical correctness (i.e., the presence or absence of morphological and syntactical errors) in stuttered and fluent utterances were compared.

Results

Findings revealed that stuttered utterances in Spanish tended to be longer and more often grammatically incorrect, and contain more clauses, including more subordinate and/or conjoined clauses. However, when controlling for the interrelatedness of syllable number and clause number and complexity, only utterance length and grammatical incorrectness were significant predictors of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of these Spanish-speaking children. Use of complex utterances did not appear to contribute to the prediction of stuttering when controlling for utterance length.

Conclusions

Results from the present study were consistent with many earlier reports of English-speaking children. Both length and grammatical factors appear to affect stuttering in Spanish-speaking children. Grammatical errors, however, served as the greatest predictor of stuttering.

Purpose

The relationship between anxiety and stuttering has been widely studied. However, a review conducted more than 10 years ago (Menzies, Onslow, & Packman, 1999) identified 5 methodological issues thought to preclude consistent research findings regarding the nature of this relationship. The purpose of the present review was to determine whether methodological improvements have occurred since the Menzies et al. (1999) review.

Method

Literature published since the Menzies et al. review was evaluated with regard to the 5 methodological issues identified in that review: (a) the construct of anxiety, (b) trait anxiety measures, (c) participant numbers, (d) treatment status of participants, and (e) speaking tasks.

Results

Despite some remaining ambiguous findings, research published since the Menzies et al. review has provided far stronger evidence of a relationship between stuttering and anxiety, and has focused more on social anxiety, expectancies of social harm, and fear of negative evaluation.

Conclusion

The aims of future research should be to improve research design, increase statistical power, employ multidimensional measures of anxiety, and further develop anxiolytic treatment options for people who stutter.

Purpose

To discuss constructs and methods related to assessing the magnitude and the meaning of clinical outcomes, with a focus on applications in speech-language pathology.

Method

Professionals in medicine, allied health, psychology, education, and many other fields have long been concerned with issues referred to variously as practical significance, clinical significance, social validity, patient satisfaction, treatment effectiveness, or the meaningfulness or importance of beyond-clinic or real-world treatment outcomes. Existing literature addressing these issues from multiple disciplines was reviewed and synthesized.

Conclusions

Practical significance, an adjunct to statistical significance, refers to the magnitude of a change or a difference between groups. The appropriate existing term for the interpretation of treatment outcomes, or the attribution of meaning or value to treatment outcomes, is clinical significance. To further distinguish between important constructs, the authors suggest incorporating as definitive the existing notion that clinical significance may refer to measures selected or interpreted by professionals or with respect to groups of clients. The term personal significance is introduced to refer to goals, variables, measures, and changes that are of demonstrated value to individual clients.

Purpose

To present a primarily conceptual introduction to item response theory (IRT) and Rasch models for speech-language pathologists (SLPs).

Method

This tutorial introduces SLPs to basic concepts and terminology related to IRT as well as the most common IRT models. The article then continues with an overview of how instruments are developed using IRT and some basic principles of adaptive testing.

Conclusion

IRT is a set of statistical methods that are increasingly used for developing instruments in speech-language pathology. While IRT is not new, its application in speech-language pathology to date has been relatively limited in scope. Several new IRT-based instruments are currently emerging. IRT differs from traditional methods for test development, typically referred to as classical test theory (CTT), in several theoretical and practical ways. Administration, scoring, and interpretation of IRT instruments are different from methods used for most traditional CTT instruments. SLPs will need to understand the basic concepts of IRT instruments to use these tools in their clinical and research work. This article provides an introduction to IRT concepts drawing on examples from speech-language pathology.