Adult interaction style effects on the language sampling and transcription process with children who have development disabilities

Abstract

A determination was made of whether an empirically derived interaction style improves the usefulness of the language sampling and transcription in 17 children with developmental disabilities in Brown's (1973) Stages I and II. Whether the interaction style affected the diversity and complexity of the language the children produced during the samples was also examined. All subjects experienced two 20-minute interaction sessions that differed according to whether topic-continuing wh-questions were used. Results indicated that, regardless of order of exposure to the styles, children talked more often and produced proportionally more transcribable utterances. In addition, they produced a larger sample of productive vocabulary in the style using topic-continuing wh-questions. There were no style effects on vocabulary diversity or length of utterance. The importance of using interaction styles that maximize the information available from language samples of young children with disabilities was discussed.