SLP Receptive and Expressive Language 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A child with developmental language disorder (DLD) frequently omits past tense '-ed' morphemes in obligatory contexts. Which grammatical morpheme tense marker is MOST diagnostic for DLD in English?
- Plural -s
- Possessive -s
- Past tense -ed and third-person singular -s (Correct answer)
- Present progressive -ing
Correct answer: Past tense -ed and third-person singular -s
Past tense -ed and third-person singular -s are among the most diagnostically sensitive grammatical morphemes for identifying DLD in English-speaking children.
Question 2: An SLP uses 'expansion' as an intervention technique. Which of the following best illustrates expansion?
- Child: 'Dog run.' SLP: 'Yes, the dog is running fast!' (Correct answer)
- Child: 'Dog run.' SLP: 'What is the dog doing?'
- Child: 'Dog run.' SLP: 'The dog is running. He is running away.'
- Child: 'Dog run.' SLP: 'Dog run. Dog run.'
Correct answer: Child: 'Dog run.' SLP: 'Yes, the dog is running fast!'
Expansion takes the child's utterance and recasts it in a more complete, grammatically correct form while preserving the child's intended meaning.
Question 3: Which receptive language task is considered the MOST cognitively demanding?
- Pointing to a named object
- Following a two-step unrelated command (Correct answer)
- Identifying a picture from a single word
- Choosing between two objects
Correct answer: Following a two-step unrelated command
Following two-step unrelated commands (e.g., 'Touch your nose and then give me the ball') requires holding and sequencing two independent instructions in working memory.
Question 4: A 5-year-old uses the word 'yesterday' to refer to any time in the past, including last year. This reflects immature development in which domain?
- Pragmatics
- Temporal semantics (Correct answer)
- Narrative structure
- Phonological representation
Correct answer: Temporal semantics
Imprecise use of temporal terms like 'yesterday' reflects immature temporal semantic knowledge — understanding of words that encode time relationships.
Question 5: Which approach is MOST evidence-based for improving expressive syntax in school-age children with language impairment?
- Whole-language immersion without explicit instruction
- Recasting with focused stimulation on target structures (Correct answer)
- Articulation drill at the word level
- Social story training
Correct answer: Recasting with focused stimulation on target structures
Focused stimulation combined with recasting — providing multiple models of a target structure and recasting the child's errors — has strong evidence for improving expressive syntax.
Question 6: A clinician administers the CELF-5 to a 10-year-old and finds a Core Language Score of 78. How should this be interpreted?
- Average language ability
- Below average; may indicate language disorder requiring further evaluation (Correct answer)
- Superior language performance
- Inconclusive due to test ceiling
Correct answer: Below average; may indicate language disorder requiring further evaluation
A standard score of 78 falls more than 1 SD below the mean (100), placing the child in the below-average range and warranting further clinical evaluation.
Question 7: A child can answer 'what' and 'where' questions but fails 'why' and 'how' questions. This difficulty reflects challenges in:
- Basic referential comprehension
- Causal and procedural reasoning in language (Correct answer)
- Phonological decoding
- Narrative episode structure
Correct answer: Causal and procedural reasoning in language
'Why' and 'how' questions require causal and procedural reasoning, which are more cognitively demanding than simple referential 'what' and 'where' questions.
SLP Receptive and Expressive Language 5
A child with developmental language disorder (DLD) frequently omits past tense '-ed' morphemes in obligatory contexts.
Which grammatical morpheme tense marker is MOST diagnostic for DLD in English?