Examining Readiness for Learning Two-Word Utterances by Children With Specific Expressive Language Impairment

Abstract

Dynamic assessment examines how children respond to cues presented hierarchically from least to most supportive. The hypothesis is that children's responsiveness reflects readiness to learn a new behavior; that is, responsiveness to the least supportive cuing indicates a readiness for immediate learning (Vygotsky, 1978). A dynamic assessment procedure was employed with 15 preschool children with specific expressive language impairment to determine their readiness for producing two-word utterances. Three types of validation were examined for the dynamic assessment procedure: construct, predictive, and concurrent. The results supported construct validity in that the subjects were able to produce more two-word utterances correctly with the more supportive cuing than they produced with the least supportive cuing. The results also supported predictive validity in that subjects who demonstrated responsiveness to the cuing hierarchy generally demonstrated greater language change during the 9-week study period than those subjects not responsive to the cuing hierarchy. The concurrent validity results revealed rather unexpected findings. In general, the subjects produced a greater variety of two-word categories and more lexical combinations during the language sample than during the dynamic assessment procedure. Clinical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.