Syftet med denna uppsats är att öka kunskapen kring hur några lärare undervisar elever med språkstörning på låg-, mellan- och högstadiet. Syftet uppnås genom att intervjua lärare och på så sätt få svar på frågeställningarna: Hur anpassar lärarna undervisningen för elever med språkstörning samt vilka utmaningar upplever lärarna att eleverna har? Vilka assisterande verktyg har lärarna tillgång till och använder? I vilken utsträckning anser lärarna att de har kunskaper och tillgång till stöd för att anpassa undervisningen för elever med språkstörning? I undersökningen framkommer att lärarna gör anpassningar i klassrummet för att elever med språkstörning ska kunna nå kunskapsmålen, men att de känner sig osäkra på hur de på bästa sätt skall göra lämpliga anpassningar. De assisterande verktyg som eleverna har tillgång till är bland annat inläsningstjänst och talsyntes. Dessa assisterande verktyg upplevs av lärarna både som framgångsrika men samtidigt som problematiska då de kan innebära praktiska hinder och avleda uppmärksamheten. Trots att språkstörning påverkar både sociala relationer, skolnärvaro och självbild hos dessa elever upplever många lärare att de har bristande kunskap kring diagnosen språkstörning och framgångsrika arbetssätt.

Historically, social communication approaches to intervention for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) have been limited. However, several recent studies have shown that these interventions can produce positive changes in children with DLD. One weakness that children with DLD demonstrate is the production of words to express emotion. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of a story-based social communication intervention to increase the production of emotion words in three elementary school-age children diagnosed with DLD. Data were collected and analyzed in pre-treatment baseline sessions, throughout the intervention, and in post-treatment follow-up data for the seven target emotion word categories of happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and contempt. The specific targeted emotion word categories were determined based on individual participants limited proficiency during baseline sessions. Thus, the emotions targeted were unique to each child. Intervention consisted of 40 intervention sessions using a combination of storybook therapeutic strategies (e.g., story enactment, story sharing, and modeling by the clinician to help increase the child's emotion understanding) as well as emotion recognition and emotion inferencing tasks. Each participants data were analyzed and presented in figures. The percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) was used in data analysis, quantifying how successful the intervention was for each of the targeted emotions. While the target emotion word categories varied between participants, all of the children showed improvement in the targeted emotions. While the intervention was more effective for some children than others, all increased in their ability to use the target emotion words more accurately as a result of participating in intervention.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with social and emotional learning, including emotion understanding and inferencing. Five children with DLD, ages 6;4 to 11;9, identified emotions depicted in pictured scenarios over a period of 10 weeks. Emotion categories included happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each child's responses were analyzed and plotted on a confusion matrix. In a few cases, children did not interpret the scenario accurately. Even when they interpreted the scenario accurately, all of the children misapplied, overgeneralized, or confused emotion labels in some cases. These errors represented limitations in social and emotional learning that could negatively impact the ability to interact with others, to establish and maintain relationships, and to succeed academically.

This study employed the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to investigate two aspects of sociability, likeability and prosocial behavior, in 143 children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and 131 of their typically developing peers. Initially, measurement invariance analysis was performed to determine if teachers evaluated likeability and sociability in a similar manner for both children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Likeability items on the TBRS were invariant, and 4 of the 5 prosociability items were invariant. Subsequent analysis revealed that teachers rated children with DLD lower in both likeability and prosociability in comparison to their typically developing peers. The results of this study suggest that children with DLD are not fully accepted by their peers, nor do they engage in the helpful, comforting behaviors that encourage peer acceptance and build friendships.

<p dir="ltr">The goal of the study was to investigate vowel accuracy in preschoolers with and without speech sound disorders (SSD) on nonword repetition tasks. Children ages 4 and 5 years completed a battery of speech and language measures, as well as two nonword repetition tasks, the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) and the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT). A total of 41 children participated in the study divided among 3 groups: 14 children with typical speech and language skills (TD), 14 children with isolated speech sound disorders (SSD-only), and 13 children with SSD and comorbid Developmental Language Disorder (SSD+DLD). Ultimately, it appears that children with SSD+DLD make more vowel errors on the Nonword Repetition Task, and that vowel accuracy on nonword repetition tasks and phonological awareness may share underlying mechanisms.</p>

The aim of the present study is to examine how schools organize the work with and for pupils with language disorder.  Further, it aims to find which role the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) and principal, respectively may have in the work with the pupils and give an insight into what knowledge about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) personnel in schools have. The background of the study is that knowledge about DLD begins to diffuse at schools in Sweden today, but there is still a great deal of ignorance about what the diagnosis entails and how to work inclusive with these students in the classroom. The study was conducted with a qualitative method, semi-structured interviews with six special needs coordinators and five principals. The theoretical framework consist of Etienne Wenger’s Social theory of learning and the analysis was performed through a thematic content analysis. The results of the study indicate that none of the schools in the study have a particular organization for pupils with DLD. Half of the informants argue that they would like increased collaboration with speech therapists. The collaboration with guardians is another area that needs to improve in the schools. Enterprise in relation to engagement is most prominent in the schools, according to the analysis based on Wenger’s social theory of learning. All informants recognize gaps of knowledge regarding the definition of DLD, and how to work with pupils with the disability. Further education on the subject was requested by all informants.

Les modèles actuels de perception de la parole suggèrent un couplage étroit entre les rythmes cérébraux, caractérisés par les oscillations neuronales, et le rythme de la parole, permettant de segmenter le flux verbal continu en unités linguistiques pertinentes pour la reconnaissance. En particulier, les modulations lentes d’amplitude de l’enveloppe temporelle de la parole, véhiculant l’information syllabique et prosodique, sont capables d’« entrainer » les oscillations corticales auditives dans la bande de fréquence thêta (4-7 Hz), échantillonnant le signal verbal en unités syllabiques. L’information temporelle qui caractérise la parole joue un rôle fondamental dans l’acquisition et le développement du langage ; un déficit de traitement des indices rythmiques de la parole a d’ailleurs été décrit dans les troubles développementaux du langage. L’objectif de ce travail de thèse était de mieux comprendre les processus neurocognitifs sous-tendant la perception du rythme de la parole naturelle chez l’enfant présentant un développement langagier typique ou atypique (dysphasie) dans trois études. Une première étude en magnétoencéphalographie (MEG) a permis de dévoiler la dynamique corticale oscillatoire chez des enfants francophones neurotypiques (8-13 ans) lors de l’écoute de phrases naturellement produites à un débit normal ou rapide. Nos résultats suggèrent l’existence de deux phénomènes d’« entrainment » des oscillations sur l’enveloppe temporelle de la parole à débit normal, l’un dans la bande thêta au sein des régions auditives droites, l’autre dans une bande centrée sur le débit syllabique moyen des stimuli dans les régions temporales antérieures gauches. Dans la condition de parole rapide, une synchronisation cortico-acoustique a été mise en évidence dans la bande thêta au sein des régions (pré)motrices gauches, reflétant le rôle de la voie dorsale d’intégration sensori-motrice dans les conditions d’écoute difficiles mais aussi dans le développement du langage oral. Les deux études suivantes ont été réalisées chez des enfants présentant une dysphasie expressive (8-13 ans) afin de tester l’hypothèse d’un trouble de traitement du rythme syllabique chez ces enfants, potentiellement sous-tendu par une dynamique corticale oscillatoire atypique. Dans une étude comportementale, nous avons évalué les capacités des enfants dysphasiques à décoder de la parole naturellement produite à débit normal ou rapide, ou accélérée artificiellement. Nous avons montré des performances réduites chez ces enfants, en regard d’enfants neurotypiques, pour traiter des phrases accélérées naturellement et artificiellement, suggérant un déficit d’extraction du rythme de la parole lorsque la fréquence des modulations de l’enveloppe temporelle augmente. Une étude en MEG, identique à celle réalisée chez les enfants neurotypiques, nous a permis d’apporter de premiers éléments en faveur de cette interprétation en révélant un traitement cortical atypique de l’information syllabique dans la dysphasie, qui pourrait rendre compte des troubles phonologiques et morpho-syntaxiques souvent décrits dans ce trouble neuro-développemental. Une synchronisation réduite des oscillations thêta du cortex auditif a ainsi été mise en évidence chez les enfants dysphasiques par rapport à leurs pairs lors de la perception de parole à débit normal. L’absence d’alignement de l’activité oscillatoire des régions prémotrices sur l’enveloppe temporelle des phrases à débit rapide nous a en outre conduit à émettre l’hypothèse d’un dysfonctionnement de la voie dorsale chez ces enfants. Dans l’ensemble, ce travail de thèse fournit donc, pour la première fois à notre connaissance, des preuves expérimentales (i) de la synchronisation entre rythmes corticaux et rythme de la parole naturelle chez les enfants à développement langagier typique et (ii) d’une dynamique oscillatoire atypique lors de la perception de parole à débit normal et rapide chez les enfants dysphasiques. / Current models of speech perception suggest a close correspondence between brain rhythms, characterized by neuronal oscillations, and speech rhythm, which would allow the brain to parse the incoming speech signal into relevant linguistic units for decoding. Slow amplitude modulations in speech temporal envelope, which convey syllabic and prosodic information, have been shown to entrain oscillatory activity of auditory cortex in the theta frequency band (4-7 Hz), sampling the acoustic signal into syllable-sized units. Temporal information in speech is a foundation for oral language acquisition and development; accordingly, deficits in processing speech rhythmic cues have been described in developmental language disorders. This thesis sought to throw light on the neurocognitive processes underlying the perception of natural speech in children with typical and atypical language development (Specific Language Impairment – SLI – or Developmental Language Disorder – DLD) in three experimental studies. In a first magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we unraveled the oscillatory dynamics in a group of French-speaking typically-developing children aged 8 to 13 years old during listening to naturally-produced sentences either at a normal or fast rate. Our results suggested two types of entrainment of cortical oscillations on the temporal envelope of normal rate speech: the first one occurred in the theta band in right auditory cortex whereas the second one was found in a frequency band centered on the mean syllabic rate of our stimuli in left anterior temporal regions. As to the fast rate condition, we showed cortico-acoustic coupling in the theta band in left (pre)motor areas, reflecting the role of the sensorimotor dorsal pathway in challenging listening conditions as well as in language development. In two other studies, we tested the hypothesis of an impairment to process speech syllabic rhythm, potentially underpinned by atypical oscillatory cortical dynamics, in children with developmental language disorders mainly at the expressive level. In a behavioral study, we examined how French-speaking children with expressive DLD (8-13 years old) processed speech naturally produced at a normal or fast rate, or artificially accelerated. Our results showed poorer performance to decode fast sentences, either accelerated naturally or artificially, in these children as compared to their typically-developing peers, which suggests a deficit in extracting speech syllabic information with increased modulation frequency in the amplitude envelope. The last study, identical to the first one in MEG conducted in typically-developing children, provided the first piece of evidence in favor of this interpretation by showing atypical cortical processing of syllabic information in children with DLD, which may account for the phonological and morpho-syntactic deficits frequently described in this developmental disorder. Reduced alignment of theta oscillatory activity in auditory cortex to normal rate speech has indeed been evidenced in children with DLD as compared to typically-developing children. Lack of synchronization of oscillations in left (pre)motor regions to amplitude envelope of fast rate sentences was also observed, which we interpreted as potential dysfunction of the dorsal stream in this population. To the best of our knowledge, the findings obtained in this thesis therefore provide first experimental evidence for (i) coupling between brain rhythms and rhythm of naturally produced speech in typically-developing children and (ii) atypical oscillatory cortical dynamics underlying normal and fast rate speech in children with developmental language disorders.

The diploma thesis deals the children with developmental language disorder, which are included in the regular type of school, and analysis of advantages and disadvantages resulting from this integration. The thesis includes a brief description of the development of a younger school age child, the possibilities of education in the Czech Republic and the complete terminological definition of developmental language disorder from etiology, diagnostics to therapies. The main objective of the thesis is to analyze the process of integration of pupils with developmental language disorder at the first stage of a basic elementary school and to find out the possibilities of their inclusive education. It may be an inspiration for pedagogues, speech therapists, parents, and caregivers of children with developmental language disorder. The thesis can be a starting point for further scientific work that deals with similar issues.

Språkstörning innefattar större svårigheter att förstå och uttrycka sig på sitt eller sina modersmål jämfört med jämnåriga. Språkliga förmågor har stor betydelse i skolan både för måluppfyllelse och för socialt samspel. Skolan kan bli särskilt utmanade i de högre årskurserna när skolspråket, såväl avseende form som innehåll och användning, blir allt mer avancerat. Enligt skollagen i Sverige har alla elever rätt till det stöd de behöver för att så långt som möjligt kunna utvecklas utifrån sina förutsättningar. Förutom svårigheter relaterade till skolgången kan språkstörning även leda till svårigheter kopplade till arbetsliv och delaktighet i samhället i vuxen ålder.  Syftet med detta examensarbete är att bidra med perspektiv om upplevelser och erfarenheter hos elever med språkstörning och deras vårdnadshavare gällande skolsituationen. Studien bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta elever med språkstörning och deras vårdnadshavare. Intervjuerna analyserades med fokus på innehållsliga aspekter av deltagarnas berättelser.  Studiens resultat visade att språkstörningen upplevdes ha konsekvenser för skolarbetet för samtliga elever. På vilka sätt varierade dock mycket i grad och omfattning. Vårdnadshavarna och eleverna berättade om utmaningar i skolan vilka främst relaterade till att läsa och skriva, nå upp till godkända betyg, få tillräckligt med stöd i skolan och i viss mån psykiskt välmående under skolgången. I intervjuerna framkom även sådant som deltagarna upplevde fungerar väl. De mest framträdande välfungerande områdena kan kopplas till praktiska skolämnen, socialt samspel och trivsel i skolan.  Slutligen konstateras att på vilka sätt språkstörning tar sig uttryck och vilka konsekvenser den får för skolarbetet varierar mycket från elev till elev. Det förekommer även stora skillnader gällande vilket stöd elever med språkstörning får i skolan. Fler studier på området vore i framtiden värdefullt för att öka förståelse och kunskap kring elever med språkstörning och deras förutsättningar och behov i skolan. Detta är viktigt för att dessa elever ska få möjlighet att utvecklas utifrån sina förutsättningar och för att minska risken för språkliga, känslomässiga och sociala konsekvenser i ett långtidsperspektiv. / Developmental language disorder (DLD) involves difficulties with understanding and expressing oneself in one´s native language or languages to a greater extent compared to peers. Linguistic abilities are important for goal attainment and social interaction in school. School can be particularly challenging in higher grades as language in school becomes increasingly advanced. According to the Swedish Education Act, all students are entitled to the support they need to develop based on their individual conditions. DLD can also lead to difficulties later in life related to working life and participation in society.  The aim of this study is to provide perspectives of students’ and caregivers’ perceptions of DLD in school context. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with eight students and their caregivers. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the interviews. The results of the study showed that DLD was perceived to have consequences for different aspects of school for all participating students, however, with varied degree and extent. The participants talked about challenging areas related to school. These were mainly related to reading, writing, grades, support in school and mental health issues. The interviews also revealed aspects of school that the participants thought worked well, especially practical school subjects, social interactions, and well-being. The study strengthens the understanding that there is a great variety between students regarding how DLD appears and what consequences it has for school and learning. The students and caregivers also witness about differences regarding opportunities to receive support in school. Further studies in this area would be valuable to increase understanding and knowledge about students with DLD and their needs in school. This is important for students’ continuous development and for decreasing risk for linguistic, emotional, and social consequences in a long-term perspective. / Likvärdig utbildning för barn med språkstörning - En studie av måluppfyllelse, erfarenheter och deltagande

Det här är en uppsats som undersöker hur man kan underlätta och anpassa för elever med språkstörning i ämnet slöjd. Skolor har börjat uppmärksamma språkstörning mer, men okunskapen är fortfarande stor. I mina undersökningar har jag tittat på vad slöjdlärare känner att de saknar för att kunna ge eleverna det stöd de behöver, vad föräldrar önskar att deras barn får för hjälp i slöjden, samt vad specialpedagoger och speciallärare rekommenderar att lärare kan göra i undervisningen med elever med språkstörning. Det har resulterat i att lärare har behov av mer kunskap, mer stöd och mer tid i sin interaktion med elever med språkstörning. Eftersom man kan säga att språkstörning ligger på ett brett spektrum eftersom det finns så många olika inriktningar behöver man kunna individanpassa till varje elev för det finns inte ett färdigt koncept som fungerar för alla även om man med visuellt stöd kan gagna de flesta elever. / This is an essay that investigates how to make the sloyd subject more managable for students with a developmental language disorder (communication disorder). Schools have started to observe developmental language disorders more, but the lack of knowledge is still substantial. In my research I have looked at what teachers feel that they lack in order to provide these students with the support they need, what type of assistance parents would like see, and recommendations from special needs teachers. This research concludes that teachers need more knowledge, support and additional time in their interaction with students with developmental language disorders. Because there is a broad spectrum of developmental language disorders, you need to make individual adjustments because there is not a ready made concept that will work for everyone even though visual support will assist all students, not just those with developmental language disorder.