Interven-tion
A clinician is working with parents on home language-stimulation activities for their 3-year-old daughter, Hannah, whose language is delayed. The clinician recommends that the parents play with Hannah and describe and comment on what she is doing and the objects she is interested in. For example, the parents might say, “You are making the car go fast,” or “That pig is pink.” The parents are using the technique of:
A. Self-talk
B. Expansion
C. Expatiation
D. Parallel talk
D. Parallel talk. If parents are using a technique in which they play with their child and describe and comment on what she is doing and the objects she is interested in, the parents are using the technique of parallel talk.
You are seeing a 9-year-old boy, Emile, whose Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition score is one year above age level. Emile appears to be performing adequately in the classroom. His teacher reports that he is at grade level in most subjects. However, he often interrupts others and irritates his listeners; as a result, he is avoided by many peers. His mother reports that he is not invited to other children's birthday parties and that she has heard that other mothers view him as rude and disrespectful. Treatment should focus on increasing:
A. pragmatic skills
B. syntactic skills
C. morphologic skills
D. semantic skills
A. Pragmatics, or social language, is the area in which this student needs the most help.
Using Brown's morphemes as a reference, which utterance below represents two morphemes?
A. Daddy's
B. Cupcake
C. Choo-choo
D. No no
A. The word Daddy's has two morphemes; the rest of the words contain just one morpheme each.
Which one of the following is not true?
A. Standardized language tests provide a means of quantifiable comparison of a child's performance to that of large groups of children in a similar age category
B. Standardized language tests help sample behaviors adequately, providing multiple contexts for sampling target-language behaviors
C. With young children, we want to examine play skills (among other things)
D. When evaluating the language skills of adolescents, we want to keep both academic and social language skills in mind
B. This item is false because standardized tests do not sample language behaviors adequately. They provide only one or two contexts that sample each behavior.
Tonia is a 6-year-old with autism spectrum disorder. As you work with her, you find that she frequently says what you just said. For example, if you say "Tonia, point to the apple," she says "Tonia, point to the apple." What you are observing is Tonia's use of:
A. extrapolated utterances
B. immediate echolalia
C. delayed echolalia
D. semantic replication
B. If you say "Tonia, point to the apple," and she says "Tonia, point to the apple," that is immediate echolalia.
In a preschool setting, a typically developing child walks up to a child with SLI and says, "Let's play house. You be the mommy, and I'll be the daddy, and we'll make dinner. Then the grandma will put the baby to bed." The typically developing child is suggesting that they engage in which type of play?
A. Parallel play
B. Associative play
C. Collaborative play
D. Side-by-side symmetrical play
C. The typically developing child is suggesting collaborative play, in which children often adopt roles and play together as a group.
The mother of Danny, a 3-year-old who is speaking very little, has been working with an SLP on some language stimulation techniques to build Danny's expressive language skills. One day when they are driving, Danny points to the sky and says excitedly, "Plane sky!" His mother responds, "Yes, I see that big silver plane flying up in the blue sky! Wow!" She has just used the technique of:
A. extension
B. parallel talk
C. expansion
D. recasting
A. The mother has used the technique of extension, in which she adds both semantic and grammatical information to Danny's utterance.
The SLP has noted that when Danny does speak, he appears to have word retrieval difficulties. The SLP decides to target this in therapy. In targeting word retrieval skills, she is working on the area of:
A. morphology
B. semantics
C. pragmatics
D. phonology
B. Children who have difficulty with word retrieval need intervention that is focused on increasing their semantic skill.
You are assessing the expressive language skills of a 4-year-old with delayed language. One of the things he says is "My birthday party was fun—we ate cake and cookies!" This would count as:
A. 10 words, 10 morphemes
B. 10 words, 12 morphemes
C. 10 words, 11 morphemes
D. 10 words, 9 morphemes
C. This utterance would count as 10 words, 11 morphemes.
Mario is a 4-year-old Head Start preschool child whose teacher has observed some "red flags" in his language development. You decide to interview Mario's parents and observe him in the classroom setting. You also decide to conduct a language sample. You want to conduct a language sample with Mario because:
A. You can use the results to obtain quantitative data, such as percentile ranks and standard deviations
B. A language sample's primary diagnostic function is to evaluate the child's language in actual settings
C. The teacher has requested it, and by law, you need to carry out assessments requested by classroom teachers
D. Language samples are mandated by the Common Core State Standards
B. A language sample's primary diagnostic function is to evaluate the child's language in actual daily settings. This is ideal for a young child who might not respond as well to standardized assessment measures.
Jeannette is a 4-year-old girl with specific language impairment. At preschool, the teacher gives her a direction involving completing one action before another. Jeannette completes the actions in the order in which they were verbally mentioned instead of interpreting the intended sequence. Jeannette is showing difficulty with:
A. phonological awareness
B. pragmatics
C. syntax
D. order of mention
D. Jeannette is having difficulty with order of mention. She is literally following the commands in the sequence given rather than correctly interpreting the teacher's intent.
A child who shows slow, writhing, involuntary movements has which type of cerebral palsy?
A. Spastic
B. Mixed
C. Ataxic
D. Athetoid
D. A child who shows slow, writhing, involuntary movements has athetoid cerebral palsy.
You are seeing a 6-year-old child, Tyler, with specific language impairment. When you assess Tyler, you find that he has adequate language comprehension. He is able to follow directions, understand vocabulary, and comprehend sentences of appropriate length and complexity for his age. However, his teacher and parents report that he has "no friends" and that they are concerned about his social skills. When you observe Tyler several times on the school playground, in the classroom, and in the school cafeteria, you see that, while he is well behaved and nondisruptive, he does not initiate interactions with others. Treatment should focus on:
A. increasing mean length of utterance
B. working on bound morphemes
C. increasing assertiveness in conversation
D. increasing sentence complexity
C. A 6-year-old child with a language impairment and adequate language comprehension but difficulty initiating interactions with others would best be served by treatment focusing on increasing assertiveness in conversation.
Jonathan is a 5-year-old boy with a language impairment. He has a German shepherd at home named Angel. The neighbors have a Rottweiler, and his grandma has a poodle. But Jonathan only calls Angel a "dog"; he does not use the word "dog" to refer to his neighbor's Rottweiler or his grandma's poodle. We can say that Jonathan is demonstrating the pattern of:
A. underextension
B. overextension
C. restricted semantic categories
D. overcategorization
A. Jonathan is specifically demonstrating underextension, because he only thinks his dog is a dog.
Justin is a 7-year-old second-grade child who has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The report from the previous SLP says, among other things, that Justin's language sample showed that he had difficulty with forms, such as -er (e.g., bigger) and -est (e.g., biggest). Problems with these forms reflect poor:
A. morphologic skills
B. pragmatic skills
C. literacy skills
D. semantic skills
A. Problems with forms such as -er (e.g., bigger) and -est (e.g., biggest) reflect difficulty in the area of morphology.
Parents bring their son Derek to you. He is 30 months old and only says a few words. The pediatrician has told them to not worry and just give Derek time, saying "He is a boy, after all, and they usually develop language more slowly." But Derek's parents are still concerned. The best recommendation you could give them would be:
A. Do nothing and follow the pediatrician's recommendation to give him time to develop
B. Give them a home language stimulation program, and tell them to come back in a year for a reevaluation
C. Recommend an immediate, full evaluation of Derek's language skills
D. Send Derek and his parents to a psychologist for an evaluation of his cognitive skills
C. An immediate, full language evaluation is the best course of action in this case. At 30 months of age, Derek should be saying 200–300 words.
The parents of Genna, a 6-year-old with a language impairment, tell you that "Genna doesn't follow directions at home." You find that Genna has specific difficulties with order of mention. When her dad asks her to do something and she misinterprets it, which one of the following requests is Genna most likely to misinterpret?
A. Please clear the table before you do the dishes.
B. Before you clear the table, be sure the dog is fed.
C. After you do the dishes, please make sure your homework is done.
D. Do your homework and put your backpack in the car.
B. Genna is most likely to have problems with this command because she is following the directions in the order in which she heard them.
A clinician is providing services for a school-age child, Myron, who uses an AAC device. Myron's parents and teacher report that he is having trouble with the device; others frequently do not understand what he is trying to communicate. To help Myron communicate more effectively with others so that they understand his messages better, the clinician needs to make sure that the symbols on Myron's AAC device are:
A. PECS friendly
B. transparent
C. non-iconically opaque
D. opaque
B. To help Myron communicate more effectively with others so that they understand his messages better, the clinician needs to make sure that the symbols on Myron's AAC device are transparent or easily decipherable by others.
You are working with an adolescent, Alyssa, who has receptive and expressive language problems. She is getting Ds in most of her classes at the junior high school and has few friends. In therapy, it would be best to target:
A. increasing auditory memory skills
B. increasing the use of complex sentences containing subordinate clauses
C. increasing social use of language and collaborating with the classroom teachers
D. increasing the understanding and use of figurative language
C. Adolescence is a time when the use and comprehension of appropriate social language is critical. In addition, collaboration with classroom teachers would yield directions for use of specific classroom materials and ideas that could be used in therapy to target Alyssa's deficient language skills while increasing her academic performance.
Martin, a clinician in private practice, is conducting a home visit to observe Stephanie, a 2-year-old. Her parents are concerned because among other things, Stephanie calls everything "kitty"—the hamster, the dog, and the goldfish. Martin assures Stephanie's parents that she is appropriately displaying the pattern of:
A. overextension
B. underextension
C. generalization
D. object permanence
A. When children use overextensions, they "lump together" things that are similar (e.g., animals).
You obtain 50 utterances from Mario. Your analysis of the language sample shows that Mario used 100 words and 120 morphemes. Thus, his average MLU (mean length of utterance in morphemes) is:
A. 5.0
B. 4.5
C. 2.0
D. 2.4
D. Mario's MLU in morphemes is 2.4. The number of words in Mario's language sample is irrelevant to the average MLU in morphemes.
A school-based SLP is conducting classroom-based intervention with several students diagnosed with specific language impairment. This means that the SLP is:
A. Conducting pull-out intervention, in which she brings the students to her therapy room and uses classroom materials as part of a small-group therapy session
B. Conducting pull-out intervention, in which she brings a student to her therapy room and uses classroom materials as part of an individual therapy session
C. Teaching language skills to the whole class; the students with SLI are part of this class
D. Going into the classroom and helping language-impaired students, individually or in a small-group format, to achieve classroom curriculum goals
D. Classroom-based intervention involves going into the classroom and helping these students, in a small-group format, to achieve classroom curriculum goals.
An SLP, Devin, receives a referral of Greta, a third grader with a diagnosis of ADHD. Devin remembers that Greta will probably have difficulties with executive dysfunction; this is due to brain differences in the _____ lobe.
A. parietal
B. occipital
C. frontal
D. temporal
C. A child with ADHD who has difficulties with executive function, when compared with typically developing peers, has slower development of the frontal lobe.
The SST believes that Justin might profit from the SCERTS approach to intervention, which involves:
A. An emphasis on improving social communication, implementing ongoing evaluation of regulatory behavior, and training syntactic skills for increased communication success
B. An emphasis on the importance of targeting goals in social communication and emotional regulation by implementing transactional supports, such as visual supports, environmental arrangements, and communication-style adjustments
C. An emphasis on improving semantic communicative effectiveness, regulation of emotional state, and transactional environmental supports, such as increased auditory cues
D. A holistic approach that encourages social communication, effectiveness in regulating transactions, and successful dialogue with others in the environment
B. The SCERTS model emphasizes the importance of targeting goals in social communication and emotional regulation by implementing transactional supports, which include visual supports, environmental arrangements, and communication-style adjustments.
Which of the following is not true with regard to treatment of children with language disorders?
A. Because many children with language disorders have difficulties with working memory, clinicians should conduct therapy primarily through the auditory modality and not be concerned with incorporating tactile or visual activities into therapy
B. Collaboration with classroom teachers is important in helping children generalize treatment target behaviors
C. It is helpful, when appropriate, to incorporate reading and writing (literacy) intervention into language therapy
D. A child's chronological age is not always the best predictor of the kind of treatment that will be appropriate; current skills (developmental level) is a more reliable indicator
A. It is critical to use a multimodal approach because most children with language disorders will learn more quickly and retain more information this way.
You are working in a school and are told that a new child with an IEP has transferred to your school and will be needing language intervention. On her IEP, it states that she has a "pragmatic language disorder." Which one of the following problems are you MOST likely to see in this student?
A. Difficulties in allowing a conversational partner to have a turn
B. Problems using complex and compound sentences
C. Vocabulary deficits
D. Word retrieval problems
A. A student with a pragmatic language disorder is most likely to have difficulties in allowing a conversational partner to have a turn.
A third-grade teacher refers 8-year-old Allyson to you. The teacher is concerned because "Allyson's verbal expression skills just are not what they should be." You decide that as part of your assessment of Allyson's language skills, you will gather and analyze a language sample using TTR. When you eventually calculate TTR based on her language sample, you find that her TTR is 0.31. You conclude that:
A. Allyson is normally developing her syntactic skills
B. Allyson is delayed in pragmatic skills
C. Allyson is low in her lexical skills or the number of words she uses expressively
D. Allyson has receptive morphological problems
C. A TTR of 0.31 is low—a TTR of 0.5 is within average range. Thus, this indicates that Allyson is low in her lexical skills or the number of different words she uses expressively.
You have a new job in a school district where you are serving preschoolers, elementary students, and teens. You will remember that Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA):
A. Is a federal grant program that assists states in operating a comprehensive statewide program of early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities, ages birth through 3 years, and their families
B. Is a focused early diagnostic program whose goal is to identify language delayed preschool children and refer them to Head Start
C. Guarantees appropriate augmentative and alternative communication devices for children with cerebral palsy and other medically based conditions
D. Mandates IEPs that provide for language-based work-study programs for language impaired students in high school
A. Part C of the IDEA is a federal grant program that assists states in operating a comprehensive statewide program of early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities, ages birth through age 3 years, and their families.
A child with traumatic brain injury would most likely manifest which of the following?
A. A higher familial incidence
B. Echolalia and obsessive talking
C. Hypersensitivity to touch, insistence on routines, lack of interest in human voices
D. Impaired word retrieval and comprehension, lack of attention, and memory problems
D. Hypersensitivity to touch, insistence on routines, and lack of interest in human voices are generally characteristic of children with autism, not children with traumatic brain injury.
You move to a new elementary school and begin seeing the children on the caseload. One child, who is being treated to "increase semantic skills," has four goals listed on her IEP. Which one of these goals is inappropriate?
A. Increase types and numbers of words child uses in the classroom
B. Increase specific word usage and decrease usage of nonspecific words, such as this, that, thing
C. Decrease overextensions of words
D. Increase use of appropriate discourse skills, turn taking, and conversational repair strategies
D. Increasing use of appropriate discourse skills, turn taking, and conversational repair strategies would be appropriate targets for a child working on pragmatic skills, not semantic skills.