Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Seton Hall University, Interprofessional Health Sciences Campus, Nutley, NJ.
Department of Pediatrics, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University, Nutley, NJ.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2020 Mar 23;63(3):749-763. doi: 10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00235. Epub 2020 Feb 27.
Purpose Toddlers with late language emergence have difficulty acquiring an object vocabulary that is well defined by shape early in development. Without object words, subsequent language growth is delayed. The current study tested an intervention scaffold that highlights object shape during word teaching so that toddlers with late language emergence may establish themselves in the early stages of object word learning. Method Four toddlers with late language emergence participated in a brief dose of two interventions that differed only in semantic scaffold-a co-speech shape gesture or a co-speech indicator gesture. Co-speech refers to the word model and gesture occurring simultaneously. Shape gestures explicitly conveyed object form, whereas indicator gestures directed attention to the object. A single-subject experimental design tracked naming of taught objects and untaught exemplars. The study compared the mean number of phonemes produced in names between conditions. Results The four participants (a) extended more names to novel exemplars, (b) named more exemplar types, and (c) named more exemplar tokens when learned with shape gestures than with indicating gestures. The shape gesture advantage was confirmed with "percentage of nonoverlapping data" analysis. Not only did the shape gesture increase naming over the indicator gesture but more sounds were also mapped on average in the shape condition. Conclusion The current study used a semantic approach to the word learning problem in toddlers with late language emergence. We conclude that co-speech shape gestures led to semantic enrichment and facilitated phonological binding of the word representation. Future experiments should focus on a component analysis in parent-implemented interventions for greater carryover in the child's natural environment (i.e., external validity).
目的 语言发展迟缓的幼儿在早期很难掌握形状定义明确的物体词汇。没有物体词汇，后续的语言发展就会延迟。本研究测试了一种干预支架，在单词教学中强调物体形状，以便语言发展迟缓的幼儿可以在物体单词学习的早期阶段确立自己的地位。
方法 四名语言发展迟缓的幼儿参与了两种干预措施的简短剂量测试，这两种干预措施仅在语义支架上有所不同——伴随言语的形状手势或伴随言语的指示手势。伴随言语是指单词模型和手势同时出现。形状手势明确传达物体的形状，而指示手势则将注意力引导到物体上。采用单一被试实验设计来跟踪所教物体和未教示例的命名情况。研究比较了条件下产生的命名音素数量的平均值。
结果 四名参与者（a）对新示例扩展了更多的名称，（b）命名了更多的示例类型，（c）在使用形状手势学习时命名了更多的示例实例。“非重叠数据百分比”分析证实了形状手势的优势。形状手势不仅比指示手势增加了命名，而且平均映射的声音也更多。
结论 本研究使用语义方法解决了语言发展迟缓幼儿的单词学习问题。我们得出的结论是，伴随言语的形状手势导致了语义丰富，并促进了单词表示的语音绑定。未来的实验应该集中在父母实施的干预措施中的组件分析上，以提高儿童自然环境中的迁移效果（即外部有效性）。
