Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties with both verbal and nonverbal language with approximately 50% of children diagnosed with autism remaining functionally mute into adulthood (Charlop & Haymes, 1994; Charlop-Christy, Carpenter, Le, LeBlanc, & Kellet, 2002). This study explored intervention using the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) for two nonverbal preschoolers with ASD. The effects of PECS using two picture systems, Picture and Words (P&W) and MorphoPhonic (MPh) picture word, was assessed in the communicative outcomes after 6 weeks of intervention. This study asked if MPh picture words would elicit more picture-exchange communication acts in functional contexts than P&W and if MPh picture words would elicit a greater number of verbal communications than pictures accompanied by words. The results suggest that changes in communication can be observed in 6 weeks of intervention. Specifically greater gains were observed in the MPh picture word condition over the P&W condition.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether storybooks designed to elicit talk about letters and sounds, termed "alphabet-storybooks" will generate more print referencing behaviors from Head Start teachers than traditional storybooks, and if there is a concomitant positive impact on the learning of the children in these classrooms. In addition, the meaning reference behaviors of adults and impact on children also will be measured to determine if meaning is sacrificed at the expense of print referencing.

This study investigated emerging phonemic awareness skills and printed sight word recognition abilities in two-year-old toddlers using plain text and MorphoPhonic Face words on flash cards. MorphoPhonic Face words were used to determine if this learning process is enhanced when words are iconically represented to show the first sound and the word's meaning (purposefully creating idiosyncratic cues) using pictures superimposed into the letters. Sixteen (16) age-matched toddlers were assigned to alternate treatment groups and received exposure to both printed and MorphoPhonic pictured words three times weekly for six weeks. During each session, children were taught 16 sight words (8 in print only format; 8 as MorphoPhonic words). Words taught using print only to Group 1 were taught using MorphoPhonic words to Group 2, and vice versa. The subjects were compared for pre and posttest measures of emergent literacy and phonological awareness skills as well as word recognition under print only and MorphoPhonic conditions. Three instruments, were administered at pre- and posttest to assess vocabulary, alphabet knowledge, phonemic awareness, and language segmentation. In addition, four measures for word recognition were administered to assess word knowledge. A Home Literacy Questionnaire, assessing direct and indirect literacy experiences, was also completed for each child. Mean gain analyses across pre-and post-assessments revealed that two-year-old toddlers demonstrated significant improvements in early literacy and phonological awareness skills after six weeks treatment. It was also revealed that sight words learned under the MorphoPhonic condition were recognized more frequently than those learned as print only. Strong correlations between measures of literacy experience and gains in sight word recognition were evident. In addition, the toddlers development of phonemic awareness skills and gains in emergent literacy skills produced strong interactions with their direct and indirect home literacy experiences. The results of this study challenge the currently accepted view that phonemic awareness and early literacy skills are secondary language skills learned through explicit instruction. Instead this study supports that phonemic awareness, early literacy, and sight word recognition skills can be learned as early as two years of age via a natural language acquisition process in the presence of print-rich environments.

Although communication sciences and disorders (COMD) research supports intensive treatment for individuals with chronic brain injury, funding to provide these services is limited. This study explored the use of interdepartmental university resources to provide an intensive, multidisciplinary chronic brain injury program. Methodologically, treatment regimes were designed with clinical faculty as practicum experiences for COMD masters degree students. Subjects with a single onset head injury or cerebral vascular accident greater than one year were recruited to participate in the Intensive Treatment, Weekly Treatment or Control Groups. Pre, Post, and Post-Post Testing were used to measure cognitive-linguistic, quality of life and physical function. Additionally, treatment groups participated in electronic Experience Sampling Method (ESM) probes which queried their perception of happiness, tiredness, stress, and communication satisfaction throughout treatment using a Palm Zire 31 Personal Data Assistant. Both treatment programs were contextually-oriented, stressing functional multi-modality communication and compensatory techniques. Three hours of small and medium group COMD treatment were administered to the Weekly Group once weekly. The six subjects in the Intensive Group received a 35 hour weekly program including: COMD (12 hours), modified Tai Chi (3 hours), and psychological support for them and caregivers (4 ¼ hours). One-way repeated measures analysis of variance with partial eta squared effect size was used to analyze measures in the standardized battery. Intensive Group cognitive linguistic function appeared to significantly differ from the other groups on the Communication Activities of Daily Living-2 and Aphasia Diagnostic Profile Writing subtest suggestive of functional communication gains. Results of the ESM probes indicate that the Intensive Group was reportedly more happy and satisfied with their communication than the Weekly Group. The participants of the Intensive Group appeared to physically benefit from 3 weeks of modified Tai Chi in rate of ambulation. Limitations of the study, including self selection of treatment condition and differing severity across treatment groups, must be addressed by expanding the subject pool in follow-up research.

The purpose of this study was to learn about the diagnostic accuracy of Module 1 of the ADOS-G. Specifically, this study was designed to determine how well the ADOS-G differentiates children with autism from children with language impairments without autism. Data for this study were obtained from 10 children who were recruited from speech, language and hearing clinics in the metropolitan area of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Visual inspection and statistical analyses indicated that the means of the ADOS-G scores for all domains (Communication, Social Interaction, and Communication + Social Interaction Score) were higher for the autism group than for the non-autism group. The ADOS-G also yielded high sensitivity but low specificity values for correctly classifying the participants clinical diagnoses. Visual inspection of individual items revealed that for four items in the Communication domain and three items in the Social Interaction domain, 50% or more of the participants with and without autism earned similar scores. Overall, this study suggests that the ADOS-G is able to differentiate between groups of children with autism and children with language impairment without autism; however, at the level of the individual, it has a tendency to over classify children as presenting with autism or ASD.

ABSTRACT The present single subject study investigated the treatment effects of group aphasia treatment (GAT) on word retrieval skills. Two participants participated in 1.5 hours of GAT, two times a week for 17 sessions. Both participants demonstrated significant improvements in percent of correct responses, but theses gains were not maintained. Slight improvements were noted on the Boston Naming Test (BNT; Kaplan et al., 2001) in one participant, but not the other. Both participants demonstrated improvement in discourse as evidenced by percent correct information units (CIUs; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993) and in functional communication abilities as evidenced by the ASHA Functional Assessment of Communication Skills (ASHA FACS; Frattali et al., 1995) Social Communication Subtest. One participant demonstrated improved quality of life Based on the ASHA Quality of Communicative Life Scale (Paul et al., 2004) ratings. Results indicated that total time in treatment did not affect improvement. Results indicate that GAT was successful in the treatment of word retrieval but these skills did not generalize to untrained activities and were not maintained.

This preliminary study investigated the voice initiation period (VIP) and voice offset period (VOP) using high-speed digital imaging. The purpose of the study was to obtain preliminary data on VIP and VOP patterns of normal voice and to investigate the variability in VIP and VOP patterns in young female subjects within and between recording sessions. VIP was segmented into 3 phases: VIPa, VIPb, and VIPc. Results of the analysis of the data demonstrated that VOP is a more consistent measure than VIP and that VIPa is the most consistent phase of VIP. This study also suggested that changes in fundamental frequency and intensity may affect the number of glottic cycles necessary to complete VIP segments but not the VOP.

The study examined childrens use of verbal s marking (e.g., he walks) in two nonmainstream dialects of English, African American English (AAE), and Southern White English (SWE). Verbal s marking was of interest because there are gaps in the literature about the nature of this structure within and across typically developing children who speak AAE and SWE and about the nature of this structure in AAE- and SWE-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). To address these gaps, childrens verbal s marking was examined as a function of their dialect and clinical status and as a function of a number of linguistic variables. These included: verb regularity, negation of the utterance, meaning of the verb phrase (+/- habitual and/or historical present and +/-historical present), and type of subject preceding the verbal s form. Data came from 57 language samples elicited from six-year-olds (26 were speakers of AAE and 31 were speakers of SWE; 26 with SLI and 31 without SLI). The results indicated that the childrens verbal s marking varied as a function of their dialect. For the SWE-, but not the AAE-speaking groups, the childrens marking also varied by their clinical status. In addition, the results indicated that four of the linguistic variables influenced the childrens marking of verbal s in different ways. Negation of the verb phrase affected the verbal s marking of three of the four groups, and the direction of the influence was consistent with the adult literature; habituation of the verb phrase also affected the verbal s marking of all four groups, but the direction of the influence ran counter to what has been documented in the adult literature; and verb regularity and historical present tense affected the verbal s marking of the SWE-, but not AAE-speaking groups. For type of subject, the data were insufficient to evaluate the effect of this variable on the childrens rates of marking. Finally, the results showed that all four speaker groups produced six different types of nonmainstream verbal s forms, and they also produced a range of different verb types with the verbal s structure.

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.