Authors: Tessa Sabin, Derek Bagley, Kylie Olsen, Alexis Klein, Haven Broadhurst
Mentors: Sandi Gillam
Insitution: Utah State University
The purpose of this project was to create systematic, reliable rubrics for using the Frog Story series in language sample analysis for the diagnosis and treatment of children with developmental language disorders (DLD).
Language sample analysis is a critical part of the assessment process by speech language pathologists (SLPs) for determining whether a child has a developmental language disorder. This is accomplished by analyzing a child’s use of vocabulary, sentence structures, and grammatical markers (i.e., past tense) and comparing it to their typically developing peers. Once diagnosed, language sampling is used as part of progress monitoring efforts to ensure the child is making reasonable progress toward their language goals in one (or all) of these areas.
Elicitation of language from a child is often achieved by asking them to tell a story. One popular way that SLPs have obtained samples is to ask them to retell one of four popular wordless picture books from the Frog Story series by Mercer Mayer. This series involves the antics of a frog and his boy as they encounter different adventures. There is no rubric or “analysis key” associated with the stories leaving the SLP to decide how to use the information obtained from the story independently. This makes it hard to obtain reliable results over multiple time points for use in progress monitoring.
In this project, a team analyzed all four Frog stories for their inclusion of specific story elements (i.e., character, setting, episode), vocabulary and sentence structures; and separate rubrics were created. The methodology for identifying the language parameters of interest, reliability in coding, and uses for the rubrics will be described. The rubrics will be automated using a web application so clinicians can upload their child’s story and have them instantly scored, making their use in analysis more reliable and consistent.