5535V - Does Decontextualized Talk Mean More Conversational Turns for Preschool Children With Language Disorders?

This study examined decontextualized language exchange between pre-service speech-language pathologists and preschool-age children diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD N = 9) or children with language impairment associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD N = 7). Dyadic interactions were video-recorded during free play activities in a therapy setting. Preliminary analyses indicated that 1) conversation turns between pre-service clinicians and preschool-age participants were equally distributed among contextualized and decontextualized talk, with great between-sample variability, 2) decontextualized talk was correlated with children’s expressive language (MLU in words, number of different words per minute) but not with children’s receptive language (PLS-5 Auditory Comprehension), 3) neither the total number of conversation turns nor decontextualized turns differed between the two diagnostic groups (DLD and ASD).