Douglas B. Petersen

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Wyoming

Purpose Several studies have demonstrated that dynamic assessment can be a less biased, valid approach for the identification of language disorder among diverse school-age children. However, all prior studies have included a relatively small number of participants, which is generally not adequate for psychometric research. This is the first large-s...

The purpose of this three-arm randomized controlled trial was to explore the impact of multi-tiered explicit and systematic narrative language instruction on the language students are expected to understand and produce in the school setting (e.g., reading and writing). A sample of 210 kindergarten students were assigned to three conditions: treatme...

Implementation considerations should be integrated into the iterative development of educational innovations. The purpose of this design-based implementation research (DBIR) was to identify intervention components worthy of revision, examine the feasibility of a video manual and document barriers to the implementation of a multi-tiered dual-languag...

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of vocabulary instruction embedded in the narrative intervention on the immediate and retained definitional knowledge of taught words for first graders at risk for language-related reading difficulties. Method We employed a repeated acquisition design with innovative quality fe...

Purpose The purpose of this randomized controlled trial was to examine the effects of a multitiered system of language support (MTSLS) on kindergarteners' narrative retelling, personal stories, writing, and expository language. Method Participants were 686 kindergarten students from four school districts in the United States. Twenty-eight classroo...

Introduction and objectives This cross-validation study investigated the extent to which a Spanish narrative language dynamic assessment accurately identified students with and without developmental language disorder across two separate samples of monolingual Spanish-speaking students from Guatemala and Mexico. Materials and methods Students with...

Background Children in India are among the lowest performing students on international reading comprehension and writing assessments. Oral language instruction may improve these literacy outcomes. Aim: This pilot study investigated whether a multi-tiered system of language support (MTSLS) improved oral narrative language comprehension, reading comp...

This early-stage feasibility study investigated the effects of a multitiered oral narrative language intervention on oral language, reading comprehension, and writing. Twenty-eight second-grade students participated in this quasi-experimental control group study with assignment at the classroom level. The independent variable was large- and small-g...

Purpose The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method Three listening and...

Purpose Narrative interventions are a class of language interventions that involve the use of telling or retelling stories. Narrative intervention can be an efficient and versatile means of promoting a large array of academically and socially important language targets that improve children's access to general education curriculum and enhance their...

The purpose of this cluster randomized group study was to investigate the effect of multitiered, dual-language instruction on children’s oral language skills, including vocabulary, narrative retell, receptive and expressive language, and listening comprehension. The participants were 3- to 5-year-old children (n = 81) who were learning English and...

Purpose Educators often use results from static norm-referenced vocabulary assessments to aid in the diagnosis of school-age children with a language disorder. However, research has indicated that many of these vocabulary assessments yield inaccurate, biased results, especially with culturally and linguistically diverse children. This study examine...

Learning to write is one of the essential literacy skills to academic success (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Graham & Perin, 2007). Early intervention to foster children’s early writing development can prevent a long-term adverse effect on students’ writing performance (Berninger, Nielsen, Abbott, Wijsman, Raskind, 2008). The writing standards indicated...

This study examined whether a multi-tiered system of support focused on oral narrative language would improve the oral and written academic language of kindergarten students. Over 650 students were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved proximal (narrative retelling) and...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to outline the psychometric requirements for progress monitoring tools for oral and written language and to provide an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of current oral and written language progress monitoring tools used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and general and special educators. Method E...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine how well a kindergarten dynamic assessment of decoding predicts future reading difficulty at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade and to determine whether the dynamic assessment improves the predictive validity of traditional static kindergarten reading measures. Method With a small variation in sample size...

Purpose Epidemiological research has indicated that students with language-based disorders are underidentified (Tomblin et al., 2007). Research has indicated that speech-language pathologists working in the schools utilize tests based on the year of publication rather than the tests' diagnostic accuracy (Betz, Eickhoff, & Sullivan, 2013). To furthe...

Standards of academic performance place a high demand on students’ English language. To help Spanish-speaking preschoolers who are developing English as a second language meet these demands, researchers recommend strengthening their first language to facilitate development of their second language. Head Start teachers and research assistants delive...

Purpose Despite literature showing a correlation between oral language and written language ability, there is little evidence documenting a causal connection between oral and written language skills. The current study examines the extent to which oral language instruction using narratives impacts students' writing skills. Method Following multiple...

Purpose This study investigated the classification accuracy of a concentrated English narrative dynamic assessment (DA) for identifying language impairment (LI). Method Forty-two Spanish–English bilingual kindergarten to third-grade children (10 LI and 32 with no LI) were administered two 25-min DA test–teach–test sessions. Pre- and posttest narra...

There is the very real possibility that narrative-based language intervention may not only improve narrative-specific outcomes such as narrative retelling and personal story generation, but also expository language, which has traditionally been perceived as a dissimilar, distal outcome. In this paper we discuss the relationship between narrative la...

A disproportionate percentage of culturally and linguistically diverse students have difficulties with language-related skills that affect their academic success. Early and intensive language instruction may greatly improve these students' language skills, yet there is not sufficient research available to assist educators and school psychologists i...

Oral narratives are a commonly used, meaningful means of communication that reflects academic language. New state curriculum standards include narrative-related language expectations for young school-age children, including story grammar and complex language. This article provides a review of preschool narrative-based language intervention studies,...

This study investigated the extent to which results of English narrative intervention interacted cross-linguistically with Spanish for 73 bilingual children. We employed a quasi-experimental design, using matched-pairs random assignment for children with typically developing language and a nonrandom block design for children with language impairmen...

Purpose The first purpose of this study was to explore the use of a whole class, test–teach–test, dynamic assessment of narratives for identifying participants. The second purpose was to examine the efficacy of a Tier 2 narrative language intervention for culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers. Method A dynamic assessment was conducted...

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to describe differences in the narratives produced by 3-, 4-, and 5- year old Spanish-speaking (SS) children. Narrative productions of 104 typically developing children were collected using a story-retelling task and coded using the Index of Narrative Complexity. The results of this study indicate th...

Narrative skills that are important for preschoolers include retelling stories, telling personal stories, and answering questions about stories. Narrative abilities form the foundation of reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individually delivered language intervention on the narrative skills of presc...

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the classification accuracy of early static prereading measures and early dynamic assessment reading measures administered to 600 kindergarten students. At the beginning of kindergarten, all of the participants were administered two commonly used static prereading measures. The participants were...

This study investigated the effect of a large group narrative intervention on diverse preschoolers’ narrative language skills with aims to explore questions of treatment efficacy and differential response to intervention. A quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest comparison group research design was employed with 71 preschool children. Classrooms were...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individualized, systematic language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism. Method A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to examine the effect of the intervention on language features of personal narratives...

The majority of children who are culturally and linguistically diverse in the United States read below grade level. This disproportionate prevalence of reading difficulty is likely due to language-related factors. Although most of these children do not have language impairment, they do need explicit instruction in the use and comprehension of compl...

Sixty-three bilingual Latino children who were at risk for language impairment were administered reading-related measures in English and Spanish (letter identification, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition) and descriptive measures including English language proficiency (ELP), language ability (LA), socioeconomi...

This study investigated the predictive validity of a dynamic assessment designed to evaluate later risk for reading difficulty in bilingual Latino children at risk for language impairment. During kindergarten, 63 bilingual Latino children completed a dynamic assessment nonsense-word recoding task that yielded pretest to posttest gain scores, residu...

In this presentation, technical results of the Test of Narrative Retell in PreK and School age children are presented. Discussion follows regarding application of narrative retells within a Response to Intervention framework.

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This authors of this article present a new language assessment, the Narrative Language Measures (NLM), designed for screening, progress monitoring, and intervention planning purposes. The authors examine NLM for its ability to satisfy the requirements of the assessment of language in a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Specifically, they de...

The purpose of this study was to describe similarities and differences in structure-dependent features of narratives produced by 132 typically developing African American (AA) and European American (EA) children in a modeled elicitation context, across three age groups. Participants included 132 AA and EA children matched for gender, age, and geogr...

El Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL) es uno de los trastornos infantiles más comunes y afecta aproximadamente al 7% de los niños en los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Si bien se trata de un trastorno prevalente, su origen no se ha esclarecido del todo y existen diversas teorías al respecto. El propósito de esta revisión es presentar un panor...

This systematic review focuses on research articles published since 1980 that assess outcomes of narrative-based language intervention for preschool and school-age children with language impairment. The author conducted a comprehensive search of electronic databases and hand searches of other sources for studies using all research designs except no...

This article presents reading comprehension from the narrow view of reading perspective. Comprehension is presented as linguistic in nature, no matter the modality in which the content occurs. The strategies, content, and targeted basal approaches are discussed. Speech-language pathologists possess unique knowledge that can promote linguistic compr...

Purpose This study investigated the effect of a literate narrative intervention on the macrostructural and microstructural language features of the oral narratives of 3 children with neuromuscular impairment and co-morbid receptive and expressive language impairment. Method Three children, ages 6-8 years, participated in a multiple baseline across...

This article summarizes norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measures of narration and introduces a new criterion-referenced narrative scoring system called the Index of Narrative Complexity (INC). The INC was designed to be used as a progress-monitoring tool. A preliminary study of the use of this scoring system is reported that yielded eviden...

This study investigated the validity of measures that were hypothesized to account for significant variance in English reading ability. During kindergarten, 63 bilingual Hispanic children completed letter identification, English and Spanish phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition static assessment tasks. They also...

Evidence-based practice (EBP) refers to clinical decisions as a result of the careful integration of research evidence and student needs. Although required to employ evidence-based practices, teachers receive little training on how to identify what practices are determined to be evidence-based and which are most appropriate for individual students....