Effects of Recast Rate and Distribution on Irregular Past Tense Acquisition
The recast lab is housed in ETSU's speech and hearing department in Lamb 256 and is supervised by Dr. Kerry Proctor-Williams.
Dr. Proctor-Williams is now accepting participants for the study. Participants who qualify for the study are 4-6 year old children with histories of language difficulties and 3-4 year olds with typical language development. Up to $100 is available for participation. Parents who are interested in enrolling a child in the study or would like more information can contact Dr. Proctor-Williams at 423-439-7187 or williamk@etsu.edu.
Director
Dr. Kerry Proctor-Williams, Ph.D.
Education
2005 | Ph.D., University of Kansas
1984 | M.CI.Sc., University of Western Ontario
Teaching
Language Development
Language Disorders of Young Children
Language and Literacy Disorders
SLP Clinic: Child Evaluation/Treatment
Clinical Interests
Prelinguistic Communication Development and Disorders
Early Childhood Language Development and Disorders
Interprofessional Practice and Education
Research Interests
Characteristics of infants and children exposed to opioids and other drugs prenatally
Acquisition of morphology by children with language impairments
Treatment of children with language impairments
Interprofessional Education
Project
Research Question: How do quick corrections during conversation, called recasts, help children learn grammar?
Dr. Proctor-Williams of East Tennessee State University's Department of Communication Disorders, has received a $207,000 grant from the National Institute of Health for a study that examines child language acquisition through recast rates and distribution.
When a child says "I falled down" and an adult responds with a correction "Oh, you fell down," this is called a recast. Research shows that children who are developing language typically learn the correct form faster when they hear recasts, but only to a point. If an adult uses recasts too often (i.e. nagging) the child may not pay attention to the helpful corrections or recasts. In contrast, children with language delays need more recasts to develop and learn language.
This study will examine two aspects of recasts:
- Does the recast rate affect children's learning of irregular past tense verbs? That is, does it matter if children hear 5, 10 or 15 recasts in 10 minutes?
- Does recast distribution affect children's learning of irregular past tense verbs? That is, does it matter if children hear 20 recasts all in 1 session, or across 2 or 5 sessions?
Dr. Proctor-Williams hopes that the information gained from this study will develop an understanding of the best approaches to use recasts in therapy, and how learning from recasts by children with language impairment compares to children with typical language development.
The Research Study: The children will be taught 4 made-up verbs, such as bive, which have an irregular past tense, such as bove during play with specific toy sets. In conversation, when the children use a regular past tense, such as bived, the examiner will recast it with the irregular form. In one experiment, 2 verbs will be recast at a specific rate and in another experiment 2 more verbs will be recast for a specific number of sessions.
People
- Dr. Kerry Proctor-Williams, Ph.D.
- Email: williamk@etsu.edu
- Phone: 423-439-7187
- Paul Rice - Research Assistant
- Email: ricepb@etsu.edu
- Rebecca Baker - Research Assistant
- Email: bakerrm1@etsu.edu
- Ashley Grohmann - Research Assistant
- Email: grohmann@etsu.edu
Equipment
Lab room
Stimulus materials for learned recast words
Audio recording equipment