Work

Extending Clinical Effectiveness of MLU to Longest Utterances in Conversation and Story Retelling Contexts for Preschool LD Children

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Objectives: When conducting language assessments, it is essential to collect language samples from children in natural communication settings alongside standardized language tests. Mean Length of Utterances (MLU) and Length of Longest Utterances (LLU) serve as important indicators of language development and are significant measures for identifying children with language delay (LD). However, language sample analysis (LSA) is not widely utilized in clinical practice, underscoring the need for developing efficient methods for its application.Methods: This study involved 25 typically developing (TD) children and 25 children with LD aged 5-6 years in preschool. Natural conversational utterances and story retelling utterances were collected. For conversational samples, MLU-eojeol (MLUe), MLU-morpheme (MLUm) for the 50 utterances and the LLU-eojeol (LLUe), LLU-morpheme (LLUm) for the longest 5 utterances were analyzed. For story retelling samples, the total number of utterances, MLUe, and MLUm were analyzed. Differences in all measures between the two groups were examined, and stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) were conducted to distinguish between TD and LD.Results: Significant differences were found between TD and LD in all measures. SDA identified LLUm, the number of story retelling utterances, and story retelling MLUm as significant discriminant factors, classifying the two groups with 96% accuracy.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that length of utterances remains a reliable indicator for identifying LD at ages 5-6 and emphasized the importance of longitudinal observation of length of utterances in LD. Additionally, it confirmed the effectiveness of analyzing the longest utterances and story retelling utterances. A time-efficient approach to LSA in clinical settings using computer programs was also proposed.

Source: Eon'eo cheong'gag jang'ae yeon'gu/Communication sciences & disorders

DOI: 10.12963/csd.250096

Authors: Sodam Kim, Soyeong Pae

Institution: Hallym University

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: diamond

OpenAlex ID: W4409420944