Melanie D. Javid and Dr. Martin Fujiki, Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties with language comprehension and production that is not attributed to other disabilities. Studies have shown that these children are also at risk for social problems. These social problems are assumed to be the outcome of the child’s language ability. The purpose of this project is to investigate the emotional understanding of children with SLI. This project is designed to provide speech-language pathologists with a clearer delineation of emotional needs experienced by children with SLI. Our profession may then adapt therapy to address the child’s understanding of emotions.
Our project was designed to analyze the understanding of emotion in children with SLI. We assessed 25 children with SLI and 25 age and gender-matched peers from the Alpine, UT and Jordan, UT School Districts. Each child was evaluated in three 45-60 minute sessions in a quiet room at their school.
The first two sessions included two formal standardized tests. The first formal language test, Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL), was designed for children ages 3 to 21 years. The CASL provided scores of children’s language ability in lexical/semantic, syntax, supralinguistic, and pragmatic areas. This test was administered to identify the children with and without language impairment. The second test administered was the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT). It was designed for children ages 5 through 17. The UNIT analyzed the children’s general intelligence by nonverbal measurements in six areas: memory quotient, reasoning quotient, symbolic quotient, non-symbolic quotient, and full scale intelligence quotient.
The third session provided an opportunity to assess the understanding of emotions. It included four separate tasks for each child to complete. Before starting, the clinician provided six different pictures relating to a given emotion (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust). For each task, the child was asked to point to the picture that best represented the emotion they would see or feel. The tasks were administered in a random order.
One task assessed the child’s ability to identify emotion through prosody. The child listened to an audiotape of the same passage read five times. Each time the passage was read, the last line was emphasized with a different prosody (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, and surprise). The passage reads, “It was the first day of school. I got ready early. I wanted to see who was in my class. I walked in my class and sat down. Pat came in and sat next to me. Then the teacher walked in the room. I knew this year would be different.” The child then pointed to the picture that best represented the emotion expressed in the reader’s voice.
Another task assessed the child’s ability to identify emotion in facial expressions. Each child was shown 24 standardized photographs selected from Matsumoto and Ekman’s (1988) collection of standardized photographs of facial expressions of emotion. The child was asked to point to the picture that best represents the emotion (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust) expressed in the reader’s voice.
A third task assessed the child’s ability to identify emotion in facial expressions shown real-time. The child watched 24 short video clips of children answering the phone, saying “hello”, pausing, and reacting with a certain emotion (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust). The child was asked to point to the emotion they thought the actor was feeling. Then, they were asked to state what they thought the person heard on the phone.
A fourth task addressed the child’s ability to identify the emotion (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust) of a character in a given scenario. It also analyzed the child’s reaction to a given situation. The child was evaluated with 10 scenarios. The evaluator read and provided pictures for each scenario. A sample scenario is, “This is Chris. This is Chris’s favorite aunt. Chris’s favorite aunt comes to visit him/her. Chris’s aunt brings him/her a present for his/her birthday. Christ really wants a new scooter. Chris opens the present. It is a shirt. Chris does not want a shirt.” The child then answered four questions: What did Chris’s aunt bring him/her? How does Chris feel? What should Chris say to his aunt? What would Chris’s parents want him/her to do?
Currently for this project, all the assessments have been completed and the children’s responses have been typed into a database. We have just begun to analyze and compare the data between the children with SLI and the children with normal language abilities. Once the analysis has been accomplished, the outcomes will determine if our premise regarding the emotional understanding of children with SLI is accurate. Therapy techniques may then be developed to assist the emotional development for children with SLI.
Information will be analyzed throughout the summer and fall 2004. When the project has been completed, we plan to present the results of this study during the Wisconsin Symposium on Child Language Disorders in June 2005 and at the national convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in November 2005. We also plan on publishing the results of this project in a peer-reviewed journal such as the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research or Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in the Schools.