I många utvecklingsländer finns en begränsad tillgång på utvecklade AKK-system (Alant, 1999) och ofta även en okunskap kring möjligheterna att arbeta med kommunikationsproblem (Marshall, 1997). I föreliggande studie genomförs intervention i alternativ och kompletterande kommunikation (AKK) för två deltagare med cerebral pares på ett dagcenter i Kilimanjaroregionen, Tanzania. Syftet i föreliggande interventionsstudie är att genom intervention studera och utveckla de i mätsituationerna responsiva talakterna att påkalla uppmärksamhet för att inleda interaktion, acceptera och avfärda samt upprätthålla och avsluta interaktion. Detta sker med hjälp av begreppen ja och nej för att acceptera och avfärda, liksom mer och mindre för att upprätthålla och avsluta interaktion. Studien följer en single subjekt design och insatsen utgörs av två interventionsperioder, bestående av direkt intervention med deltagarna samt utbildning och fortlöpande handledning av personal. Resultaten visar att deltagarna i varierande grad lärde sig att påkalla uppmärksamhet för att inleda interaktion, acceptera och avfärda samt upprätthålla och avsluta interaktion. Det observerades även att deltagarna i högre grad utförde performativa talakter utanför den styrda testsituationen. Områden som vidare diskuteras är bland annat deltagarnas kommunikativa handlingar utifrån The Communication Matrix där en utveckling från prelingvistiska uttrycksätt till användandet av abstrakta symboler synliggjordes hos deltagarna. / In several developing countries there are a limited supply of developed AAC systems (Alant, 1999) whereas a lack of knowledge about the possibilities of working with communication problems (Marshall, 1997). The present study is an intervention study about the introduction of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for two participants with cerebral palsy at a day-care centre in the Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. The purpose of the intervention study was to develop responsive speech acts to attract attention to initiate interaction, accept and reject interaction, as well as maintain and terminate interaction. This was done using the terms yes and no to accept and reject, and more and less to continue and terminate interaction. The study followed a single subject design consisting of two intervention periods, where direct intervention with the participants and continuing training and guidance for the staff occurred. The results show that the participants in varying degrees, has learned to attract attention to initiate interaction, accept and reject interaction as well as to maintain and terminate interaction. It was also observed that the participants learned to use the performative speech acts outside the controlled test situation. An area further discussed is the participants’ communicative acts as shown in The Communication Matrix, which displayed a development from pre linguistic models of expression to use the abstract symbols.

Det finns mycket forskning som handlar om barns läsinlärning, men inte om barns egen högläsning. Syftet med den här studien var att se om högläsning för ett djur kunde öka motivationen för läsning hos barn med lässvårigheter. Studien hade 2 deltagande barnmed lässvårighetersamt 3 deltagande föräldrar som rekryterades av logoped som är verksam hos Lära med djur, den förening där läsinterventionen genomfördes. Metoden var single subject design (A-B-A) där varje barn utgjorde sin egen kontroll. Studien var indelad i tre olika faser. Under baslinjen (A) läste barnet högt i hemmiljön. Under interventionen (B) läste barnet högt för ett djur vid fem tillfällen. Under uppföljningen (A) läste barnet hemma igen. All högläsning videoinspelades och föräldrarna intervjuades 3 gånger, en gång i respektive fas. Viss förändring hos barnen kundekonstateras på områdena aktiv lästid och antal avbrott under läsningen. Intervjuerna med föräldrarna visade på att interventionen med djur förefaller ha haft en positiv påverkan på åtminstone ett av barnens läsmotivation. Båda föräldraparen valde att låta sina barn fortsätta läsa hos Lära med djur efter studiens avslut. Sammantaget visade resultaten att läsning med djur kan ha en viss effekt på barnets läsning, men vidare studier krävs på området. / There is a lot of studies done about children’s learning to read but not a lot about themselves reading aloud. The purpose of this study was to see if reading aloud to an animal can increase the reading motivation in children with reading difficulties. The study had 2 participating children with reading difficulties and 3 participating parents who were recruited by a speech and language pathologist who works at Lära med djur, the association where the reading intervention took place. The method was a single subject design (A-B-A) where each child constituted as their own control. The study was divided into three different phases. During the baseline (A), the child read aloud in the home environment. During the intervention (B), the child read aloud to an animal on five occasions. During the follow-up (A), the child read at home again. All readings were videotaped. The parents were interviewed three times, one time in each of the phases. The children showed some change in the areas of active reading time, the correct number of words read and the number of interruptions during reading. The interviews with the parents showed that the intervention with animals seemed to have had a positive effect on foremost one of the childrens’ motivation for reading. Both parent couples said that they chose to let their child continue to read at Lära med djur atthe end of the study. Overall, the resultsshowed that reading with animals can have a certain effect on the child's reading, but further studies are required in this area.

Vid prematur födsel finns en ökad risk för kognitiva svårigheter och utmaningar i språkutvecklingen. Tidigare forskning har framhållit vikten av att erbjuda interventioner med fokus på språkutvecklingen redan i tidig ålder för att stödja barns utveckling. En intervention som syftar till att utveckla barns språkutveckling är interaktiv högläsning. Syftet med denna pilotstudie var att utvärdera om en 4-veckors intervention med interaktiv högläsning kunde förbättra kommunikationsfärdigheterna hos små barn födda prematurt. För att undersöka detta filmades och analyserades två föräldra-barn-par i en single-subject design med fyra baslinjetillfällen och nio interventionstillfällen. Resultaten från studien antyder att interventionen kan ha en positiv påverkan på kommunikationsfärdigheterna hos små barn födda prematurt. Ytterligare forskning för att fördjupa förståelsen för metoden och dess tillämpning erfordras. / At preterm birth, there is an increased risk of cognitive difficulties and challenges in language development. Previous research on preterm infants has emphasized the importance of providing interventions focusing on language development at an early age to support children's development. Interactive reading is a method aimed at fostering children's language skills. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate whether a four-week intervention with interactive reading could improve the communication skills of preterm infants. To investigate this, two parent-child pairs were videotaped and analyzed using a single-subject design with four baseline sessions and nine intervention sessions. New instructions/techniques were provided to the parents during the intervention sessions. The results of this pilot study suggest that the intervention may have a positive impact on the communication skills of prematurely born children. Further research to deepen the understanding of the method and its application is warranted.

Previous research has shown that children with multiple disabilities have been able to learn to make choices. Practising choice making is a good way to introduce an intervention using Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). Choice making with objects should then be trainded before choice making with pictures. The present study is a single subject experimental design and was accomplished at a center for children with disabilities in Tanzania during 12 weeks. The primary purpose was to examine if the number of choices made by two boys with cerebral palsy increased after communicationintervention with objects and pictures. The participants were trained to make choices over two intervention phases and the staff were given lectures on two occasions and through tuitions. The number of choices made by the participants as well as the choices offered by the staff, were measured continuously at predetermined activities. The results show that the number of choices with objects and pictures increased in both participants. It was also observed that the interaction between the children and the staff increased. Aspects that are discussed are whether the staff’s ability to offer choices affects the result and that the factors which separate what a “none-choice” is could be defined more clearly.

Abstract Background: Individuals with nonfluent aphasia may have significant difficulties with functional spoken communication tasks in their daily life. Aphasia treatment held in a group setting may provide an enriched communicative context wherein the requirements of spoken language are similar to those within functional day-to-day communicative situations. Thus engaging in a spoken language activity in a group setting may directly target generalization of trained skills to those required in real-life, social communication situations. The present study is concerned with an aphasia group treatment that requires focused practice of spoken language during a social-functional communication task. Intensive Language Action Therapy (ILAT) has demonstrated positive communication outcomes in some individuals with chronic aphasia. However, it remains to be seen which clinical measures best index outcomes for ILAT. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effectiveness of ILAT in individuals with nonfluent aphasia by exploring multiple, potential ILAT outcomes. The outcomes included change in performance on assessments of directly trained spoken social-functional communication abilities (proximal outcomes), untrained social-functional communication abilities and language abilities (primary outcomes), and cognitive-communication abilities (secondary outcome). Additionally, the project aimed to explore the participants' perceptions of ILAT (secondary outcome). Methods and Procedures: ILAT was implemented with four individuals with nonfluent aphasia, using a single-subject multiple baseline design. The treatment was conducted daily for 10 consecutive week days, totaling 25 hours of treatment. Treatment probes (i.e., using trained and untrained picture cards and an unrelated control-task of nonword repetition), a pre/post assessment battery, and a post-treatment survey/interview were administered to assess performance on the treatment task, generalization to other potential ILAT outcomes, and participants' perceptions. Outcomes & Results: Increased accuracy was observed for trained and untrained items. However, two of the four participants were not able to reach a criteria determined a priori for treatment performance. Performance on items that were untrained resulted in some improvements in performance for all participants. Three of the four participants demonstrated small effect sizes in response to ILAT. One participant who demonstrated a medium effect size in response to ILAT also demonstrated a clinical significant change in discourse abilities, a measure of spoken social-functional communication abilities. All participants demonstrated improvements on at least one primary outcomes measure. Two participants, however, demonstrated a decline. All participants, however, perceived a positive experience with ILAT on a qualitative posttreatment survey/interview. Conclusions: Patterns were found between skills directly trained during ILAT, proximal outcomes, and performance on primary and secondary outcome measures of language, social-functional communication, and cognitive-communication, meant to assess generalization of trained skills to similar or potentially related untrained skills. A substantial amount of change (e.g., at least a medium effect size) on proximal outcome measures may be required in order for improvements to occur in primary and secondary outcome measures. Participants' perceptions of a positive treatment experience associated with the ILAT program further supports the value of the treatment. Future research should aim to further examine the influence of ILAT treatment components and participants' characteristics.

Fractions are an essential skill for students to master, and one students struggling in mathematics face particular difficulty with (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008; Mazzocco & Devlin, 2008). This study employed the multi-probe multiple baseline design to examine the effectiveness of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) approach and explicit teaching practices to teach fraction equivalence to students struggling in mathematics. The study was conducted across four students, and replicated simultaneously across four more. The CRA approach included concrete aids such as fraction circles and fraction strips, representations such as pictures of fraction circles and polygons, and algorithms. Explicit teaching involved following a model-lead-test sequence and included an advanced organizer, corrective feedback and cumulative reviews. Results of this study indicated that the intervention program was effective to improve students‟ performances in fraction equivalence tasks. In particular, the use of vii representations was seen to impact performance and concrete aids alone may not be sufficient to improve performance. With regards types of representational and concrete aids employed, results of this study tended to favor the use of linear versus circular aids. Results indicated that students whose performances tend to vary may not benefit to the same extent as those who have stable profiles. Students who demonstrate variable profiles may require additional practice to master skills being taught. This study also examined transfer of skills to word problems and, results demonstrated that the CRA and explicit teaching approaches were beneficial in helping aiding transfer. Several aspects of the program may have contributed to aiding transfer including, minimal exposure to word problems during intervention, drawing connections between representations and abstract information, and incorporating the fair sharing understanding or quotient interpretation of fractions. This program concluded that students were able to maintain performances over time, and that representations in particular appeared to aid conceptual understanding and promote maintenance of skills. / text

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One population with challenges in learning to read is children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) intervention activities to improve phonological awareness and phonics skills with three children with ASD. Previous studies have looked at the effectiveness of using SEEL with other young children with diverse backgrounds; however, this is the first study to focus on using SEEL intervention with children with ASD. The study used a single-subject, multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design to compare performance on phonic patterns before and after intervention. Three young, male students who had a diagnosis on the autism spectrum and delays in literacy skills participated in the study. A number of different, yet comparable literacy targets were selected for each of the participants and assessment tasks were created to probe the participants’ ability to demonstrate reading and phonological awareness for these target patterns. Baseline assessment data were collected prior to participants receiving individualized intervention, and performance on each task was monitored using the same assessment each subsequent session. SEEL instruction focusing on one target at a time was used to teach participants to read or decode the target words and give appropriate responses to phonological awareness tasks. Intervention sessions were held once a week and lasted approximately 30-45 minutes. Each SEEL lesson was adapted to meet the needs of the individual child; however, all sessions contained SEEL principles of contextualized play, frequent auditory and visual exposures to the targets, explicit teaching using the target words, and engaged and reciprocal participation with opportunities to create original oral and written phrases. An analysis of the results show marked improvement in performance with the selected targets for two of the participants. This study provides further insight into the efficacy of using SEEL with different populations in need of early literacy intervention, especially those with multiple behavioral and skill-based variables to consider. It also discusses some additional factors and challenges to consider for future research in using SEEL with children with ASD.

A single-subject-multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design was used to examine the effects of using Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) instruction to help Tier 3 kindergarten students learn to read CVC words. Four students designated as Tier 3 by their teachers participated in the study. They were grouped into two dyads and received SEEL instruction focusing on specific word reading targets for approximately 20 minutes four days per week over a seven-week time period. The instruction included meaningful, interactive activities and incorporated high levels of play, multiple exposures to the target, explicit instruction, and student-teacher conversational exchanges. Baseline assessment data were collected prior to the application of the intervention for each of the targets and assessment data continued to be collected after each intervention session. All students learned to read the target words and three of the students generalized their learning to other targets. A moderate to large effect size of 0.54 was obtained using Cohen's r value. The need for adequate exposure to targets and time to practice was highlighted, along with the value of revisiting targets and addressing individual student's needs when working in small groups.

Studien syftade till att bidra med kunskap kring hur materialet BRAVKOD för engelska påverkade avkodningsförmågan hos elever som uppvisade svårigheter i engelska och hade läs- och skrivsvårigheter/dyslexi. Studien genomfördes som en interventionsstudie i RtI-modellens lager 3. Träningen bestod av tio tillfällen med läsning av listor med ord från BRAVKOD för engelska. En jämförelse av för- och eftertest visade att BRAVKOD för engelska hade positiv effekt på avkodningsförmågan.