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Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. Aims: To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Methods & Procedures: Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Outcomes & Results: Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast mapping production scores than TD children. Scores from the non-word repetition task were also significantly lower for the SLI group, revealing reduced phonological STM capacity. Phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary emerged as significant predictors of fast mapping performance when the group data were combined in a multiple regression analysis. Conclusions & Implications: These results suggest that the word-learning difficulties experienced by children with SLI may originate at the fast mapping stage, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary significantly predict fast mapping ability. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of word-learning difficulties in children with SLI and may inform lexical learning intervention.

Background: Children with specific language impairment are known to struggle with expressive grammar. While some studies have shown successful intervention under laboratory conditions, there is a paucity of evidence for the effectiveness of grammar treatment in young children in community settings. Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based intervention programme for expressive grammar in 5-year-olds with specific language impairment. Method & Procedures: Thirty-four 5-year-old children attending a specialized school for children with language impairment participated in the study. Nineteen children received treatment for expressive grammar (experimental group) and 15 children received a control treatment. Treatment consisted of weekly 1-h sessions of small group activities in a classroom setting for 8 weeks. Techniques included direct instruction, focused stimulation, recasting and imitation. Outcomes & Results: Results were analysed at the group level and as a case series with each child as their own control in a single-subject design. There was a significant difference in grammatical performance pre- and post-treatment for children who received grammar treatment (Cohen's "d" = 1.24), but not for a group of children who received a control treatment. Further, no difference in performance was found in the equivalent time period prior to treatment, nor for an untreated target. Treatment success was more pronounced in children without articulation difficulties which interfered with their ability to produce the grammatical targets (Cohen's "d" = 1.66). Individual analyses indicated the treatment effect was significant for the majority of children. Conclusions & Implications: Individually targeted intervention delivered in small groups in a classroom setting was effective in improving production of expressive grammatical targets in 5-year-old children with specific language impairment. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)

Background: The development of children's speech, language, and literacy skills is considered to build on a robust and intact speech-processing system, with normally functioning skills at all levels of input and output processing, as well as storage. There are a range of tasks available that assess input and output processing skills, however there are few tasks described in the literature that require a child to reflect on and analyse the internal structure of their own phonological representations. Aims: This paper will describe the development of the Silent Deletion of Phonemes (SDOP) task. This task is designed to assess a child's ability to delete and manipulate sounds silently within their own stored representations while minimizing the impact of any output difficulties. Methods & Procedures: The SDOP task was presented to 69 typically developing mainstream Year 2 children (aged 7;2-8;1 years) as part of a battery of phonological processing skills and literacy measures. Outcomes & Results: Scores for the population of typically developing Year 2 children were normally distributed and above a basal level but not approaching ceiling. Performance on the SDOP was significantly correlated with other measures of phonological processing but not a measure of non-verbal ability. It was most highly correlated with the measure of phonological awareness as expected, as both tasks measure awareness of the internal structure of words. However, the SDOP provided more information about the accuracy and specificity of a child's underlying phonological representations. The SDOP explained a significant amount of concurrent variance in both reading and spelling performance beyond the variance accounted for by the predictors that have been used by researchers to date. In combination, the SDOP and rapid-naming measure accounted for 58.8% of variance in performance on the reading measure and 54.4% of variance in spelling performance. Conclusions & Implications: The SDOP task appears to be a valid and reliable tool to assess the internal structure of a child's stored phonological representations. Profiling phonological representations allows clinicians to explore children's speech-processing skills which may be particularly useful with children with complex literacy difficulties. (Contains 3 figures and 6 tables.)

Background: There is a great deal of evidence to support the robust relationship between phonological awareness and literacy development. Researchers are beginning to understand the relationship between the accuracy and distinctiveness of stored phonological representations and performance on phonological awareness tasks. However, many of the tasks currently used to assess the integrity of underlying representations are confounded by requiring spoken output. Aims: This paper describes the development of the Quality of Phonological Representations (QPR) task, a task that does not require speech output, and its evaluation in the context of a larger study examining predictors of literacy outcomes in Western Australia. Methods & Procedures: The QPR task was given as part of a larger task battery to a cohort of 235 mainstream children in the last term of their Preprimary year (average age = 5;5) and to 179 children at follow-up at the end of Year 2 (average age = 7;9). Outcomes & Results: Normative data for both accuracy and reaction time are presented in percentile tables (appendix B). In their Preprimary year, children were able to identify correct productions of multi-syllabic words (hits) on average 87.5% of the time, rising to an average of 93.8% in Year 2. As expected, children became quicker at making these judgements, reaction time shifting from an average of 1.1 s in Preprimary to 0.83 s in Year 2. A similar pattern was observed with the data for correct rejections. To make these judgements, the children had to identify a pseudo-word as an incorrect pronunciation by "Katie the computer". In the Preprimary year, children were able to reject correctly the pseudo-words on average 68.5% of the time, rising to an average of 81.7% in Year 2. As expected, children became quicker at making these judgements, reaction time shortening from an average of 1.4 s in Preprimary to 0.81 s in Year 2. The QPR task was shown to have moderate reliability and concurrent validity. Conclusions: The QPR task appears to be a useful and cost-effective addition to task batteries aiming to identify at-risk children in the early stages of schooling. The ability to profile children's phonological awareness skills and gain insight into their underlying phonological representation skills allows more informed goal setting and intervention planning. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

Background Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. Aims To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Methods & Procedures Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Outcomes & Results Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast mapping production scores than TD children. Scores from the non-word repetition task were also significantly lower for the SLI group, revealing reduced phonological STM capacity. Phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary emerged as significant predictors of fast mapping performance when the group data were combined in a multiple regression analysis. Conclusions & Implications These results suggest that the word-learning difficulties experienced by children with SLI may originate at the fast mapping stage, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary significantly predict fast mapping ability. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of word-learning difficulties in children with SLI and may inform lexical learning intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]