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Conversations Between Preservice Speech-Language Pathologists and Preschoolers
What is it about?
Abstract "there-and-then" language use, such as talking about past events, pretend scenarios, and cause-and-effect reasoning, emerges during the preschool years. We recorded and analyzed play sessions between preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder or autism spectrum disorder and speech-language pathology graduate students.
Why is it important?
This study is the first to examine "there-and-then" decontextualized talk between preschoolers with language disorders and non-parent adults. Some important findings include that: a) nearly all children engaged in decontextualized talk in roughly half of their conversation turns, b) children's individual language ability (particularly vocabulary diversity) predicted conversation participation more strongly than diagnostic category, and c) a simple clinician strategy of repeating back what children said explained 66% of the variance in children's sentence length during sessions. Our findings suggest that clinicians and graduate training programs can consider incorporating decontextualized talk strategies and responsive techniques like repetition while working with preschoolers with language disorders during play-based sessions.