Praxis Chapter 4

A clinician is working with parents on home language-stimulation activities for their 3-year-old daughter, Hannah, whose language is delayed. Among other things, Hannah needs to increase her expressive language skills to a level more commensurate with her chronological age. Her mean length of utterance is restricted, and her utterances are more typical of a young 2-year-old child. The clinician has recommended that at home, the parents use a technique in which they play with Hannah and describe and comment upon what she is doing and the objects she is interested in. For example, the parents might say, "You are making the car go fast," or "That pig is pink." The parents are using the technique of

• Self-talk

• Expansion

• Expatiation

• Parallel talk.

Answer explanation

If parents are using a technique in which they play with their child and describe and comment upon what she is doing and the objects she is interested in (e.g. the parents might say, "You are making the car go fast," or "That pig is pink"), the parents are using the technique of parallel talk.

You are seeing a 6-year-old, Tyler, with specific language impairment. When you assess Tyler, you find that he has adequate language comprehension. He is able to follow directions, understand vocabulary, and comprehend sentences of appropriate length and complexity for his age. However, his teacher and parents report that he has "no friends" and that they are concerned about his social skills. When you observe Tyler several times on the school playground, in the classroom, and in the school cafeteria, you see that, while he is well behaved and nondisruptive, he does not initiate interactions with others. Treatment should focus on

• Increasing mean length of utterance

• Working on bound morphemes

• Increasing assertiveness in conversation

• Increasing sentence complexity

Answer explanation

A 6-year-old child with a language impairment and adequate language comprehension but difficulty initiating interactions with others would best be served by treatment focusing on increasing assertiveness in conversation.

You are seeing a 9-year -old boy, Emile, whose Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition score is one year above age level. Emile appears to be performing adequately in the classroom. His teacher reports that he is at grade level in most subjects. However, he often interrupts others and irritates his listeners; as a result, he is avoided by many peers. His mother reports that he is not invited to other children's birthday parties and that she has heard that other mothers view him as rude and disrespectul. Treatment should focus on increasing

• Pragmatic skills

• Syntactic skills

• Morphologic skills

• Semantic skills

Answer explanation

Pragmatics, or social language, is the area in which this student needs the most help.

You are working with an adolescent, Alyssa, who has receptive and expressive language problems. She is getting Ds in most of her classes at the junior high school and has few friends. In therapy, it would be best to target

• Increasing auditory memory skills

• Increasing the use of complex sentences containing subordinate clauses

• Increasing social use of language and collaborating with the classroom teachers

• Increasing the understanding and use of figurative language

Answer explanation

Adolescence is a time when the use and comprehension of appropriate social language is critical. In addition, collaboration with classroom teachers would yield directions for use of specific classroom materials and ideas that could be used in therapy to target Alyssa's deficient language skills while increasing her academic performance.

A child who shows slow, writhing, involuntary movements has which type of cerebral palsy?

• Spastic

• Mixed

• Ataxic

• Athetoid

Answer explanation

A child who shows slow, writhing, involuntary movements has athetoid cerebral palsy.

Which one of the following is NOT true?

• Standardized language tests provide a means of quantifiable comparison of a child's performance to that of large groups of children in a similar age category.

• Standardized language tests help sample behaviors adequately, providing multiple contexts for sampling target-language behaviors.

• With young children, we want to examine play skills (among other things).

• In language sampling, some clinicians calculate a type-token ratio (TTR), which represents the variety of different words a child uses expressively.

Answer explanation

This item is false because standardized tests do not sample language behaviors adequately. They provide only one or two contexts that sample each behavior.

You are assessing the expressive language skills of a 4-year-old with delayed language. One of the things he says is "My birthday party was fun- we ate cake and cookies!" This would count as

• 10 words, 10 morphemes

• 10 words, 12 morphemes

• 10 words, 11 morphemes

• 10 words, 9 morphemes

Answer explanation

This utterance would count as 10 words, 11 morphemes.

You move to a new elementary school and begin seeing the children on the caseload at this school. One child, who is being treated to "increase semantic skills," has four goals listed on her IEP. Which one of these goals is inappropriate?

• Increase types and numbers of words the child uses in the classroom.

• Increase specific word usage and decrease usage of nonspecific words, such as this, that, and thing.

• Decrease overextensions of words.

• Increase use of appropriate discourse skills, turn taking, and conversational repair strategies.

Answer explanation

Increasing use of appropriate discourse skills, turn taking, and conversational repair strategies would be appropriate targets for a child working on pragmatic skills, not semantic skills.

A child with traumatic brain injury would most likely manifest which of the following?

• A higher familial incidence.

• Echolalia and obsessive talking.

• Hypersensitivity to touch, insistence on routines, lack of interest in human voices.

• Impaired word retrieval and comprehension, lack of attention, and memory problems.

Answer explanation

Hypersensitivity to touch, insistence on routines, and lack of interest in human voices are generally characteristic of children with autism, not children with traumatic brain injury.

Which of the following is not true with regard to treatment of children with language disorders?

• Because many children with language disorders have difficulties with working memory, clinicians should conduct therapy primarily through the auditory modality and not be concerned with incorporating tactile or visual activities into therapy.

• Collaboration with classroom teachers is important in helping children generalize treatment target behaviors.

• It is helpful, when appropriate, to incorporate reading and writing (literacy) intervention into language therapy.

• A child's chronological age is not always the best predictor of the kind of treatment that will be appropriate; current skills (developmental level) is a more reliable indicator.

Answer explanation

It is critical to use a multimodal approach to treatment because most children with language disorders will learn more quickly and retain more information this way.