Language Research – Making Research Relevant

A common gripe for a long time with research of language disorders is that much of it has often been irrelevant to the actual teaching of language.  And by often, I mean nearly always.  A lot of the research seems geared toward one isolated characteristic of one subset of one small segment of people, and only to that particular population.  The similarity of the following fake titles to actual titles may help demonstrate my point…

– “Toward Understanding Morphologic Tendencies in Left Handed Nicaraguan Preschoolers.”    or

– “Past Tense Comprehension in Bilingual Adopted Children; A Conceptual Framework.”

It just has long seemed that these are the sorts of research titles that usually exist in the most commonly read sources of language research.  And that’s when these journals even decide to address language at all, which has long seemed to be much less common then research addressing say, hearing, or voice, or stuttering.  And this is too bad.  Because there are many, many language related questions out there that can be addressed scientifically that would actually be useful in teaching language.  So what might these “practical” studies look like?  Here are some ideas I’ve had.

Question:  Do twins often have one member with more language deficits than the other?

Implication:  This often seems to be the case.  Anecdotally, it seems as though one twin often speaks for the other, almost creating deficits in the less talkative twin.  If the research would support this hypothesis, then we could prepare for this with extra early intervention, and assistance for twin parents.

3 Interesting Articles from PsychCentral

I was about to link this article (1)  when I noticed this one (2), and then this one (3) too, that caught my attention.  Here are short summaries of each:

1)  Older Parents, Birth Order Linked to Autism– This, from the U. of Wisconsin,  is claimed to be the largest study ever to look into autism correlations.  In short, older parents and/or earlier birth order = greater chance of autism.  While the “complex combinations of multiple causes” are up to their usual shenanigans, waiting longer to have children does appear to slightly increase one’s odds for autism.

2)  Facial Expressions are Innate, Not Learned – Researchers from San Francisco State found that both blind and sighted athletes demonstrate similar facial expressions after winning or losing competitions.  Social smiles after winning and lip pursing after losing were found to be similar regardless of sight, prompting the conclusion that these are well developed instincts that trace back long through evolution.

3)  Mother’s Care Influences ADHD Diagnosis– The results of this study imply “that the diagnoses and health care utilization that a mother receives prior to having her child is predictive of having a child who is diagnosed with ADHD.”  Those mothers who more often seek other forms of health care are more likely to seek (and get) ADHD diagnoses for their children.  Hey, they said it, not me.

Return From Chicago

I’m finally back from this year’s ASHA convention for Speech and Language Pathologists.  Some nuggets of language learning interest included these:

Marc Fey and Ronald Gillam presented on phases of clinical research in language intervention.  These phases were pre-trial (can a treatment possibly work?), feasibility (maybe), early efficacy (possibly), later efficacy (probably), and effectiveness (yes, but how much?).  The gist was that good research goes in this order.  Not going in this order can be dangerous.  Don’t do effectiveness studies before efficacy studies.

Kerry Ebert and Kathryn Kohnert dicussed the often underated importance of the clinician in treatment effectiveness.  Studies in psychotherapy have found that clinicians can be more important than even medication in determining treatment outcome, but SLP studies rarely consider the therapist.

Tammie Spaulding reported on her work that pretty much all language tests lack both sensitivity and specificity.  Sensitivity is when a test accurately identifies a kid that’s language disabled.  Specificity is when a test accurately shows a kid as not being language disabled.

Teresa Ukrainetz and et. al. asked “How Much is Enough?” while discussing how much therapy clinicians should be giving.  There was a lot of info in this one, such as intervention gains seem better in the first four months than the second, Head Start is effective, teaching vocabulary using context and definitions works better than only context or definitions, and the optimal range for most effective treatment dosage may be between 4 and 12 weeks.

Middendord and Buringrud discussed the SLP role in selective mutism.  While counseling should typically be a large component, the presentation described a possible progression of therapy that can go from gestures to whispering to vocalizing nonsense words to vocalizing with soft voice and finally vocalization with full voice.

A group of presenters from the New England Center for Children described their program of incidental teaching in autism.  They teach strategies to people that work with autistic individuals.  In this program, incidental teaching is contrasted with discrete trial teaching, or ABA-type therapy, although both teaching types can be used depending on a student’s needs.  Because many autistic (and other children with early developing communication) lack the desire to communicate, incidental teaching can be extremely effective, especially considering that a strict adherence to ABA therapy may actually suppress this desire.  In other words, one size does not fit all.