American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology最新文献

Purpose: The study sought to understand Haitian parents' perspectives on heritage language maintenance with typically developing children.

Method: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 Haitian parents of typically developing children. A thematic analysis was conducted to determine recurring themes.

Results: Participants desired to preserve the heritage language; however, factors such as linguistic and class ideologies of Haiti, xenophobia within the United States, and English monolingualism hindered parents' success in maintaining the heritage language.

Conclusion: The findings from this study demonstrate the need for additional research and resources to help support the Haitian community's desire for heritage language maintenance to promote healthy communication practices, decrease language loss, and foster social communication in the home and community.

Purpose: International cleft lip and palate surgical charities recognize that speech therapy is essential for successful care of individuals after palate repair. The challenge is how to ensure that cleft speech interventionists (i.e., speech-language pathologists and other speech therapy providers) provide quality care. This exploratory study investigated effects of a two-stage cleft training in Oaxaca, Mexico, aimed at preparing speech interventionists to provide research-based services to individuals born with cleft palate. Changes in the interventionists' content knowledge and clinical skills were examined.

Method: Twenty-three cleft speech interventionists from Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua participated in a hybrid two-stage training, completing an online Spanish cleft speech course and a 5-day in-person training in Oaxaca. In-person training included a didactic component and supervised clinical practice with 14 individuals with repaired cleft palates. Testing of interventionists' content knowledge and clinical skills via questionnaires occurred before the online course (Test 1), immediately before in-person training (Test 2), and immediately after in-person training (Test 3). Qualitative data on experience/practice were also collected.

Results: Significant increases in interventionists' overall content knowledge and clinical skills were found posttraining. Knowledge and clinical skills increased significantly between Tests 1 and 2. Clinical skills, but not knowledge, showed further significant increases between Tests 2 and 3. Posttraining, interventionists demonstrated greater expertise in research-based treatment, and fewer reported they would use nonspeech oral motor exercises (NSOME).

Conclusions: Findings provide preliminary support for such two-stage international trainings in preparing local speech interventionists to deliver high-quality speech services to individuals born with cleft palate. While content knowledge appears to be acquired primarily from the online course, the two-stage training incorporating in-person supervised practice working with individuals born with cleft palate may best enhance continued clinical skill development, including replacement of NSOME with evidence-based speech treatment. Such trainings contribute to building capacity for sustainable quality services for this population in underresourced regions.

Purpose: Changes in voice and speech are characteristic symptoms of Huntington's disease (HD). Objective methods for quantifying speech impairment that can be used across languages could facilitate assessment of disease progression and intervention strategies. The aim of this study was to analyze acoustic features to identify language-independent features that could be used to quantify speech dysfunction in English-, Spanish-, and Polish-speaking participants with HD.

Method: Ninety participants with HD and 83 control participants performed sustained vowel, syllable repetition, and reading passage tasks recorded with previously validated methods using mobile devices. Language-independent features that differed between HD and controls were identified. Principal component analysis (PCA) and unsupervised clustering were applied to the language-independent features of the HD data set to identify subgroups within the HD data.

Results: Forty-six language-independent acoustic features that were significantly different between control participants and participants with HD were identified. Following dimensionality reduction using PCA, four speech clusters were identified in the HD data set. Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS) total motor score, total functional capacity, and composite UHDRS were significantly different for pairwise comparisons of subgroups. The percentage of HD participants with higher dysarthria score and disease stage also increased across clusters.

Conclusion: The results support the application of acoustic features to objectively quantify speech impairment and disease severity in HD in multilanguage studies.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25447171.

Purpose: This review aims to comprehensively summarize, compare, and evaluate screeners used to identify risk for developmental language disorder (DLD), a common learning disability that is underidentified. Screening for DLD is a cost-effective way to identify children in need of further assessment and, in turn, provides much needed supports.

Method: We identified 15 commercially available English language DLD screeners in North America. We then characterized each screener on 27 aspects in three domains, including (a) accessibility information (acronym, subtest, website, cost, materials included, publish year, examiner qualification, age range, administration time, and administration format), (b) usability features (dialect compatibility, progress monitoring function, actionable follow-up instruction, group assessment capability, and online administration availability), and (c) technical standards (the availability of a technical manual, conceptual definition, the sample size used in classification accuracy calculation, sample distribution, year of sample collection, outcome measure, sample base rate, cutoff score, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value).

Results: We obtained sufficient accessibility information from 14 out of 15 (93%) screeners. In contrast, none of the screeners (0%) included comprehensive usability features. Ten screeners (67%) included a range of classification accuracy (70%-100% sensitivity and 68%-90% specificity). We provided areas of strength and weakness for each screener as a quick reference for users and generated screener recommendations for five practical scenarios.

Conclusions: Our findings presented some DLD screeners that meet most standards and highlight numerous areas for improvement, including improving classification accuracy and clarifying follow-up instructions for children who are identified with DLD risk. Screening for DLD is critical to provide timely early identification, intervention, and classroom support, which in turn facilitates student outcomes.

Purpose: Due to the scope of practice of speech-language pathology (SLP) expanding considerably in recent times, there is reduced emphasis on certain communication conditions within the curricula of SLP university programs. Stuttering and cluttering are neglected components of such curricula, despite the complex clinical skill set required to work with these client groups. Evaluation of the content and quality of modules on stuttering and cluttering is warranted to ensure that SLP students are graduating with adequate competence and confidence for supporting people with these conditions. This tutorial, based on a review of the literature, aims to provide guidance to educators who are designing or revising such modules.

Method: The All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE) model for module design provides a practical and theoretically underpinned guide to educators in higher education on the design of a new module or the review of an existing one. The model's seven key components are discussed, and their application to a module on stuttering and cluttering is outlined.

Results: The AISHE model provides a systematic and user-friendly approach to module design in SLP university programs. It supports educators who are designing a new module or revising a module currently being taught on stuttering and cluttering.

Conclusions: Educators are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the seven components of the AISHE model and to use it as a tool to design or revise modules on stuttering and cluttering. This will ensure that SLP students are graduating with increased competence and confidence in working with these client groups.

Purpose: Text-to-speech (TTS) technology potentially benefits people with aphasia by presenting content through two modalities simultaneously; however, for this to help, eye fixations must synchronize with the auditory rendition of words. Researchers have yet to explore how often and to what extent people with aphasia achieve modality synchronization. This retrospective analysis examined the percent of words people with aphasia see and hear concurrently when reading passages presented via TTS technology. Text-to-speech (TTS) technology potentially benefits people with aphasia by presenting content through two modalities simultaneously; however, for this to help, eye fixations must synchronize with the auditory rendition of words. Researchers have yet to explore how often and to what extent people with aphasia achieve modality synchronization. This retrospective analysis examined the percent of words people with aphasia see and hear concurrently when reading passages presented via TTS technology.

Method: Nine adults with aphasia had their eye movements tracked while processing TTS passages at a preselected default rate of 150 words per minute. Modality synchronization occurred whenever fixation on a written word occurred during the time span beginning 300 ms before auditory presentation and ending at the next word's initiation. Correlations between standardized test scores, unsupported reading rate, and modality synchronization percentages were informative about the association of aphasia and reading impairment severity with achievement of synchronicity.

Results: Three participants demonstrated consistent modality synchronization; average synchronicity ranged from 67% to 76% of passage words. One participant displayed inconsistent synchronization within passages and achieved an average of 58%. The remaining five participants rarely achieved synchronization, with fixations typically lagging substantially behind the auditory presentation. A significant positive correlation occurred between paragraph reading comprehension test scores and modality synchronization percentages.

Conclusions: A default TTS presentation rate does not result in dual modality synchronization for most people with aphasia. This lack of synchronization may contribute to inconsistencies in the benefit people with aphasia experience when provided with TTS support.

Purpose: Motor deficits are widely documented among autistic individuals, and speech characteristics consistent with a motor speech disorder have been reported in prior literature. We conducted an auditory-perceptual analysis of speech production skills in low and minimally verbal autistic individuals as a step toward clarifying the nature of speech production impairments in this population and the potential link between oromotor functioning and language development.

Method: Fifty-four low or minimally verbal autistic individuals aged 4-18 years were video-recorded performing nonspeech oromotor tasks and producing phonemes, syllables, and words in imitation. Three trained speech-language pathologists provided auditory perceptual ratings of 11 speech features reflecting speech subsystem performance and overall speech production ability. The presence, attributes, and severity of signs of oromotor dysfunction were analyzed, as were relative performance on nonspeech and speech tasks and correlations between perceptual speech features and language skills.

Results and conclusions: Our findings provide evidence of a motor speech disorder in this population, characterized by perceptual speech features including reduced intelligibility, decreased consonant and vowel precision, and impairments of speech coordination and consistency. Speech deficits were more associated with articulation than with other speech subsystems. Speech production was more impaired than nonspeech oromotor abilities in a subgroup of the sample. Oromotor deficits were significantly associated with expressive and receptive language skills. Findings are interpreted in the context of known characteristics of the pediatric motor speech disorders childhood apraxia of speech and childhood dysarthria. These results, if replicated in future studies, have significant potential to improve the early detection of language impairments, inform the development of speech and language interventions, and aid in the identification of neurobiological mechanisms influencing communication development.

Purpose: Verb tense production is known to be impaired in people with nonfluent aphasia. Selective past tense impairment in this population has been reported, but results are inconsistent and lacking at the discourse level. In addition, language production can be affected by discourse elicitation tasks depending on the cognitive linguistic demands and instructions unique to each task. There is limited evidence regarding whether verb tense production in people with nonfluent aphasia is impacted by discourse task demands. Understanding this potential impact is important for clinicians and researchers who are interested in assessing and then identifying effective clinical goals for this population. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the trends of verb tense production across various discourse elicitation tasks in people with nonfluent aphasia compared to people without aphasia.

Method: Language samples for 23 people with nonfluent aphasia and 27 people without aphasia were obtained for six discourse tasks from the AphasiaBank database. We calculated ratios of past tense, present tense, future tense, imperative, and unknown verb types to compare which tense was used most frequently within and across the tasks and groups.

Results and conclusions: Our findings revealed evidence of verb tense production deficits and a selective past tense impairment in people with nonfluent aphasia. Discourse task effects were shown for people without aphasia but were scarce in people with nonfluent aphasia. This finding could be explained by an overall reduction of verb production and overreliance on present tense production in nonfluent aphasia. These results suggest the potential methodological implications of using different discourse tasks to evaluate verb tense production in people with nonfluent aphasia. Future studies need to evaluate discourse task effects on other aspects of verb production (e.g., moods) and specific task factors (e.g., presence or absence of visual stimulus).

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25146242.