Language and early literacy professional development: A complex intervention for early childhood educators and speech-language pathologists.

Purpose: Improving language and literacy skills in preschoolers can lead to better life outcomes. One way speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can improve these skills in preschoolers is by supporting educators through professional development (PD). However, PD in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings is a complex intervention. To improve preschoolers' language and literacy skills using PD, SLPs must first work with educators to change or increase educators' language and literacy-promoting behaviours. This paper aimed to describe educator behaviours and preschooler skills following a real-world language and literacy PD intervention facilitated by two community SLPs.Method: Two pragmatic studies were conducted across four ECEC centres: (1) an observation study of 13 educators' self-reported language and literacy promoting behaviours, and (2) a non-randomised controlled trial investigating the language and literacy skills of 82 preschoolers as reported by their educators and parents/carers.Result: After the intervention, educators rated themselves as performing language and literacy-promoting behaviours more frequently. Educators also rated the early reading skills of preschoolers more highly after the PD intervention, but not preschoolers' oral language or early writing skills. Parents/carers did not report any significant improvements in preschoolers' skills.Conclusion: PD as an SLP intervention, whilst promising, showed mixed outcomes. Educator outcomes improved; however, preschooler outcomes were varied.

Neural control of the lips differs for young and older adults following a perturbation.

Aging impairs the control of many skilled movements including speech. The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether young and older adults adapt to lower lip perturbations during speech differently. Twenty men (10 young, 26 ± 3 years of age; 10 older, 60 ± 9 years of age) were requested to repeat the word ("papa") 300 times. In 15% of the trials, the subjects experienced a mechanical perturbation on the lower lip. Displacement and neural activation (EMG) of the upper and lower lips were evaluated. Perturbations to the lower lip caused a greater increase in the maximum displacement of the lower lip for older adults compared with young adults (34.7 ± 19% vs. 13.4 ± 17%; P=0.017). Furthermore, young adults exhibited significantly greater 30-100 Hz normalized EMG power for the lower lip compared to the upper lip (P<0.005). In young adults, changes from normal to perturbed trials in the 30-50 Hz frequency band of the EMG were negatively correlated to the changes from normal to perturbed trials in the lower lip maximum displacement (R (2) =0.48; P=0.025). It is concluded that young adults adapt better to lower lip perturbations compared with older adults and that the associated neural activation strategy of the involved muscle is different for the two age groups.