Gina Conti-Ramsden
Human Communication and Deafness
The University of Manchester
gina.conti-ramsden@manchester.ac.uk
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Gina Conti-Ramsden Human Communication and Deafness The University of Manchester gina.conti-ramsden@manchester.ac.uk |
| Participants: | 12 |
| Type of Study: | clinical |
| Location: | UK |
| Media type: | no longer available |
| DOI: | doi:10.21415/T5VW2J |
Conti-Ramsden, G., & Dykins, J. (1991). Mother–child interactions with language-impaired children and their siblings. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 26, 337–354.
In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.
Other relevant publications include:
Bishop, D. V. M. (1982). The test of reception of grammar. University of Manchester, UK: Medical Research Council.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Conti-Ramsden, G., & Friel-Patti, S. Situational variability in mother-child conversations. In Children’s language K. Nelson and A. van Kleeck (Eds.) (pp. 43-64). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, L. M., Whetton, C., & Pintillie, D. (1982). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor, UK: NFER.
Leiter, R. G. (1969). The Leiter International Performance Scale. Chicago: Stoelting.
Zimmerman, I. L., Steiner, V. G., & Pond, R. E. (1979). The preschool language scale. London: Merrill.
This corpus includes data from six British language-impaired children and their younger MLU-matched siblings in the age range from 4;0 to 9;0. ONE SET OF TRANSCRIPTS, Abe and Ann are unfortunately missing.
Two groups of children and their mothers participated in this study. Five participants were language-impaired children and five were their normally developing younger sib-lings. The families were drawn from a larger study of parent–child interaction conducted by Conti-Ramsden in England. The study had a two-stage screening procedure for the re-cruitment of participants. First, families were contacted through a network of speech ther-apists and professional colleagues who were informed by letter of the criteria for participation. Second, each language-impaired participant referred was matched with his or her younger, normally developing sibling on the basis of MLU during a home visit. This part of the screening consisted of audiotaping a language sample of each of the two children while playing at home in order to obtain a rough idea of their MLU. It is not often that one finds an older language-impaired child at the same expressive language stage as his or her younger normally developing sibling. For the Conti-Ramsden project in England 36 families were contacted of which only 5 met the standards of language match required in this study. The five families participating in this study were White, intact (both father and mother living together at home), and monolingual.
Conti-Ramsden Families
| FED | MED | FSEG | SE Group | Children |
| Secondary | Secondary | skilled manual | III(M) | Rick and Rose |
| Further | Secondary | managerial | II | Clay and Charles |
| Further | Secondary | managerial | II | Abe and Ann |
| Further | Secondary | managerial | II | Martin and Mathue |
| Secondary | Secondary | manual | IV | Kate and Kale |
| Secondary | Secondary | skilled manual | III(M) | Sean and Susan |
All parents had secondary education (two fathers had further education but did not hold university degrees). The mothers were all housewives. Based on the father’s occupation, the families belonged to social class II (ancillary workers with occupations between professional and skilled), III (skilled manual workers), or IV (semiskilled manual workers), as indicated in the preceding table.
The language-impaired children ranged in age from 4;9 to 6;9 years. All five language-impaired children presented with severe expressive language delays as measured by MLU. The language-impaired children fell within Brown’s (1973) Stage I and II of linguistic development, although according to their chronological age they should have been functioning post-Stage V. In addition, all language-impaired children appeared to have nonverbal abilities within normal limits as measured by the Leiter International Performance Scale (Leiter, 1969). These data, along with the child’s sibling position in the family are as follows:
Conti-Ramsden Children
| Child | Group | Sex | Age | Position | M.A. | I.Q. |
| Rick | LI | M | 6;9 | 3/4 | 6;6 | 101 |
| Rose | SIB | F | 3;2 | 4/4 | 3;3 | 108 |
| Clay | LI | M | 5;10 | 1/2 | 4;9 | 86 |
| Charles | SIB | M | 2;4 | 2/2 | 2;0 | 91 |
| Abe | LI | M | 5;3 | 2/3 | 5;9 | 115 |
| Ann | SIB | F | 1;11 | 3/3 | 1;10 | 101 |
| Kate | LI | F | 4;9 | 1/3 | 4;3 | 95 |
| Kyle | SIB | M | 2;4 | 3/3 | 2;3 | 101 |
| Sid | LI | M | 4;9 | 1/2 | 5;0 | 110 |
| Susan | SIB | F | 2;5 | 2/2 | 2;3 | 98 |
| Martin | LI | M | 3;8 | 1/2 | - | - |
| Mathue | SIB | M | 2;1 | 2/2 | - | - |
Interestingly, the children’s comprehension status varied depending on which aspect of comprehension was being measured. The following table gives the results for three standardized tests. Results of the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-C) (Zimmerman, Steiner & Pond, 1979), a developmental test of auditory comprehension, revealed all language-impaired children to be functioning within normal limits (quotients ranging from 82 to 105). Results for the receptive vocabulary test, the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS) (Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Pintillie, 1982), a test in which the child points to one picture out of four choices, revealed all language-impaired children to have difficulties with receptive vocabulary (percentile scores ranging from 6% to 26%). Finally, findings of the Test of Reception of Grammar (TROG) (Bishop, 1982), a test of the comprehension of grammatical structures, revealed some language-impaired children to have difficulties in this area, although others appeared to be functioning normally (percentile scores ranging from no measurable comprehension of grammar to 50%).
The results on these three tests were as follows:
Conti-Ramsden Test Scores
| Child | Group | CA | PLS-C | BPVS | TROG |
| Rick | LI | 6;9 | 6;6 (96) | 4;6 (6%) | 5;0 (10%) |
| Rose | SIB | 3;2 | 2;9 (87) | 2;8 (28%) | * |
| Clay | LI | 5;10 | 5;4 (91) | 4;7 (22%) | 4;9 (20%) |
| Charles | SIB | 2;4 | 2;4 (98) | * | * |
| Abe | LI | 5;3 | 5;6 (105) | 4;4 (26%) | 5;0 (40%) |
| Ann | SIB | 1;11 | 2;7 (131) | * | * |
| Kate | LI | 4;9 | 3;10 (82) | 3;0 (7%) | See note |
| Kyle | SIB | 2;4 | 2;1 (91) | * | * |
| Sean | LI | 4;9 | 4;10 (103) | 2;10 (6%) | 5;0 (50%) |
| Susan | SIB | 2;5 | 2;3 (93) | * | * |
| Martin | LI | - | - | - | |
| Mathue | SIB | - | - | * | * |
Younger siblings ranged in age from 1;11 to 3;2 years. All younger siblings appeared normally developing (IQ ranging from 91 to 108) with age-appropriate language in terms of MLU (MLU in Stages I and II) and general auditory comprehension (PLS-C quotients ranging from 87 to 131). All children participating in the study had hearing within normal limits as determined by pure tone audiometry screening bilaterally (at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 Hz at 25 dB). Through the use of a questionnaire and parent interview, it was ascertained that no child had a history of chronic middle ear problems that necessitated regular otological treatment. In addition, all children presented uneventful case histories with respect to severe neurological or emotional problems.
Furthermore, as can be seen in the following summary, all language-impaired children were receiving speech therapy in the clinic or were enrolled in language-based classrooms for specific language-disordered children (language units). In these classrooms, the children received help from their language teacher and speech-language pathologist who worked together to develop a program for each individual child. In England, both speech-language pathologists and teachers are in continual contact with the children’s parents via home visits and visits by the parents to the clinic or the language units in the school. Nonetheless, none of the parents participating in this study had attended a parent training program.
Conti-Ramsden Therapy Breakdown
| Child | Started Therapy | Months in Therapy | Type of Provision |
| Rick | 4;0 | 33 | Clinic 4;0 to 5;3 |
| Language-Unit 5;3 to 6;9 | |||
| Clay | 2;6 | 44 | Clinic 2;6 to 4;6 |
| Language Unit 4;6 to 5;8 | |||
| Abe | 3;0 | 27 | Clinic 3;0 to 4;6 |
| L-Unit 4;6 to 5;3 | |||
| Kate | 4;6 | 3 | Clinic 4;6 to 4;9 |
| Sean | 3;2 | 21 | Clinic 3;2 to 4;2 |
| L-Unit 4;2 to 4;9 |
“Clinic” refers to weekly therapy in a clinic. Despite severe problems, Kate appears to have fallen through the health-service net as she was not referred to therapy until she attended nursery school.
After a warm up period of 2 to 10 visits, each pair of language-impaired child and younger sibling was videotaped interacting individually with their mothers in a free play situation in the participants’ home. The video recorder was not turned on until the partici-pants were ready and playing comfortably. Each dyadic play interaction lasted approxi-mately 15 minutes. The order of interactions was determined by each family given everyday restrictions such as older sibling’s possible school attendance, children’s willingness, and so forth. In addition, each family chose the toys they wanted to play with and were only instructed to “do what you normally do.” The present project attempted to gather ecologically valid, everyday interactions; thus, it was desirable to minimize the amount of structure imposed on the families’ everyday activities.
The transcription process involved two phases. In the first phase, 10-minute samples of continuous play interaction were transcribed from the videotape recordings. Transcriptions included verbal and nonverbal events and the context in which these event occurred. These initial transcriptions were done by two native speakers of British English using paper and pencil. In the second phase, the paper and pencil transcriptions were computerized; verified; enriched with gestures, indications of nonverbal communicative activity, gaze, and some broad phonetic information required for the analyses; and formatted in accordance with CHAT.
The coding scheme aims to identify whether the partners in each dyadic interaction are a) engaged in a conversation, b) following their own separate foci of attention, or c) engaged in a mainly nonverbal episode of interaction. Further coding under each of these three main categories is then applied in order to identify more subtle aspects of the interaction.
Conversations were defined according to Conti-Ramsden and Friel-Patti’s (1987) def-inition: “Two or more turns linked together by a focus on a particular topic.” Turns are defined as either verbal or nonverbal. Codes that indicate that a turn is part of a conversation are: $NEW, $CON, $END, and $NC (noncontingent). After each of these codes, further codes were added which vary according to whether the turn was that of parent or child, or alternatively mark the end of the conversation.
$END codes include: