RESUMO
BACKGROUND: There are few hearing tests in Spanish that assess speech discrimination in noise in the adult population that take into account the Lombard effect. This study presents the design and development of a Spanish hearing test for speech in noise (Prueba Auditiva de Habla en Ruido en Español (PAHRE) in Spanish). The pattern of the Quick Speech in Noise test was followed when drafting sentences with five key words each grouped in lists of six sentences. It was necessary to take into account the differences between English and Spanish. METHODS: A total of 61 people (24 men and 37 women) with an average age of 46.9 (range 18-84 years) participated in the study. The work was carried out in two phases. In the first phase, a list of Spanish sentences was drafted and subjected to a familiarity test based on the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the sentences; as a result, a list of sentences was selected for the final test. In the second phase, the selected sentences were recorded with and without the Lombard effect, the equivalence between both lists was analysed, and the test was applied to a first reference population. RESULTS: The results obtained allow us to affirm that it is representative of the Spanish spoken in its variety in peninsular Spain. CONCLUSIONS: In addition, these results point to the usefulness of the PAHRE test in assessing speech in noise by maintaining a fixed speech intensity while varying the intensity of the multi-speaker background noise. The incorporation of the Lombard effect in the test shows discrimination differences with the same signal-to-noise ratio compared to the test without the Lombard effect.
RESUMO
The Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2) has demonstrated its usefulness as an instrument to assess discrepancies between the use of structural dimensions of language and the pragmatic and sociointeractive uses of language. The aims of the present paper are: (1) to test the capacity of the Galician adaptation of the CCC-2 to discriminate the linguistic profiles of children with different disorders and (2) to test whether the capacity of the CCC-2 to discriminate the linguistic abilities of children with different disorders is the same at different ages: earlier development and later development. The sample is of 117 children previously diagnosed with different disorders: autism spectrum disorder (ASD), developmental language disorder (DLD), attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Down syndrome children (DS) and typically developing children (TD). The children were divided into two different age groups: from 4 to 6 and from 7 to 16 years of age. The results indicate that the Galician CCC-2 (1) accurately identified children with and without communicative impairments, (2) distinguished between profiles with a predominance of pragmatic (ASD and ADHD) and structural disorders (DS and DLD) and (3) distinguished between different profiles of pragmatic impairment. The CCC-2 equally identified these profiles at both earlier and later ages. The Galician CCC-2 seems to be a useful instrument for differentiating among different clinical groups and for assessing pragmatic disorders from an early age, which can be valuable for planning early intervention.
RESUMO
En el presente estudio se ha diseñado y aplicado un programa lúdico-educativo con el fin de estimular el lenguaje de niños de último curso de educación infantil con y sin dificultad específica. Este programa pretende responder a la necesidad de herramientas en el aula que, de forma atractiva y dinámica, actúen sobre las dificultades que pueden aparecer durante el desarrollo del lenguaje oral de los niños. Para ello, se empleó un diseño pre-post con una muestra de 25 alumnos de tercer curso de educación infantil. Las evaluaciones se realizaron a través de un registro de observación del lenguaje y de la Prueba de lenguaje oral de Navarra revisada. Las actividades del programa lúdico están basadas en el juego dirigido y se centran en aspectos como la atención, el reconocimiento visual, la lateralidad, el ritmo y la fluidez del habla, la discriminación auditiva, etc. Su duración ha sido de un mes, con 2 sesiones semanales de 45 min. Los resultados reflejan diferencias estadísticamente significativas en la mayoría de las variables objeto de intervención. Si bien se trata de un estudio piloto, los resultados parecen apoyar la utilidad de intervenciones breves de tipo lúdico-educativo aplicadas a nivel grupal en el contexto escolar para la estimulación del lenguaje (AU)
In the present study, an educational play-based program was designed and implemented to stimulate the language of children with or without specific difficulties in the last year of primary education. This program aimed to respond to the need for dynamic tools in the classroom to correct difficulties that may arise during the development of children's oral language. To do this, a pre-post design was used with a sample of 25 students in their third year of primary education. Evaluations were performed by the Revised Navarre oral language test and an observational procedure specifically designed for this study. The program's activities were based on directed play and focused on aspects such as attention, visual recognition, laterality, rhythm and fluency of speech, auditory discrimination, etc. The program lasted for 1 month with two weekly sessions of 45 min each.Statistically significant differences were found in most of the variables. Although this was a pilot study, the results seem to support the usefulness of brief interventions for language stimulation applied at the group level in schools (AU)
