Table 2 –
Language analysis measures used in the current study.
| Domain | Measure | Calculation Method |
|---|---|---|
| Fluency | Words per minute | Total # of words/total length of audio in minutes The total number of intelligible, whole words per 5-utterance segment was manually counted and divided by the speaker’s total speaking time as measured in Praat (Boersma, 2001). |
| Total number of disfluencies | Disfluencies were manually coded and their numbers were extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command | |
| Word Retrieval | Moving Average Type Token Ratio (MATTR) | KidEVAL utility in CLAN provides the value |
| Idea Density | # of propositions (non-noun entities)/ 10 words EVAL utility in CLAN provides the value |
|
| Correct Information Units (CIU) | Total # correct information units/ Total # words in sample This was manually calculated | |
| Total number of semantic errors | Semantic paraphasias were manually coded and their numbers were extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command | |
| Total number of phonological errors | Phonological paraphasias, phonemic paraphasias and neologisms were manually coded, and their numbers were extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command | |
| Total number of word retrieval errors | The numbers of semantic, phonological and mixed paraphasias were extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command and added up | |
| Syntax | Mean length of utterance (MLU) | Total # of morphemes in a sample/ total # of utterances in a sample EVAL utility in CLAN provides the value |
| Proportion of grammatical utterances | Manual coding of grammaticality of each utterance EVAL utility in CLAN provides the value | |
| Verbs per utterance | Average # verbs/ Total # utt EVAL utility in CLAN provides the value | |
| Sentence Complexity | Manual coding of complex sentence types (e.g., sentences containing embedded clauses, modifying clauses, passive sentence construction) The number of sentences is extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command |
|
| Total number of morphological errors | Morphological errors were manually coded and their numbers were extracted using CLAN’s FREQ command | |
| General | Total number of errors | Sum of disfluencies, semantic, phonological and morphological errors |
Abbreviations: CLAN = Computerized analysis of language (MacWhinney, 2000), EVAL & FREQ = utilities in CLAN. EVAL computes a wide range of language measures, FREQ computes the number of instances of a specified language unit.