Each CHILDES database contains a "readme" file, which provides details on the language study.  These details include background information, characteristics of all the test subjects, and information on how the data were obtained and transcribed. Please see me for instructions on how to access these "readme" files.  The following information is a copy of the "readme" file for the "Conti data."

Fathers, Mother, and Sibling Interactions with Language Impaired Children

Gina Conti-Ramsden, Ph.D.
Centre for Educational Guidance and Special Needs
School of Education
University of Manchester
Manchester, M13 9PL England
Phone: 061-275-3514 or 3510

The Families
Potential families that had one child with specific language impairment (SLI) were informed of the research project funded by the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation Grant 12-251 through the speech and language therapy services in the north-west of England. They were asked if they would be willing for the research workers to visit them to discuss their possible involvement in more detail. During this initial visit, the researchers collected language samples by means of an audio recording from the SLI child and the younger normal language learning sibling (NL). The first fifty utterances of the recordings were transcribed in order to ascertain whether the SLI child and NL sibling belonged to the same language stage. From the outset, it was made clear that no identifying information would be revealed except to the research workers and that the family could end their involvement in the research project at any time, and any data collected from the family at that point would be destroyed if desired.

There was some difficulty in identifying families whose children fitted the strict criteria on the investigation. That is, the SLI child and his/her NL sibling were of the same language stage, and falling within the limits of Brown's Stage I and early Stage II. It was considered important that all children be in the same language stage so that comparisons could be made across children. An early stage of development was chosen because it is in this early stage of syntactic growth that maternal effects are believed to play an important role (Nelson, Bonvillian, Denninger, Kaplan and Baker, 1984). In addition, the study required all SLI children to have a severe language impairment with eventful birth histories, but cognitive abilities within normal limits. A total of 40 families were visited of which 6 fitted the above criteria and were used for this research project. Another 6 families whose children matched in MLU the SLI-NL families were used as controls. Thus a total of 18 children participated in the study: 6 children with SLI, 6 normal siblings (NL), and 6 control children.

Characteristics of the Subjects
The characteristics of the children are presented in the following table:

Child         Age     Sex     MLU     LIPS     PLS     BPVS     TROG
Clay (SLI)     6;5     M      1.22     86      91      88        84
Charles (SIB)  2;11    M      1.38     91      98      95        NA
Kaleb (Cont)   1;10    M      1.19     91      86      NA        NA
Jack (SLI)     4;11    M      1.39     127     124     97        103
Jim (SIB)      2;4     M      1.53     101     123     NA        NA
Janet (Cont)   2;2     F      1.34     113     108     NA        NA
Kate (SLI)     4;10    F      2.19     95      82      78         *
Kyle (SIB)     2;5     M      2.07     101     91      NA        NA
Kevin (Cont)   1;11    M      2.05     96      91      NA        NA
Martin (SLI)   3;9     M      1.17     105     103     86         *
Mathue (SIB)   2;0     M      1.35     101     104     NA        NA
Mary (Cont)    2;1     F      1.30     118     100     NA        NA
Rick (SLI)     6;10    M      2.33     101     96      77        82
Rose (SIB)     3;3     F      2.36     108     87      91        NA
Robert (Cont)  3;1     M      2.02     127     108     100       NA
Sid (SLI)      4;9     M      1.54     110     103     76        99
Susan (SIB)    2;5     F      1.21     98      93      NA        NA
Sally (Cont)   2;5     F      1.32     108     103     NA        NA

Key to Table

• Age is at time of video recording
• SLI: Child with specific language impairment
• SIB: Normal language learning sibling of the SLI child
• Cont: Control child of the same language stage as SLI/SIB
• LIPS: Leiter International Performance Scale (Leiter, 1969)
• MLU: Mean length of utterance
• PLS: Preschool Language Scale (Zimmerman, Steiner and Pond, 1969)
• BPVS: British Picture Vocabulary Scale (Dunn, Dunn, Whetton and Pintillie, 1982)
• TROG: Test of Reception of Grammar, (Bishop, 1983)
• NA: Not applicable
• *: Child could not do the test, score below test floor 

Note that all children matched for MLU (a maximum of .35 of a morpheme difference for each SLI-NL-CONT triad) and in addition all children fell within Brown's Stage I/Early Stage II of language development (Brown, 1973). All children were functioning cognitively within normal limits as evidenced by the results of the LIPS. All children with SLI had severe expressive language deficits reflected in the fact that their MLUs fell far below age expectancies.

As has been found before with SLI children with expressive language difficulties (Conti-Ramsden, Donlan and Grove, 1992) these children with SLI presented with varied comprehension abilities in terms of vocabulary and grammar as can be seen from the results of the BPVS and TROG.

In addition, all children had adequate hearing sensitivity as determined by pure-tone audiometry screening bilaterally (500, 1,000 and 2,000 HZ at 25 db). The SLI children all presnted with eventful birth histories: five out of the SLI children were anoxic at birth. One of these 5 children required intensive care for 24 hours. The sixth SLI child was jaundiced at birth and mother had a difficult pregnancy with colic and infections which required treatment. In addition, all children spoke English in monolingual homes and came from intact (two parent) families.

Below are details of the Parent's Employment and Education
Note: "Secondary" in England means left school at 16 years of age.

• Clay and Charles: Father: Sales Executive; secondary education plus two diplomas in marketing and advertising management. Mother: housewife, secondary education
• Jack and Jim: Father: Production scheduler in factory; secondary education. Mother: Housewife, secondary education
• Kate and Kyle: Father: Security Guard; secondary education. Mother: housewife; secondary education
• Martin and Matheu: Father: Butcher; Secondary education. Mother: Housewife; secondary education
• Rick and Rose: Father: Roofer; Secondary education. Mother: Housewife, secondary education
• Sid and Susan: Father: Plant operator mechanic; secondary education. Mother: Housewife; secondary
• Kaleb: Father: Senior lecturer in Further Education; Graduate of University.  Mother: Housewife; up to A-level (this means up to 18 years of age in Education)
• Janet: Father: Postal engineer; secondary education. Mother: Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer; Technical Diploma from Polytechnic
• Kevin: Father: Furniture maker: Graduate of University. Mother: Midwife Teacher; Professional Diploma
• Mary: Father: Deputy Headmaster; Master's Level Qualifications. Mother:  Senior Lecturer in polytechnic; Diploma and Certificate in Education
• Robert: Father: Computer Design Engineer; Graduate of University. Mother:  Housewife; Graduate of University
• Sally: Father: Labourer; secondary education. Mother: housewife; secondary

Following are the Speech Therapy Histories for the children with SLI. All language impaired children were receiving speech therapy in a clinic or were enrolled in language based classrooms for specific language impaired children called in England "language units".

• Clay: Started therapy when he was 2;6 years. He attended a clinic from 2;6 to 4;6. From 4;6 until the time of the video he was attending a language unit.
• Jack: Started therapy when he was 2;9 years. He attended a clinic from 2;9 to 4;4. From 4;4 until the time of the video he was attending a language unit.
• Kate: Started therapy when she was 4;6 years. She attended a clinic from 4;6 until the time of video. This is a child professionals felt had fallen through the net and should have received help earlier.
• Martin: Started therapy at 3;0 years. He attended a clinic from 3;0 until the time of the video.
• Rick: Started therapy at 4;0. He attended a clinic from 4;0 to 5;3. From 5;3 until the time of video he attended a language unit.
• Sid: Started therapy at 3;2. He attended a clinic from 3;2 to 4;2. From 4;2 until the time of the video he attended a language unit.

Clinic usually refers to once or twice a week therapy on a withdrawal basis.

Video Recordings
The video recording sessions were conducted in the homes of the families using play material available from their homes such as jigsaws, Fisher-Price toys, books, Legos, models, etc. In order to keep the parents as unconcerned as possible about the nature of their own speech, the parents were told that the research was primarily about children's communicative development. The instructions given to parents were "play as you normally do".

Families of children with SLI participated in a number of dyadic interactions and these are used to place the files into directories:

• FATSLI: The father and the SLI child.
• MOTSLI: The mother and the SLI child.
• FATSIB: The father and the sibling.
• MOTSIB: The mother and the sibling.
• SLISIB: The SLI child and the sibling.
• CONCON: Control children and their siblings.

Because of the number of interactive alignments to be recorded and because the project also taped two conditions (play and book reading although only PLAY is discussed here), the researchers spent all day with the family and sometimes more than one day. All families had warm-up sessions where the researchers carried out testing of the children and when the equipment was set up for the children to explore and get used to. Thus, all children were seen at least for one day before video recording started. The order of recording was NOT controlled for. It was the SLI or NL sibling depending on which of the children was available and ready to interact. For example, the mother-child interactions with the NL sibling were usually carried out during the day when the older sibling was at school. Father-child interactions were usually done in the evening when dad came home. The interactions were dyadic and no siblings were present while recording. Siblings and other members of the family where kept busy with activities in another room of the house. Recording sessions lasted approximately 15 to 20 minutes. The researchers asked participants to begin to play and once the parents had settled playing the video camera was turned on.

Transcription
The first ten minutes of each video session were transcribed. The transcriptions involved verbal and non-verbal interactions and the context in which these events occurred. This was carried out in accordance with the guidelines produced by the Codes for Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) which is part of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) (MacWhinney and Snow, 1985). The computerized transcripts were then compared by an independent transcriber with the original videotaped data in order to verify their accuracy. Any disagreements concerning the transcription were resolved by re-examination and consensus was reached.

References

Bishop, D.V.M. (1983). Test of Reception of Grammar (TROG). Medical Research Council. Available from Dr. Dorothy Bishop, MRC Applied Psychology Unit, University of Cambridge, England.

Brown, R. (1973). A First Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Conti-Ramsden, G., Donlan, C. and Grove, J. (1992). Characteristics of specific language impaired children attending language units. European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 27, 325-342.

Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C. & Pintillie. D. (1982). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Widsor: NFER-Nelson.

Leiter, R.G. (1969). The Leiter International Performance Scale. Chicago: Stoeting & Co.

MacWhinney, B. & Snow, C. (1985). The Child Language Data Exchange System. Journal of Child Language, 12, 271-295.

Nelson, K.E., Bonvillian, J.D., Denninger, M.S., Kaplan, B.J., & Baker, N.D. (1984). Maternal input adjustments and non-adjustments as related to children's linguistic advances and to language acquisition theories. In A.D. Pellegrini & T.D. Yawki (eds.), The Development of Oral and Written Language in Social Contexts. New Jersey: Ablex.

Zimmerman, I.L., Steiner, V.G. & Pond, R.E. (1969). Preschool Language Scale. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co. 

Acknowledgments
When using these data please acknowledge that the collection of these data was made possible by a Social and Behavioral Sience Research Grant No. 12-FY91-0835 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation to Dr. Gina Conti-Ramsden.

You can also refer to the following article: Conti-Ramsden, G. & Dykins, J. (1991). Mother-child interactions with language-impaired children and their siblings. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 26, 337-354.

We are currently working on an article comparing fathers and mothers and also the sibling data. If you want to know where these are in the publication process please contact me directly at the address at the beginning of this document.