MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4406206936 · doi:10.1044/2024_jslhr-24-00515

Early Identification of Language Disorders Using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning: Challenges and Emerging Approaches

2025· review· en· W4406206936 on OpenAlexaff
Jessica M. Lammert, Angela Roberts, Ken McRae, Laura Batterink, Blake E. Butler

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicLanguage Development and Disorders
Canadian institutionsWestern University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsComputer scienceGeneralizability theoryLanguage identificationIdentification (biology)Natural language processingNatural languageArtificial intelligenceUniversal Networking LanguageLanguage technologyLanguage acquisitionLanguage assessmentComprehension approachPsychologyMathematics educationDevelopmental psychology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

PURPOSE: Recent advances in artificial intelligence provide opportunities to capture and represent complex features of human language in a more automated manner, offering potential means of improving the efficiency of language assessment. This review article presents computerized approaches for the analysis of narrative language and identification of language disorders in children. METHOD: We first describe the current barriers to clinicians' use of language sample analysis, narrative language sampling approaches, and the data processing stages that precede analysis. We then present recent studies demonstrating the automated extraction of linguistic features and identification of developmental language disorder using natural language processing and machine learning. We explain how these tools operate and emphasize how the decisions made in construction impact their performance in important ways, especially in the analysis of child language samples. We conclude with a discussion of major challenges in the field with respect to bias, access, and generalizability across settings and applications. CONCLUSION: Given the progress that has occurred over the last decade, computer-automated approaches offer a promising opportunity to improve the efficiency and accessibility of language sample analysis and expedite the diagnosis and treatment of language disorders in children.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.005
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.018

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.005
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0040.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.155
GPT teacher head0.436
Teacher spread0.281 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueJournal of Speech Language and Hearing ResearchSame topicLanguage Development and DisordersFrench-language works237,207