Teachers are now being held to high accountability standards in reading instruction, yet studies show that teachers lack adequate knowledge in reading and phonological awareness principles (Moats, 1994, 2009; Spencer, Schuele, Guillot, & Lee, 2008). The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of visual representations of letter/sound production (i.e., Phonic Faces, Norris, 2001) on improving teacher knowledge of phonological awareness principles, and to determine if there is a concomitant improvement in phonological awareness and reading acquisition for children in those classrooms. Seventeen kindergarten teachers from a Mississippi school were pretested on phonological awareness principles, then divided into three groups: Phonic Faces Training (PFT), with visual strategies; Traditional Training (TT), with no visual strategies; and a No Training (NT) control group. The PFT and TT groups participated in one half-day training in phonological awareness principles. All groups were posttested immediately after training, and again 3 months later at the end of the school year. Gains in phonological awareness knowledge from pretest to posttest and delayed posttest were analyzed. School records of data from the January and April administrations of subtests from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (Good & Kaminski, 2002) were compared for relative student gains. The results of this study revealed that all three groups made gains from pretest to posttest, and there were no significant differences between groups who were trained and the NT control group. In student performance, there was a significant difference in gain in Nonsense Word Fluency favoring the PFT group over the TT group and NT. The NT group did not differ from either of the inservice groups on gains in Nonsense Word Fluency. The NT teachers students gained the most in Letter Naming Fluency.

The overall purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of unilateral vestibular disorders and aging on functional performances of activities of daily living and vestibular rehabilitation exercises by examining the correlations among actual and perceived functional measures, the kinematic measurement differences among young healthy adults, older healthy adults, and older adults with unilateral vestibular deficits, and the correlations between kinematic and functional measures. Perceived and actual functional abilities and kinematic variables were compared for young controls, older healthy controls, and patients with unilateral vestibular hypofunction with no previous vestibular rehabilitation. In older adults, better strength, balance, coordination, and endurance during activities of daily living were associated with better perceived ambulation and reduction in perceived functional handicap. Older adults had difficulties stabilizing their heads relative to the environment during eye exercises and moved their heads more when the exercise required head stabilization relative to the body, probably due to alterations in performance of the exercises. Patients, who were also older adults, were able to suppress some of these movements, likely to prevent dizziness. Both older groups often reduced their head movements and/or moved differently from the young when movements were self-selected and not externally driven by a visual cue. When patients were forced to make greater horizontal head movements with intermittent gaze stabilization, they also made greater head movements orthogonal to the plane of motion for seated exercises. These findings show that some patient differences are linked to declines of normal aging and not that of the disorder. In addition patients took more steps at a slower pace for the gait with head movement exercise. The group differences in exercise kinematics guided the correlations between kinematics and functional data, so that the subject differences in correlations between actual function and head excursion kinematics differed from those for perceived function and head excursion kinematics. These data add to the limited findings on associations between kinematic measurements and functional performances in vestibular patients and are the first to show relationships exist between these measures for healthy young adults, healthy older adults and vestibular patients.

The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) has received much attention in the past decade for its use in the treatment of individuals with Parkinsons disease (Jones, 2005; Ramig, Countryman, O'Brien, Hoehn, & Thompson, 1996; Ramig, Sapir, Countryman et al., 2001; Wohlert, 2004). This intensive program requires therapy four times a week for four weeks in order to improve perceptual characteristics of the voice, such as loudness. However, since LSVT was introduced, the rehabilitation industry has experienced systematic reductions in allowable frequency and duration of covered services. The result has been that individuals often cannot qualify for the rigorous LSVT protocol (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2008). The present study followed the standard treatment protocol but manipulated the dose of treatment to determine if a reduced dose of treatment would be effective for individuals with PD (IwPD) and dysarthria. Our treatment schedule used frequency, intensity, and duration variables that more closely mirrored the current state of clinical practice (e.g., 45 minutes, 2 times per week for 8 weeks). Two IwPD participated in the study and demonstrated improvements in maximum vocal SPL, but these gains were not maintained at a 6-month follow-up. Treatment outcomes indicated improvement in body structure/function as evidenced by increased vocal SPL by both participants across all three speech tasks. Speech intelligibility scores and communicative effectiveness ratings also improved for one participant. Results, though preliminary, indicated a reduced dosage of the LSVT protocol does exhibit treatment efficacy and treatment outcomes comparable to the original, intensive LSVT protocol, thus moving this treatment closer to determining the most clinically feasible and client-friendly version of LSVT.

Vocal warm-up exercises are believed to contribute to the prevention of vocal fold injury in professional voice users. Professional singers and students of singing consider a regular vocal warm-up regimen essential. There is conflicting information in the vocal pedagogy literature about the most effective and widely used vocal warm-up exercises and the optimal frequency and duration of vocal warm-up sessions. The goal of this current study was to investigate the characteristics of vocal warm-up regimens in the singing community using a survey. One hundred seventeen participants completed the survey. Participants included voice students from undergraduate, masters, and doctoral music programs and professional singers. All participants reported using vocal warm-up prior to singing. Vocal cool-down was used following singing in 22.2% of the participants. The majority of participants (78.6%) used warm-up sessions of 5-20 minutes in duration. Despite using vocal warm-up, 25.6% of participants reported experiencing voice problems. The investigation of gender and education on frequency and duration of vocal warm-up sessions revealed that females warmed up significantly more frequently than males. There was no significant difference in duration of warm-up sessions between males and females. However, females tended to employ longer warm-up sessions than males. Education of the participants did not appear to have any significant effect on the vocal warm-up practices. The most commonly used singing warm-up exercises were ascending/descending 5-note scales, ascending/descending octave scales, legato arpeggios, and glissandi. Findings suggested a belief among singers that warming up improves voice quality and assists in prevention of vocal injury. Future studies are planned to investigate the effect of voice classification and singing styles on vocal warm-up practices.

Children, like adults, use referring expressions to refer to specific objects, events, or people. Research has provided insights into how children use referring expressions and the appearance of forms developmentally (Radford, 1990; Abu-Akel, et al., 2004; Pine & Lieven, 1997). This study examined how three, four, and five year-old children use referring expressions across increasingly more decontextualized tasks as defined by the Situational-Discourse-Semantic (SDS) Model (Norris & Hoffman, 1993, 2002) . The participants included 4 three-year-old, 12 four-year-old, and 20 five-year-old children. Language samples were elicited using seven tasks of increasing difficulty. The referring expressions produced for each task were categorized based on their usage, and then analyzed for similarities and differences in the frequencies and types of referring expressions used within and between contextualized and decontextualized levels, tasks, and age groups. A significant difference was found in how participants across the three different ages used referring expressions in the contextualized tasks versus the decontextualized tasks. The relationship between the task and category also revealed that the task significantly affected the number of referring expressions found in a given category across all of the participant age groups. Lastly, the difference between the participants in the three different age groups and the tasks was examined. Tasks 3, 6, and 7 all showed a significant group difference for performance on these tasks. Through this study, we have gained insights into referring expressions, including what they are and how they are used in contextualized and decontextualized language samples. In examining the language samples, we have started to explore how children use referring expressions, including the use of cohesive ties and types of errors children produce. Although looking at the language samples from this syntactic perspective is useful, this study also considers the effects of context and meaning and how these semantic-pragmatic variables affect the use of referring expressions. In addition, this study provides some early insights into effects of changing context and how this interacts with age.

Using a response to intervention framework, this study investigates the efficacy of a classroom-based intervention for struggling readers with decoding deficits in the upper elementary grades. Twenty two students in the fourth and sixth grades from four classrooms in low-performing schools received either a short 20-minute intervention delivered by their teacher or access to the lessons for an equivalent amount of time but no teacher instruction. Using three orthographic patterns, the 24 lessons consisted of a series of ten minimally contrasted words differing by one letter. The students in the experimental group decoded the words using a visual alphabet (Phonic Faces) and then spelled each word to reinforce the orthographic connections. Practice with word cards and contextual reading with the words in a short story were also included in the lesson. The experimental group receiving the teacher instruction made significant gains in nonword reading compared to the control group and these gains were not based on verbal ability or performance on a particular orthographic pattern. These results indicate that following intervention, the experimental group was beginning to more fully decode each letter of a word.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate caregivers perceptions of their childrens literacy experiences and determine if their perceptions differed as a function of whether their children presented with speech and language impairment or with typical language development. Participants were caregivers of children, between the ages of 24 and 54 months. Eleven children presented with speech and language impairments (S/LI) and 14 children presented with typically developing (TD) language. Caregivers perceptions about early home literacy experiences were collected through a questionnaire. Results showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups of caregivers responses to the questionnaire items as a function of their childrens clinical status. These findings were inconsistent with findings from previous studies and warrant additional study to determine if the null results of the current study were related to specific attributes of the caregivers, specific attributes of the children, or the validity of the questionnaire that was used to evaluate the caregivers perceptions of their children.

This studys purpose was to examine the acquisition and use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries by African American English (AAE)-speaking children. The impetus for this work was the lack of information regarding the developmental trajectory of these auxiliary types and their use, in AAE relative to what is known about auxiliary acquisition and use in Mainstream American English (MAE). The study used two datasets of language samples: one that contained 48 language samples from 3 ½-year-old children and one that contained 36 longitudinal language samples of five children who were between 18 and 51 months of age. Results from Dataset 1 indicated that young AAE-speaking childrens auxiliary systems contain BE, DO, and modal contexts. Overt marking of auxiliaries within these contexts was related to type of auxiliary and the childrens dialect densities. Of the three auxiliary types, overt marking was most variable for BE followed by DO, and least variable for modals. Overt marking of BE was influenced by succeeding verbal element and grammatical type of BE form. Overt marking of both BE and DO was influenced by syntactic construction. In contrast, overt marking of modals was high in all contexts. Results from Dataset 2 revealed that initial production of auxiliary contexts occurred between 19 and 24 months. For BE, DO, and modals, the range of forms produced was initially restricted but expanded as the children aged. Percentage of overt marking did not increase by age. Instead, overt marking was variable across the developmental period for BE and DO, but high in all contexts for modals. Also, from very young ages, the overt marking of BE and DO was influenced by the same linguistic variables examined with Dataset 1. Together the findings indicate that young AAE-speaking childrens use of BE, DO, and modals is consistent with what has been documented for adult AAE in the amount and nature of their overt marking; however, the childrens dialect density influenced the degree to which the childrens use of BE, DO, and modals aligned with the adult AAE literature. Nevertheless, AAE-speaking childrens BE, DO, and modals emerged at the same ages and in the same general developmental sequence as MAE-speaking children.

This study examined African American (AA) caregivers beliefs about their childrens language-literacy development and their book reading behaviors with their children as a function of socioeconomic status (SES). Caregivers behaviors were examined before, during, and after a three-day caregiver training program that targeted four behaviors (i.e., tracking print, reference to print, text to life, and interpretations). Participants were 20 caregiver-child dyads classified as Low-SES (LSES) or Middle-SES (MSES) based on the caregivers level of education. Children were typically developing girls between the ages of four and five years. At pre-test, the two groups of caregivers differed in some of their beliefs about childrens language-literacy development. They also were similar in the length of their book reading sessions, in their use of tracking print, text to life, and reference to print behaviors, but the MSES group produced more interpretations and other book reading comments than the LSES group. During training and at post-test, both groups increased the length of their book reading sessions and their use of all targeted behaviors. Nevertheless, the MSES groups book reading sessions were longer and they produced more target behaviors than the LSES group. The MSES group also incorporated more facilitative language behaviors that were not targeted in the training into their book reading sessions than the LSES group. Correlations between the caregivers behaviors and beliefs at pre-testing were positive but low in magnitude. Correlations were higher at post-test, but did not reach a level of statistical significance. Findings demonstrate the appropriateness of book reading as a caregiver training target for AA caregivers because both groups were able to increase the length of their book reading sessions, and within these sessions, increase their ability to use a number of behaviors that are known to facilitate child language-literacy development. Nevertheless, the findings show that variability exists within AA caregivers as a function of SES. This variability is related to some of their beliefs about childrens language-literacy development and their ability to utilize training to enrich their book reading with their children. Clinicians should consider this variability when designing caregiver training programs for diverse groups of AA caregivers.

Students are placed under increasing demands for more complex syntax and discourse structure in oral and written language as they age. Children with language and learning disabilities struggle to grasp the organization and relationships between the facts of the topic, making writing an increasingly daunting task. In addition, these students must also master conventions such as vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and syntax to produce a written essay (Schumaker & Deshler, 2003). This study explored the efficacy of graphic organizers as a strategy to facilitate higher complexity of syntactic and discourse structures in sentence and story formation. After seven weeks of intervention, the impact of graphic organizers was assessed by comparing spontaneously written stories to scaffolded stories as well as comparing sentence combining skills from pre- to post-test. The results suggest that graphic organizers can be an effective tool used in the writing process to generate sentences and narratives containing more complex structure of syntax and discourse.