Diagnostic accuracy of language sample measures with Persian-speaking preschool children

Abstract

This study examined the diagnostic accuracy of selected language sample measures (LSMs) with Persian-speaking children. A pre-accuracy study followed by phase I and II studies are reported. Twenty-four Persian-speaking children, aged 42 to 54 months, with primary language impairment (PLI) were compared to 27 age-matched children without PLI on a set of measures derived from play-based, conversational language samples. Results showed that correlations between age and LSMs were not statistically significant in either group of children. However, a majority of LSMs differentiated children with and without PLI at the group level (phase I), while three of the measures exhibited good diagnostic accuracy at the level of the individual (phase II). We conclude that general LSMs are promising for distinguishing between children with and without PLI. Persian-specific measures are mainly helpful in identifying children without language impairment while their ability to identify children with PLI is poor.

The clinical examination of non-word repetition tasks in identifying Persian-speaking children with primary language impairment

“…Grammatical and semantic errors can be used to distinguish Persian-speaking children with PLI from their normal peers [23], particularly when the elements of grammar or semantics are nonsense to the child, i.e., either the nonsense arrangement of verb markers (in number or tense) or functional words (e.g., prepositions or case markers). This means that a child with PLI is more likely to omit or misarrange grammatical or semantic elements in a similar way when s/he M A N U S C R I P T…”

“…The LR+ of the item-level scoring method was greater than 10, while the LR-was .1. Positive likelihood ratios greater than 10 indicate that it is very likely that a person who earns a negative score on the index test really has the condition, and if the LR+ is 20 or more, this means that such a person certainly has the condition [23]. The results have been summarized in Table 2 and Figure 1.…”

A systematic review on diagnostic procedures for specific language impairment: The sensitivity and specificity issues

“…The results of this study show that although the majority of measures extracted from language samples were capable in differentiating children with or without SLI at the group level, only three of these measures exhibited good diagnostic performances at the individual level [Table 3]. [35]…”

Word Order Acquisition in Persian Speaking Children

“…The collected language samples were orthographically transcribed following the Persian Transcription Convention Protocol (PTCP) [18] with coding rules based on the Persian-adapted instruction of Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software [18,19]. The repeated utterances, one-word utterances, utterances without a verb were excluded.…”

“…The point-topoint agreement indicated 94%, 96%, and 93% inter-rater agreements for a number of utterances, morphemes, and the codes of word orders, respectively. The frequency of VS, SV, VO, OV, VOS, OVS, VSO, SVO, OSV, and SOV word orders and the MLUs of the language samples [18] were calculated by the SALT.…”