Vowel Duration Discrimination of Children With Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A Preliminary Study.

Purpose The ability of 5- and 6-year-old male children (23 participants) between the chronological ages of 5;0 and 6;11 (years;months) with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS; n = 9) and with typical development (TD; n = 14) to detect differences in vowel duration of syllable pairs is explored. We asked whether the children with CAS show different patterns of performance on the vowel duration difference experimental task than those of their similarly aged peers with TD. Method A male adult audio-recorded the syllable /bɑ/. The /ɑ/ was digitally lengthened and shortened, while maintaining uniform fundamental frequency and amplitude of the vowel and duration of the consonant /b/ at 42 ms. Vowel lengths increased in 40-ms increments, ranging from 208 to 488 ms. Eight pairs of syllables, 1 with equal length and 7 with differing vowel lengths, were randomly presented to the children 10 times in blocks of 16 pairs via a computer application. Results Numerous complementary analyses indicated patterns of performance differed for children with CAS compared to the children with TD. The children with CAS were notably less accurate in their duration discrimination and evidenced greater variability in their performances across duration difference conditions than their peers with TD, signifying they were generally challenged to discriminate the vowel duration differences. Conclusion These results suggest that CAS, which is more generally considered a motor speech disorder, may have a perceptual component of CAS related to vowel duration discrimination. Further research directions and clinical implications are discussed. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8411876.

How experienced speech-language pathologists learn to work on teams.

This study sought to understand how 10 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) learned to work on teams with other disciplines. Team-work skills are cited by universities as a generic skill their graduate possess and by professional speech-language pathology organizations as an important skill for clinicians. Few allied health curriculums, including speech-language pathology, teach explicit team-work skills. Which leads to the question: Where have experienced SLPs learned these skills? Interviews from 10 practicing SLPs determined where and how they learned to work on teams as well as team-skills that entry-level SLPs should possess. Only two of the 10 participants had any formal team training during university study and nine out of 10 participants described learning "on the job" during their first professional job with assistance from a workplace mentor. All participants believed that training in team-work with other disciplines is important to learn during university study. The needed attitudes, knowledge, and skills described for entry-level SLPs reflects similar characteristics listed by the World Health Organization's 2010 recommendation for inter-professional education. These findings support the inclusion of inter-professional education learning opportunities in the speech-language pathology curriculum.

The Kirkpatrick model: A useful tool for evaluating training outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Services employing staff to support people with disability usually provide training in a range of areas including communication and managing challenging behaviour. Given that such training can be costly and time-consuming, it is important to evaluate the evidence presented in support of such programs. Efficacy in clinical practice is measured using evidence-based practice. However, there is currently no model that is widely used to compare and evaluate training programs despite the large number of training programs reported each year. METHOD: Six studies published in the last decade that reported the outcomes of communication-based training and six that reported on the outcomes of challenging behaviour training were evaluated using the 4-level Kirkpatrick model. RESULTS: Comparison of the levels of evidence is made for these 12 studies. CONCLUSION: The Kirkpatrick model provides one technique for appraisal of the evidence for any reported training program and could be used to evaluate whether a training program is likely to meet the needs and requirements of both the organisation implementing the training and the staff who will participate.

Teamwork: a study of Australian and US student speech-language pathologists.

In the discipline of speech-language pathology little is known about the explicit and implicit team skills taught within university curricula. This study surveyed 281 speech-language pathology students to determine a baseline of their perceived ability to participate in interprofessional teams. The students were enrolled in programs in Australia and the USA and were surveyed about their perceptions of their attitudes, knowledge and skills in teamwork. MANCOVA analysis for main effects of age, university program and clinical experience showed that age was not significant, negating the perception that life experiences improve perceived team skills. Clinical experience was significant in that students with more clinical experience rated themselves more highly on their team abilities. Post Hoc analysis revealed that Australian students rated themselves higher than their US counterparts on their knowledge about working on teams, but lower on attitudes to teams; all students perceived that they had the skills to work on teams. These results provide insight about teamwork training components in current speech-language pathology curricula. Implications are discussed with reference to enhancing university training programs.

Informativeness of the spoken narratives of younger and older adolescents with specific language impairment and their counterparts with normal language.

A large body of literature describing the narrative skills of young children with and without language impairments exists. However, there has been only limited study of the informativeness of narratives of adolescents with normally developing language (NL) and those of adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI), even though narratives play an important role in adolescents' complex social and academic lives and there is emerging evidence that narrative abilities in young children portend their later language proficiency. This study examined the informativeness of oral narratives produced by four groups of adolescents: younger adolescents with NL (mean age = 13years:2 months), older adolescents with NL (15:10), younger adolescents with SLI (13:2) and older adolescents with SLI (15:9). The results indicated that the narratives produced by the SLI adolescents consisted of fewer informative and more irrelevant/inaccurate responses than the narratives of their peers with NL. The SLI adolescents also tended to give more vague responses in their narratives than their NL counterparts, as well tending not to provide any responses to the pictures representing the story. Taken together, these results painted a picture of SLI adolescents producing less satisfying, complete, and cohesive narratives, findings consistent with those of the research on children with SLI. Language status more than age appeared to be the factor that affected the likelihood of the adolescents providing or not providing informative responses. These results suggested that the performance of adolescents with SLI may not catch up to the level of performance of their NL counterparts during adolescence.

Methodological adaptations for investigating the perceptions of language-impaired adolescents regarding the relative importance of selected communication skills.

This article describes the systematic and detailed processes undertaken to modify a research methodology for use with language-impaired adolescents. The original methodology had been used previously with normally achieving adolescents and speech pathologists to obtain their opinions about the relative importance of selected communication skills for adolescents' positive peer relationships. Modifications attempted to address language-impaired adolescents' characteristic metalinguistic, literacy, cognitive, and information processing weaknesses. Revising the original wording of the communication skills, reducing the reading level of the skills from grade 10 to 4.6, using a Q-sort approach to ranking the importance of the skills, and revising the instructions and administration procedures led to what pilot testing results indicated was a valid methodology for use with language-impaired adolescents. Results of a preliminary study using the revised methodology suggested that language-impaired adolescents may perceive the relative importance of some communication skills differently from their normally achieving peers.

The Relative Importance of Selected Communication Skills for Adolescents' Interactions With Their Teachers: High School Teachers' Opinions.

PURPOSE: This study investigated the opinions of high school teachers regarding the relative importance of selected communication skills for their students' communication with them and explored if the content areas in which the teachers taught or the amount of high school teaching experience they had were associated with their opinions. METHOD: Teachers ranked 14 communication skills according to perceived order of importance for Grade 10 adolescents' communication with them as teachers. RESULTS: Teachers tended to perceive skills associated with discourse management strategies as relatively more important than other skills. The two communication skills that were associated with metalinguistic/figurative language aspects of communication were ranked as least important. Inexperienced and experienced high school teachers tended to rank the importance of the communication skills similarly, as did sciences and humanities teachers, except for the communication skill of turn taking, which sciences teachers ranked higher than humanities teachers. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The results provide guidelines for developing intervention approaches that can facilitate successful communicative interactions in high school environments and target goals that teachers of adolescents with language and/or learning disabilities perceive as more important for teacher-adolescent interactions.

Cochlear implants and infants: expectations and outcomes.

This study followed the communication and motor development of 3 profoundly deaf infants who underwent cochlear implantation. All infants were receiving auditory habilitation at the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre, Australia, with the view to acquiring oral language skills and had English-speaking, hearing parents. Their progress was tracked with a battery of measurement tools before and after cochlear implantation. The results indicated noticeable growth in receptive language and motor skills after operation. Although expressive language improved, the rate of growth was much slower than changes in other areas. Although some areas of the subjects' communication skills remained delayed, the importance of tracking their progress according to their hearing age, as well as the chronological age, was evident.

Importance of Selected Communication Skills for Talking With Peers and Teachers: Adolescents' Opinions.

This research explored normally achieving 10th-grade adolescents' opinions concerning the relative importance of 14 communication skills for their own communication when talking with their teachers and when talking with their peers. It also investigated if the adolescents' gender influenced their opinions. Results indicated that the adolescents tended to perceive skillsassociated with characteristics of empathy and considered to be addressee-focused as relatively more important for their communication with their peers. When the adolescents considered their communication with teachers, communication skills related to discoursemanagement strategies assumed relatively more importance. Although gender appeared to influence the types of communication skills considered to be more important than others, gender-based differences in the relative importance of the communication skills were less apparent when gender and communication partnerdifferences were considered together. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.