Understanding linguis.c complexity of sentence recogni.on tasks: Implica.ons for preschool popula.ons Kris.na Blaiser, PhD, CCCSLP; Abbie Olszewski, MA, CCCSLP; & Elizabeth Preston, AuD, CCCA Utah State University Background: The purpose of sentence recogni.on tes.ng is to determine a child’s ability to hear and understand everyday speech. • Sentence recogni.on tasks are helpful in discovering a child’s difficul.es and in developing appropriate goals and objects for the child (Madell, 1998). • By using sentences, versus a single word list, results are more realis.c and reflect listening in everyday situa.ons. • It is recommended that an audiologist ensure that a child has “sufficient cogni.ve and linguis.c skills” (Waltzman & Cohen, 2000) to par.cipate in sentencebased speech percep.on tasks. Research Ques2ons: 1. What is the linguis.c complexity of commonly used sentence recogni.on tasks? 2. Does this help to inform audiologists about when/how to use specific tasks for pediatric popula.ons? 3. How do sentencebased auditory tasks compare to informa.on gained from commonly used language assessments? Results: HINTC “A/The boy fell from the window.” “A/The lady went to the store.” COMMON PHRASES “What color are your eyes?” “It's nice to meet you.” GASP “What is your name?” “What color are your shoes?” BKB “They carried some shopping bags.” “They laughed at his story.” Sentence Recogni2on Test Age Task Language Elements Recommenda2ons Common Phrases (Robbins, Renshaw, & Osberger, 1995) 48 years Repeat sentences Live voice Quiet Some complex determiners (your); early adjec2ves (nice), common nouns (eyes, clothes), present progressive verbs;(are going); no adverbs; no conjunc.ons; early morphemes (contracted copula, present progressive). 1. Linguis.cally, the simplest test of the ones analyzed. 2. Would be a good baseline sentence recogni.on task. 3. Could give to children younger than 4 years. GASP (Erber, 1982) Unknown Repeat or answer ques.on Some complex determiners (your); no adjec.ves; uses more sophis.cated preposi2on (aDer); copula verb; more complex preposi2on (aDer), uses more sophis2cated morphemes (3rd person singular, plural s) 1. All “Wh” ques.ons. Child must be able to understand and/or answer ques.ons. 2. Children with limited access to high frequencies may have some difficulty with the morphemes used (plural –s & 3 rd person singular). 3. Could give to children 4 years and higher. BKB (Etymo.c Research, 2005) 514 years Repeat sentences Recorded or live voice Quiet or noise Complex determiners (some, his, her); complex adjec2ves (shopping, asleep); regular and irregular past tense verbs (carried, drove); use of early preposi2ons (up, at), and complex morphemes (plural –s, regular past tense) were used. 1. Some use of past tense verbs and morphemes. 2. This test could be used for children who have language levels of 4 years and higher. HINTC (Biologic Systems Corp, 2005) 612 years Repeat sentences Recorded or live voice Quiet or noise Many complex determiners (her, his, their) used; many adjec2ves (big, dangerous); early nouns (boy, dog, shoes); use of irregular and regular past tense verbs (helped, came); preposi2ons are more complex (from); and complex morphemes (plural –s, contracted copula) were used. 1. More complex language used in this test. Past tense is used in almost every sentence. 2. Would be a good ongoing measure for children with more developed language. 3. Would be beier used for children who are late preschool (5 & 6 years old) or early elementary school. Discussion: • Increased understanding of the linguis.c complexity of sentence recogni.on tasks may help audiologists to recognize if the task is tes.ng the child’s auditory percep.on skills or language development. • Audiologists and speechlanguage pathologists can work together to ensure that tes.ng is appropriate for a child’s developmental/language level. Figure 2. The following linguis.c elements: adverbs, morphemes, ar.cles (a/the), wh ques.ons, and pronouns may be par.cularly challenging for children with hearing loss and have been analyzed in more detail. Figure 1. Total percentage of each part of speech for four common speech recogni.on tests administered to children with hearing loss. Sample ques.ons from each test are also presented. Table 1 Speech RecogniNon Task DescripNon and RecommendaNons Listed in Language Complexity Order Determiners, 27% Adjec.ves, 7% Pronouns, 15% Nouns, 27% Verbs, 17% Conjunc.ons, 0% Preposi.ons, 5% Adverbs, 2% Determiners, 11% Adjec.ves, 6% Pronouns, 22% Nouns, 19% Verbs, 39% Conjunc.ons, 0% Preposi.ons, 0% Adverbs, 3% Determiners 23% Adjec.ves 9% Pronouns 10% Nouns 25% Verbs 22% Conjunc.ons 0% Preposi.ons 8% Adverbs 3% Determiners 25% Adjec2ves 0% Pronouns 16% Nouns 24% Verbs 22% Conjunc2ons 0% Preposi2ons 4% Adverbs 9% 0 2 4 6 8 10 Adverbs Morphemes Ar.cles Wh Ques.ons Pronouns Common BKB HINTC GASP