A Comparison Of Two Procedures For Analyzing Spontaneous Language In Preschool Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to make a comparison of the SALT and SUGAR language sample analysis procedures in gathering evidence of language impairment from spontaneous language samples. Three preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) participated in the study. The children were asked a variety of open-ended questions in order to obtain a conversational sample. A total of 50 utterances were then transcribed and analyzed using the SALT and SUGAR analysis procedures. The results were then compared against the normative database for each procedure. The SALT analysis identified 2 out of 3 children as being outside one standard deviation (SD) relative to database peers on measures common to both procedures whereas the SUGAR analysis identified only 1 of the 3 children. SALT provided additional measures in which all 3 of the children fell outside of one SD relative to database peers. Based on the results, researchers determined that despite the SUGAR analysis being more efficient, the SALT analysis provides much more detailed data about expressive language development. Therefore, the SALT analysis should be used over the SUGAR analysis to analyze spontaneous language and provide supporting evidence for diagnosing children with DLD.