Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools最新文献

Purpose: This study investigated the longitudinal, cross-linguistic developmental relationships of phonological awareness (PA), letter identification (letter ID), and morphological awareness (MA) in 71 heritage Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in kindergarten and second grade.

Method: Multiple linear regression was used to test if kindergarten Spanish and English PA (sound elision and sound matching) and letter ID significantly predicted later English MA (oral derived word stress judgment, oral derivational morpheme blending, written derived word decomposition, and morphologically complex word spelling) performance in second grade.

Results: Cross-linguistically, the PA skill of sound matching in kindergarten was the most reliable predictor of MA in second grade for Spanish-English DLLs. Spanish PA explained the majority of variation in oral MA skills in English. English PA was only uniquely predictive of written MA skills in English.

Conclusions: Both the cognitive operation of sound sequence manipulation in PA (elision or matching) and the modality of morpheme representation in MA (oral or written) appear to mediate the transfer of metalinguistic knowledge in Spanish-English DLL development in early elementary school. Results are discussed within the context of classroom practices.

Purpose: Although conversational recast treatment is generally efficacious, there are many ways in which the individual components of the treatment can be delivered. Some of these are known to enhance treatment, others appear to interfere with learning, and still others appear to have no impact at all. This study tests the potential effect of clinicians' recast length on child learning during a recast treatment.

Method: Twenty-six preschool children were treated for grammatical errors using Enhanced Conversational Recast Treatment. Half heard recasts of four or fewer words (Short Recast condition), and half heard recasts of five or more words (Extended Recast condition). Outcome measures included generalization of the treated grammatical form, spontaneous use of these forms, change in mean length of utterances in words, and the number of children in each condition who showed a clinically meaningful response.

Results: There was strong evidence of improvements in the use of grammatical forms targeted by the treatment compared with forms that were tracked but not treated. Twenty children (11 in the Short Recast condition and nine in the Extended Recast condition) showed a clinically meaningful response. There was minimal support for the hypothesis that the length of clinician utterance influenced either progress on a grammatical form targeted by the treatment or on the child's mean length of utterance in words.

Conclusions: The study adds to the evidence for the efficacy of Enhanced Conversational Recast Treatment. However, there is little evidence that clinicians need to regulate the length of the recast they provide to children.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24653613.

Purpose: This study explores limitations in communication in daily life of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from their parents' perspective as well as communicative abilities and social functioning in the classroom from their teacher's perspective. Furthermore, differences between children with mixed receptive-expressive disorder and children with expressive-only disorder in communication in daily life and social functioning are studied.

Method: Data were collected through questionnaires completed by parents and teachers of children (5-6 years old) who attended schools for special education for DLD. Language test scores were retrieved from school records. Parents of 60 children answered open-ended questions about situations and circumstances in which their child was most troubled by language difficulties. Teachers of 83 children rated communicative abilities, social competence, and student-teacher relationship.

Results: Parents reported communication with strangers as most troublesome and mentioned the influence of the mental state of their child. Parents considered limitations in expressing oneself and being understood and not being intelligible as core difficulties. Teachers rated the children's communicative abilities in the school context as inadequate, but their scores concerning social competence and the quality of teacher-child relationships fell within the normal range. Children with receptive-expressive disorder experienced limitations in communication in almost all situations, whereas those with expressive disorder faced limitations in specific situations. Children with receptive-expressive disorder were also significantly more limited in their communicative abilities and social competence at school than children with expressive disorder. No differences were found between the two groups in the quality of the teacher-child relationship.

Conclusions: The results confirm that children with DLD face significant challenges in a variety of communicative situations. We found indications that children with receptive-expressive disorder experience more severe limitations than children with expressive disorder. The involvement of parents and teachers in evaluating a child's communicative ability provides valuable and clinically relevant information.

Purpose: Writing is an essential skill that secondary students need to establish for success in their further education, careers, and lives. However, most secondary students in the United States do not achieve the level of writing proficiency expected to ensure academic and future success. One approach that is emerging more in the research literature is the use of a metalinguistic approach to writing.

Method: This tutorial begins with a discussion of current educational demands and performance trends in secondary-level academic writing and how secondary students and their educators are presently struggling to meet those demands. The tutorial continues further with a discussion of existing effective writing interventions, as well as current gaps in areas of writing intervention that have the potential to be filled if metalinguistic abilities are also targeted as part of comprehensive secondary-level writing instruction. The author then provides rationale for the use of a metalinguistic approach to secondary school writing including explanation of the metalinguistic processes of writing, how to target those processes while writing, and existing metalinguistic writing interventions. The tutorial concludes with step-by-step suggestions and methods for instructors/interventionists to implement a metalinguistic approach to academic writing with secondary students including (a) review of the critical aspects of students' academic writing expectations, (b) collection of baseline data of students' metalinguistic abilities, (c) facilitation of metalinguistic discussion while working on writing with students, and (d) differentiation of students' instructional level of support.

Conclusion: This tutorial will provide instructors/interventionists with the background information, rationale, and a framework to implement a metalinguistic approach to writing that can be utilized when working with secondary students during any academic writing task.

Purpose: This letter to the editor is in response to the Gerlach-Houck and DeThorne (2023) epilogue regarding their proposal for speech-language pathologists to offer Autistic code-switching (Autistic masking and camouflage) as a viable, non-ableist social communication tool that Autistic clients may choose to use in "high-stakes" social situations. In connection with Autistic code-switching, the authors reference "the debate" regarding code-switching in "African American Vernacular English speakers," specifically, whether "standard" English should be encouraged as a way to access "conventional forms of success."

Conclusion: Professionally training Autistic clients to "code-switch" with the goal of improving the client's chances of accessing conventional forms of success is essentially training Autistic masking and camouflaging. This type of therapy reinforces to both the Autistic client, as well as society, the position that hiding a person's Autistic traits is a pathway to acceptance and success. Autistic camouflaging has detrimental ramifications for mental health outcomes; perpetuates both internalized and societal stigma; hinders bias and discrimination deconstruction; reinforces ableist values; and fails to dismantle power inequities and social barriers that lead to marginalization, oppression, and exclusion.

Purpose: A common goal of peer-mediated interventions is to train peers to successfully initiate and maintain social and linguistic interactions with a target child in the classroom. Ample evidence indicates that peer-mediated interventions improve social and linguistic outcomes for students in the primary and later grades with developmental disabilities; however, relatively little work has focused on applying these approaches to socially isolated preschoolers who are vulnerable to academic and social challenges. In this early-stage feasibility study, we examined the potential of Promoting Early Engagement, Relationships, and Socialization (PEERS), a peer-mediated intervention designed to support socially isolated preschoolers. The main goal was to consider whether the intervention showed promise for improving the social and linguistic experiences of young, isolated children and was appropriate for implementation in a preschool setting.

Method: In one preschool classroom, two peers who were well connected to their classmates were trained via storybook-based activities to provide social support to an isolated classmate. In-person and sensing technology observations were used to examine the target student's incoming peer interactions, outgoing peer interactions, and physical proximity to peers.

Results: In-person observations showed a trend toward increased interactions; sensing technology data, which provided longer snapshots of classroom experiences, were more variable. In addition, teachers perceived PEERS to be appropriate and effective.

Conclusion: The findings of this study support further investigation of storybook-based peer-mediated interventions in preschool settings to improve the social and linguistic experiences of children who are socially isolated.

Purpose: Morphological awareness develops throughout formal schooling and is positively related to later reading abilities. However, there are limited standardized measures available for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to use when assessing morphological awareness in clinical practice. The purpose of this tutorial is to guide clinicians in choosing between researcher-created measures of morphological awareness to use with their school-aged students.

Method: We first summarize previous morphological awareness assessment research and outline important clinical considerations when choosing a morphological awareness assessment for students in early elementary grades and beyond. Second, we highlight item characteristics regarding morpheme type, frequency, shift transparency, and imageability for students in early elementary versus later grades. Third, we discuss the type of tasks (i.e., production, decomposition, and judgment) and administration modes (i.e., oral or written and static or dynamic) available to clinicians assessing the morphological awareness skills of school-aged students. Throughout the tutorial, we reference a hypothetical case study to illustrate how SLPs might apply these suggestions and link morphological awareness assessment to treatment recommendations.

Conclusions: This tutorial highlights the importance of including morphological awareness assessments in clinical practice to support oral and written language development. We provide practical guidelines to help SLPs evaluate and choose appropriate morphological awareness assessments for their school-aged students as part of their comprehensive language evaluations and to support intervention planning.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24545470.

Purpose: As a representative form of discourse, oral narratives offer a sensitive, flexible, and ecologically valid tool for language evaluation. Nevertheless, oral narrative assessments in mainland China remain uncommon among school-age children. Therefore, this study explores the effectiveness of narrative microstructural assessment in Mandarin-speaking school-age children. Its primary purpose is to lay a foundation for future clinical applications by establishing a feasible administration procedure and validating various viable measures to facilitate the evaluation of language proficiencies.

Method: Narrative samples were collected through a single wordless picture from 285 Mandarin-speaking children ages 7-12 years (Grades 1-6). The samples were then coded using a semiautomatic method for 22 individual measures at word, sentence, and discourse levels.

Results: The adapted elicitation method was effective for all grades, with most of the children's stories exhibiting sufficient length, coherent structure, and certain self-fabricated specifics. The semiautomatic coding was also convenient and promising. Altogether, 19 measures were identified as robust predictors of grades, revealing a general tendency of grade-related increase from Grades 1 to 5. These measures exhibited three representative nonlinear trajectory patterns with varied rates of increase. Then, we developed a comprehensive composite measure through factor analysis, which combined six individual measures. The analysis verified the single factor of narrative microstructural competence and showed strong evidence of construct validity.

Conclusions: This study has provided a practical set of administration procedures, validated the efficacy of 19 individual measures as well as a composite measure, and offered corresponding field test data for clinical matching. The findings underscored the reliability and informative nature of oral narrative microstructural assessment in Mandarin-speaking school-age children.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine school speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) experiences regarding students' eligibility for services in public schools within the United States.

Method: Fifteen school SLPs participated in online focus groups to examine the complex nature of SLPs' participation within decision-making teams and describe practice experiences in U.S. schools. SLPs worked in one to 10+ schools serving students from pre-K through 12th grade. Data were analyzed using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT; Engeström, 2015).

Results: School SLPs' practice is impacted by rules, community, and division of labor in schools. Participants discussed the following: culture of the work setting, interaction between team members, desire to assist families and children, knowledge of regulations, evaluation practices, and the impact of poverty, and cultural and linguistic differences. Nine major tensions were identified: need for greater SLP empowerment and advocacy, documentation of educational impact, complexities of students learning English as an additional language, concerns about evaluation data for decision making, SLPs' concerns regarding outcomes of eligibility decision making, overuse of speech-language impairment for students who do not qualify, parents' involvement in decision making, disagreement between team members, and administrations' adherence to rules.

Conclusions: Within the schools, the CHAT framework was useful to identify tensions and opportunities for change at the individual and institutional levels, impacting team decision making for eligibility, SLPs' provision of services, and student outcomes. Acknowledgment of tensions and opportunities for change regarding students' eligibility for services may guide public policy; preservice training; and individual, local, and national advocacy.