Polite Elgustus J, Leonard Laurence B
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
Child Lang Teach Ther. 2007;23(3):353-366. doi: 10.1177/0265659007083640.
Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have extraordinary difficulty in the use of tense and agreement morphemes. Because spontaneous speech samples may not provide a sufficient number of obligatory contexts for these morphemes, structured probe items are often employed. However, these usually emphasize actions that can be readily illustrated through drawings, which tend to have third person subjects. In this paper we describe a method that has been successful in creating obligatory contexts for a first person morpheme - auxiliary - that heretofore has been assessed exclusively through spontaneous speech samples. Participants were 32 mainstream American English-speaking children comprising three diagnostic subgroups: children with SLI, typically developing age-matched peers, and younger typically developing peers matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). The children participated in a task in which they described their actions for an audience; these descriptions required the use of auxiliary . The results revealed that the children with SLI used auxiliary with significantly smaller percentages than both groups of typically developing children, a finding that is consistent with findings that employ other tense and agreement morphemes. Clinical applications of this method are discussed.
患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童在使用时态和一致语素方面往往存在极大困难。由于自发言语样本可能无法为这些语素提供足够数量的必要语境，因此常常采用结构化探测项目。然而，这些项目通常强调那些可以通过图画轻松展示的动作，而这些图画往往以第三人称作为主语。在本文中，我们描述了一种成功为第一人称语素——助动词——创造必要语境的方法，在此之前，该语素仅通过自发言语样本进行评估。研究参与者为32名以英语为母语的美国主流儿童，他们分为三个诊断亚组：患有SLI的儿童、年龄匹配的发育正常同龄人以及在平均语句长度（MLU）上匹配的年龄较小的发育正常同龄人。这些儿童参与了一项任务，即向听众描述自己的行为；这些描述需要使用助动词。结果显示，患有SLI的儿童使用助动词的比例明显低于两组发育正常的儿童，这一发现与使用其他时态和一致语素的研究结果一致。本文还讨论了该方法的临床应用。
