Document Type : Original Articles

Authors

1 Department of Speech Therapy, Rehabilitation School, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

2 No.346, Laale st., Tahvili cross, Shiraz

Abstract

Background: Since most clinical treatments of Persian children’s language impairments are based on either the therapist, clinicians’ experiences (mostly), or English language norms (sometimes), comparing two minor indices of speech quality, namely “mean Length of Utterance” (MLU) and “mean length of five phrasal utterances” (MLFPU) between different age groups of children, would be unequivocally efficient to help diagnose and treat Farsi-Speaking Children with language impairments.Methods: To compare the two mentioned indices of 2 to 5-year-old normal Farsi-speaking children, the speech samples of 500 children were scrutinized by elicitation, transcription, and statistically analyzing their language samples.Results: The net results prove that as the children’s ages grow from 2 to 5, the two mentioned indices increase and extend as well.Conclusion: The influence of chronological age on the indices varies, regarding the type of language samples. Hence, the analysis of speech quality indices in assessment of children’s language ability has to be performed based on the language sampling methods.

Keywords

  1. Dunn M., Flax J, Sliwinski M, Aram D. The use of spontaneous
  2. language measures as criteria for identifying children with
  3. specific language impairment: an attempt to reconcile clinical
  4. and research incongruence. Journal of Speech Hear Research,
  5. ; 39(3): 643-54.
  6. Evans JL, Craig HK, Language sample collection and analysis:
  7. interview compared to free play assessment contexts. Journal of
  8. Speech Hear Research, 1992; 35(2): 343-53.
  9. Evans JL, MillerJ. Language sample analysis in the 21st century
  10. Semin Speech Lang, 1999, 20(2): 101-15.
  11. Southwood F, Russell AF. Comparison of conversation, freeplay,
  12. and story generation as methods of language sample elicitation.
  13. Journal of Speech Hear Research, 2004; 47(2): 366-76.
  14. Klee T, Stokes SF, Wong AM, Fletcher P, Gavin WJ. Utterance
  15. length and lexical diversity in Cantonese-speaking children with
  16. and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech
  17. Hear Research, 2004; 47(6): 1396-410.
  18. Nilipour R. The concrete indices of speech quality assessment.
  19. Journal of linguistics 1992; 9(1): 40-50.
  20. Golpur, L., Nilipour, R., Roshan, B. A comparison between
  21. morphological and syntactic features of 4 to 5 years old in
  22. education severe to profound hearing impaired and normal
  23. children, 2007; 26 (2): 23-29.
  24. Miller J.F, Chapman R.S. The relation between age and mean
  25. length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech Hear
  26. Research, 1981; 24:154-61.
  27. Heiwitt L., Scheffner H.C., Yont K.M., Tomblin J.B. Language
  28. Sampling for Kindergarten Children With and Without SLI: Mean
  29. Length of Utterance, IPSYN, NDW. Journal of Communication
  30. Disorders 38 (2005); 197-213.
  31. Williamson, G. Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Journal of
  32. Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2009, 31: 1027–1050.
  33. Oryadi Z.M., Mahmoodi, B.B., Vahab, M., Jafari, S. Efficiency
  34. of picture description and storytelling methods in language
  35. sampling, according to the mean length of utterance index. Journal
  36. of Audiology, 2012, 21(3):18-23.
  37. Jalilevand, N., Ebrahimipur, M., Purqarib , J. Mean length of
  38. utterance and grammatical morphemes in speech of two Farsispeaking
  39. children. Journal of Audiology, 2012, 21(2): 96-108,
  40. Tehran University of Medical Science
  41. Oryadi Z.M. and Ghorbani R.. Study of speech quality indices in
  42. -5 year old Farsi-speaking normal children in cities of Semnan,
  43. Bijand and Tonekabon. Journal of Medical Science and Healing
  44. and Health Services of Mazandaran University, 2005; 15(50):
  45. -96.
  46. Bowen C. Brown R. the development of morphology and syntax.
  47. Available from URL: http://members.tripod.com/ Caroline_
  48. Bowen/BrownStages.htm.
  49. Chengappa Sh, Bhat S, Hiwarale J. Mean length of utterance and
  50. syntactic complexity in the speech of mentally retarded. Language
  51. in India [serial online] 2002 Available from URL: http://www.
  52. languageinindia.com/ sep2002/index.html.
  53. Blake J, Quartaro G, Onorati S. Evaluating quantitative measures
  54. of grammatical complexity in spontaneous speech samples.
  55. Journal of Child Language, 1993; 20(1): 139-52. K
  56. Klee T, Schaffer M, May S, Memmbrino I, Mougey K, A
  57. comparison of the age-MLU relation in normal and specifically
  58. language-impaired preschool children. J Speech Hear Disordering
  59. ; 54:226-33.