Project Activities
The research team will transcribe, code, and analyze SLPs' talk during 811 recorded therapy sessions collected in a prior IES study and examine relations between SLPs' talk and children's language growth as measured at five times over the academic year. They will also conduct a feasibility study using a small, randomized trial to examine whether an adaptive feedback system can affect the complexity of SLP talk during therapy sessions.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The primary study was conducted in public schools from 2009 to 2013 in Ohio and Tennessee. The feasibility study in Year 4 will be conducted in an urban pediatric hospital.
Sample
The 811 recorded speech-therapy sessions represent a sample of 73 certified SLPs and 293 children in kindergarten, first, and second grade. The children had language impairment and were receiving ongoing therapy from an SLP to target language-specific goals. The Year 4 feasibility study will involve 20 SLPs from an urban pediatric hospital and children with language impairment on their caseloads.
Factors
Factors of interest in this exploration study are three domains of SLPs' child-directed talk: quantity, complexity, and responsivity. The research team hypothesizes that one or more of these domains will serve as a key mechanism of language growth for children based on input-based theoriesof language development.
Research design and methods
The primary research aims will be addressed by transcribing, coding, and analyzing previously collected therapy videos in a prospective longitudinal study. In that study, therapy was delivered largely in pull-out rooms designated for speech and language services. Up to five regularly scheduled therapy sessions were recorded for each included child. Transcripts of SLP talk during these sessions will be automatically generated, using an existing open-source tool created by the research team. Child talk in these sessions will be hand-transcribed by trained research assistants. For the Year 4 feasibility study, the research team will use an under-powered randomized control trial in which 10 randomly assigned SLPs are provided adaptive feedback targeting the complexity of their talk in three separate one-on-one therapy sessions with children with language impairments.
Control condition
In the feasibility study, the SLPs in the control condition will conduct therapy as usual without adaptive feedback.
Key measures
Outcomes and factors will be measured with language sample analysis of transcribed, previously recorded video. Software will automatically capture from the transcript the total number of SLP utterances, total number of words, and words per minute, as measures of quantity of SLP talk. The mean length of SLP utterances, clause density, number of different words and type-token ratio will be coded by computer to measure complexity of SLP talk. The number of times an SLP recasts a child's utterance and the percent of child utterances that are recast will be hand coded by research assistants to measure responsivity of SLP talk. Child language growth will be measured with four distinct indices: mean length of utterances in morphemes, total number of words, clauses per utterance, and words per utterance. Information collected in the previous study, including surveys of SLP demographics and caseload, and child language skills and nonverbal cognition measured with Clinical Examination of Language Fundamentals-4 and Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test will be included in the dataset.
Data analytic strategy
Three data analytic strategies will be employed in this study. First, the research team will use multilevel confirmatory factor analyses to examine individual variation in the quantity, complexity, and responsivity of SLP talk. Second, they will use a multilevel longitudinal regression model to explore SLP-level characteristics that are associated with dimensions of their talk. Third, to explore relations between dimensions of SLP talk, the team will estimate cross-lagged panel models aimed at capturing the reciprocal relationship between each dimension of SLP talk and child language over time, controlling for child-level attributes (such as gender) and SLP-specific random effects. In the feasibility study, researchers will compare the prescribed and delivered complexity of SLP talk using an appropriate nonparametric analysis.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The project will result in an understanding of the associations between the characteristics of SLP talk and language outcomes in elementary school children with language impairment as well as data on the feasibility of an adaptive feedback system for SLPs. It will also result in a shared final dataset, peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and products that reach education stakeholders such as practitioners and policymakers. The research team will disseminate the open-science tools used to automatically transcribe and code SLP talk freely to the research community.
Related projects
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Schmitt, Mary Beth
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
