The effects of a multimodality treatment were investigated using a single subject experimental design across behaviors in two patients with different severity levels of Broca's aphasia. We hypothesized that Response Elaboration Training and an oral reading task would improve accuracy of sentence production, information content, and mean length of utterance. Results indicated that this treatment approach elicited significant improvement in the accuracy of sentence production and information content in the participant with very mild Broca's aphasia. Furthermore, the participant with severe Broca's aphasia demonstrated a very significant improvement in information content and mean length of utterance. The improvements support the idea that the same treatment may be used for individuals with various levels of ability as long as appropriate aspects of language are monitored for each client.

This study assessed the influence of language on the ability of children identified as being at risk for internalizing behavior disorders to successfully participate in a social skills intervention program. Fourth and fifth grade students participated in Strong Kids: A Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum in Grades 4-8, a program which promotes emotional resiliency. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition (CELF-4) and Children's Communication Checklist-Second Edition (CCC-2) were both completed to obtain a global language score and pragmatic language score. The Teacher's Report Form (TRF), a shortened 10-item version of the Internalizing Student Symptom Scale (ISSC), and a 20-item knowledge based assessment relating to the Strong Kids curriculum were completed prior to and after the intervention. These behavioral assessments were administered in order to determine improvement in academic performance, adaptive functioning, and behavioral/emotional problems with relation to language functioning. It was found that children with higher general language abilities made significantly positive improvements with regard to withdrawal than children with lower general language abilities on measures taken prior to and directly after the Strong Kids curriculum. Additionally, the ISSC revealed that children with lower general language abilities rated themselves as having significantly more positive changes in behavior than children with higher general language abilities on measures taken prior to and six weeks following the Strong Kids curriculum. Pragmatic functioning, determined by the CCC-2, was not associated with significant behavioral improvements between children with high and low pragmatic language skills.

Children with language impairment (LI) have often been identified as having social communication breakdowns. A number of these problems are likely the result of deficits in emotional competence. This thesis examines a social communication intervention designed to target the emotional competence of children with LI. Three elementary school-aged children with LI were recruited to receive twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over the course of four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing using story retell, story exploration, story enactment, perspectives charts, journal entries, emotion labeling, and personalization. These activities revolved around Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog (1967) wordless picture book series. These books were used because of their age-appropriate subject matter and clear, simple depictions of character actions and facial expressions. To analyze the effectiveness of this intervention package in improving emotional competence, the number of emotion-based words belonging to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust that were produced each session was counted. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Finally, emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were highly variable but all three participants demonstrated improvements in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category. Although all three participants usually used words of a positive valence in an appropriate manner, inappropriate uses were also observed. When actual emotion-word productions mismatched the intended emotions, all three participants produced low valence agreement for words of positive valence and high valence agreement for words of negative valence. Further research is warranted but results suggested that this particular social communication intervention was effective in improving the production of specific emotion words by children with LI.

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in their social circles than children with typical language; they also interacted with fewer peers than did children with typical language. The children with LI interacted with more adults who were paid or obligated to interact with them than did their typical peers. Information about the nature of social interactions of children with LI as well as those of children with typical language was obtained from parent interviews. Qualitative observations from the parent interviews demonstrated that the Internet was not used as a significant mode of communication for children in this age group, although the children who used it to communicate were all from the Typical group. Most parents reported that children spent the most time and talked the most with immediate family members. A greater number of parents of children with LI than parents of children with typical language skills reported their children to have people they would like to talk to but did not. Parents of children with LI also reported their children to use fewer topics in conversation than were reported by parents of their typical peers. With few exceptions, parents of children in both groups reported that their children talked mostly about concrete rather than abstract topics. More parents of children with LI than those with typical language indicated that their children had topics they would like to talk about but did not or lacked the ability to do so.

Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also completed a shortened version of this questionnaire. Additionally, children completed an informal picture task (Fujiki, Brinton, & Todd, 1996) to determine the number of peers they interacted with in various activities (e.g., eating lunch at school). The number of family and close friends named by children in each group did not significantly differ. Children with typical language skills did name more interactional partners who were considered to be casual peer acquaintances and paid interactants than did the children with LI. Parent and child responses differed on several of the comparisons. The groups also differed on the number of peers named on the picture task activity, replicating previous results.

This thesis examines a social communication intervention that targets the emotional competence of children with language impairment (LI). Three elementary school-aged children with LI received twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing. The emotion-based word productions were counted and analyzed. Categorized words belonged to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were variable but two of the participants improved in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category while one participant did not improve over the intervention. Two of the participants also showed a decrease in the number of valence errors with no notable change in valence errors for the third participant. This suggests that this type of intervention can be effective in improving the use of emotion-based words in children with LI. More research is needed to develop this type of intervention.

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.

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.

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