Sentence Recast Use by Parents of Children With Typical Language and Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

Many early studies failed to find differences in the language input of parents to children with specific language impairments (SLI) when compared to the input provided for MLU-matched children with typical language (TL). More recent investigations have revealed significant differences in the frequency of sentence recasts provided to young children. Specifically, parents of children with SLI have been shown to produce fewer recasts than do parents of younger children with TL. Because recasts have been shown to facilitate morphosyntactic development, these findings have important assessment and treatment implications. The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend these recent findings. The sentence recast usage of the parents of 10 children with SLI was compared with the recast usage of parents of 10 younger children with TL at two points in time. This strategy enabled us to examine specific hypotheses about the quantity of recasts used by parents and the changes in patterns of use over time. The results failed to confirm recent findings; there were no differences between groups at either time. We interpret this to suggest that parents of children with SLI may not differ substantially from parents of children with TL in recast usage, at least in the early preschool years when the age gap separating children with SLI and language-matched children with TL is not great. Nevertheless, to benefit from their facilitative properties, children with SLI seem to need recasts that are more frequent or more focused on specific targets than are typically available in their environments.

The Efficacy of Recasts in Language Intervention: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Analysis of data from individual studies has generally found that differing rates of recasts are associated with differing degrees of progress on proximal outcome measures (Hassink & Leonard, 2010, Girolametto et al, 1999) but that the relationship may be complex and change as the child becomes more proficient with a target structure (Fey et al 1993). Evidence suggests that targeting a rate of approximately 0.8 – 1 recast/minute may be beneficial (Camarata et al 1994; Fey et al, 1999). The results from Proctor Williams and Fey (2007) suggest that too high a rate may reduce efficacy as has been shown with typically developing children (Proctor Williams & Fey, 2007).…”

“…A conversational recast is a response to a child's utterance in which the adult repeats some or all of the child's words and adds new information, while maintaining the basic meaning expressed by the child (Fey, Krulik, Loeb, & Proctor-Williams, 1999; Nelson, 1989). The additional information may be syntactic, semantic and/or phonological.…”

What Works in Therapy: Further Thoughts on Improving Clinical Practice for Children With Language Disorders

“…Although parents of children with LI produce recasting at the same rate as parents of children with TL at the same level of language (Fey, Krulik, Loeb, & Proctor-Williams, 1999), this level of recasting was only correlated with subsequent language usage for children with TL and not for children with LI (Proctor-Williams et al, 2001). The density of exposure to grammatical features is also important.…”

Small Groups, Big Gains: Efficacy of a Tier 2 Phonological Awareness Intervention With Preschoolers With Early Literacy Deficits

“…Analysis of data from individual studies has generally found that differing rates of recasts are associated with differing degrees of progress on proximal outcome measures (Girolametto et al, 1999;Hassink & Leonard, 2010) but that the relationship may be complex and may change as the child becomes more proficient with a target structure (Fey et al, 1993). Evidence suggests that targeting a rate of approximately 0.8-1.0 recast/min may be beneficial (Camarata et al, 1994;Fey et al, 1999). The results from Proctor- Williams and Fey (2007) suggest that too high a rate may reduce efficacy, as has been shown with typically developing children.…”