The topical relationship among adjacent utterances in productively delayed children's language addressed to their mothers

Topic continuing and nontopic continuing utterances produced by three productively language-disordered preschoolers were analyzed. All children were intellectually normal, exhibited multiple articulation errors, and produced utterances characteristics of children in Brown Stage I. Each child and mother participated in a videotaped 40-min free play activity. Communicative behavior emitted by mothers and children was transcribed using procedures described by Bloom, Rocissano, and Hood (1976). Subsequently, all intelligible child utterances produced adjacent to a maternal utterance were coded as imitative (maintained topic but added no new information), contingent (maintained topic and added new information), and noncontingent (changed topic). Results suggested that these productively disordered children produced a proportion of adjacent utterances comparable to proportions previously reported for children with normal production language skills (Bloom, Rocissano, and Hood, 1976). Further analyses suggested that these productively delayed children relied on an imitation strategy to continue conversational exchanges. Results are discussed in terms of intervention procedures suitable for children displaying conversational deficits, particularly the impact of phonological delay on conversational exchanges.