Language Samples From Children Who Use Speech-Generating Devices: Making Sense of Small Samples and Utterance Length

Mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) is underreported in people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). MLUm is difficult to measure in people who use AAC because of 2 challenges described in literature: the challenge of small language samples (difficulty collecting representative samples) and the challenge of transcribing short utterances (difficulty transcribing 1-morpheme utterances). We tested solutions to both challenges in a corpus of language samples from children who use speech-generating devices.

The first challenge was addressed by adjusting the length of the sampling window to obtain representative language samples. The second challenge was addressed by using mean syntactic length (MSL) as an alternative to MLUm.

A 24-hour sample window consistently failed to yield representative samples. An extended 1-month sample window consistently yielded representative samples. A significant positive prediction of MLUm by MSL was found in a normative sample. Observed measures of MSL were used to predict MLUm in representative language samples from children who use AAC.

Valid measures of utterance length in people who use AAC can be obtained using extended sampling windows and MSL. Research is needed to characterize the strengths and limitations of both solutions.