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Metapragmatic awareness (MPA) is the ability to explicitly reflect upon the pragmatic rules that govern conversation. There is a paucity of research on how MPA develops in childhood and whether it is impaired in children with pragmatic impairments. Despite this, MPA is often cited as an intervention tool for children with pragmatic language impairments (cwPLI) and children with specific language impairments (cwSLI). There are currently no published assessments of MPA ability and practice would benefit from application of a formalised assessment methodology. This thesis reports the phases of development of a novel clinical assessment of MPA for school-aged children called the Assessment of Metapragmatics (AMP). The AMP task is a set of 13 Video Items each depicting a conversation between pairs of school-aged children. Each Video Item portrays a different pragmatic rule violation. After viewing each AMP Video Item the participants were asked a set of Assessor Questions designed to measure MPA. The AMP Video Items were shown to 40 children with typical language development (cwTLD), 34 cwPLI and 14 cwSLI. Preliminary analyses revealed the AMP to be sensitive to age-related changes in MPA and to demonstrate good internal reliability. For the cwTLD there was a distinct developmental shift in MPA ability around seven years of age. At this age there was an increase in the child’s ability to use explicit metapragmatic vocabulary to describe a pragmatic rule violation. CwTLD demonstrated superior MPA ability in comparison to the cwPLI and the cwSLI. No differential impairment in MPA abilities was present between the cwPLI and cwSLI. Considerable variability in MPA abilities occurred for both the cwPLI and cwSLI and this was associated with language ability. This suggests that where MPA is found to be impaired, the child’s language ability should be taken into account and that language ability should be remediated before MPA is targeted in intervention. Where MPA is impaired, raising awareness of pragmatic rule may be the first step for intervention. Where MPA is age-appropriate, the child’s ability to monitor their use of the pragmatic rule, or their motivation to use the pragmatic rule, may be a more effective target of intervention in order to change behaviour. The relationship between MPA and social understanding for the pragmatic rule violation is also discussed and further studies of MPA are considered.

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Purpose: The current study examined if bilingual children (English-Spanish) with language impairment(LI) and children in the low typical(LT) range display a cognate advantage as their typically developing(TD) peers do. Given the literature we posed two hypotheses; on one hand, learning cognates may be easier for bilingual children with language impairment over typically developing children, as their shared representations lend to overlap in input. Conversely, it is possible the children with SLI would exhibit a cognate disadvantage given that in early language development children reject lexical units with high competition. Method: We examined whether 117 Spanish-English bilingual children (5;0 to 9;11) displayed a cognate advantage in oral production relative to their typically developing peers. The cognate and noncognate items were derived from the English and Spanish versions of the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test. Children’s average proportion of cognate and noncognate responses were compared across ability groups. Results: TD bilingual children exhibited a cognate advantage, while the bilingual children with LI exhibited a cognate disadvantage. TD bilingual children produced a significantly higher proportion of cognates across their two languages, while LI children produced most of their cognates in Spanish only. The LT children performed similarly to the LI group in terms of overall proportion correct of cognate pairs over noncognate pairs, but performed similar to the TD group in terms of the language of response (only English, only Spanish, or both languages) of the cognate pairs. Conclusion: Consistent with our second hypothesis, children with LI show a cognate disadvantage, while TD bilingual children show an advantage for cognate production. As expected, LT children’s performance fell between the LI and TD groups. We discuss the theoretical and clinical implications of these findings. / text

The goal of this report was to explore ways to differentiate the performance of early school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children in U.S. public schools, who appear “at-risk” for language impairment versus those who have true risk. We compared the patterns of performance reported for children with typical development and language impairment reported in the literature to those for children with risk described by Bedore et al., (2013) and Perez et al., (in preparation). Children with risk seem quite different than their peers with true language problems on formal measures such as the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA). However these children presented fewer errors or weaknesses in spontaneous speech than did their peers with true language impairment. Language variability and errors are expected in the language of young bilingual children, so it is of utmost importance that language professionals closely assess each of the child’s languages with formal and functional measures prior to making a diagnosis of language impairment. / text

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This study examined the effectiveness of the Otago screening protocol in identifying school-aged children with severe speech and language impairments. In order to do so, the results of the Otago screening protocol were compared with those of comprehensive language assessment as determined by best practice protocol (Gillon & Schwarz, 1998, Kennedy, 2002). Following the completion of the screening and the comprehensive assessments, an evaluation of the true positives and false positives was calculated, and an analysis of the false negative outcomes made. Findings indicated that fourteen of the twenty participants were true positives, three were true negatives, three were false positives, and none were false negatives. The Positive Predictive Value and Negative Predictive Value of the screening protocol was 100%. Test Sensitivity and Specificity were very high at 82% and 100%. Inter-rater reliability was very high, generally ranging from 92-100%. Adding a standardised measure of phonological awareness would improve efficiency of the screening protocol. Consideration of alternative screening tools, such as the GAPS test (Gardner et al, 2006) and the CELF-4 screening test (Semel, Secord & Wiig, 2004), should be made. Additional factors which could influence a screening protocol are discussed. The Otago screening protocol is a valid procedure to detect severe speech and language impairments in school-aged students referred to Special Education.

This study examined two aspects of the use of paraprofessionals with students with visual impairments: 1) the effect of paraprofessional proximity on the students' interactions with peers and teachers in the regular education classroom, and 2) factors that may influence a paraprofessional's decision to interact or not interact with a student with a visual impairment. The four student/paraprofessional case studies included data collected by means of classroom observations, demographic forms, and semi-structured interviews. The classroom observation data were analyzed using the chi-square statistics to determine relationships between paraprofessional proximity and classroom activity setting, interaction participants, interaction initiators, and type of interaction that occurred. The data collected through the interviews were coded to determine themes. The data from all the case studies were cross analyzed to determine relationships and themes across cases.Proximity of paraprofessionals to students with visual impairments in the regular education classroom appears to have an effect on the interactions that occur between students with visual impairments, peers, and teachers. More interactions occurred between students and peers and between students and teachers when paraprofessionals were at a distance. Also, when paraprofessionals were at a distance, peers and teachers were more likely to initiate interactions with students with visual impairments.The decision making process for paraprofessionals is complicated. Factors that may influence how paraprofessionals make decisions concerning students with visual impairments were professional experience, personal experience, education level and type, and how roles and responsibilities were defined. All the paraprofessionals in the study indicated at some point during data collection the need to promote independence in their students.