Document Detail


Mean length of utterance in children with specific language impairment and in younger control children shows concurrent validity and stable and parallel growth trajectories.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  16908875     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
PURPOSE: Although mean length of utterance (MLU) is a useful benchmark in studies of children with specific language impairment (SLI), some empirical and interpretive issues are unresolved. The authors report on 2 studies examining, respectively, the concurrent validity and temporal stability of MLU equivalency between children with SLI and typically developing children. METHOD: Study 1 used 124 archival conversational samples consisting of 39 children with SLI (age 5;0 [years;months]), 40 MLU-equivalent typically developing children (age 3;0), and 45 age-equivalent controls. Concurrent validity of MLU matches was examined by considering the correspondence between MLU and developmental sentence scoring (DSS), index of productive syntax (IPSyn), and MLU in words. Study 2 used 205 archival conversational samples, representing 5 years of longitudinal data collected on 20 children with SLI (from age 5;0) and 18 MLU matches (from age 3;0). Evaluation of growth dimensions within and across groups was carried out via growth-curve modeling. RESULTS: In Study 1, high levels of correlation among the MLU, DSS, and IPSyn measures were observed. Differences between groups were not significant. In Study 2, temporal stability of MLU matches was robust over a 5 year period. CONCLUSIONS: MLU appears to be a reliable and valid index of general language development and an appropriate grouping variable from age 3 to 10. The developmental stability of MLU matches is indicative of shared underlying growth mechanisms.
Authors:
Mabel L Rice; Sean M Redmond; Lesa Hoffman
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR     Volume:  49     ISSN:  1092-4388     ISO Abbreviation:  J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res.     Publication Date:  2006 Aug 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2006-08-15     Completed Date:  2007-07-30     Revised Date:  2007-12-03    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  9705610     Medline TA:  J Speech Lang Hear Res     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  793-808     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. mabel@ku.edu
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Case-Control Studies
Child Development / physiology*
Child Language*
Child, Preschool
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Humans
Language Disorders / physiopathology*
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Phonetics*
Reproducibility of Results
Time Factors
Verbal Learning*
Vocabulary
Grant Support
ID/Acronym/Agency:
P30DC005803/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS; P30HD002528/HD/NICHD NIH HHS; R01 DC01803/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS; R01DC005226/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS
Comments/Corrections
Erratum In:
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2006 Oct;49(5):preceding 923

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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