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.

Speech-language pathologists have no clear guidelines on how to assess, diagnose or treat bilingual children with speech disorders. This thesis addresses this issue. The phonological development of 91 Cantonese-English and Punjabi-English bilingual children is described. Two Cantonese-English bilingual children's phonological development over the year they were first exposed to English is also presented. The bilingual children's phonological systems were clearly differentiated. The bilingual children's speech also included many phonological processes that would be considered atypical for a monolingual child. The use of these processes is argued to be characteristic of normal bilingual development. The longitudinal data showed that the atypical error patterns were transient and directly related to the introduction of the second language. Some `atypical' error patterns could be plausibly explained by referring to the nature of the two phonological systems. Other atypical processes could be explained by language-specific differences in normal developmental or adult variation patterns. This thesis argues that the differences evident in the bilingual children's phonological patterns are due to `hypothesis testing' resulting in underspecified realisation rules. There was no indication that bilingual children process phonological input and output differently to monolingual children. However, they differentiate the cognitive-linguistic information they abstract from the two languages, and they use separate phonological realisation rules for each language. This thesis argues that bilingual children use the same phonological processing mechanism for both languages, however they are able to filter each language through the appropriate language-specific phonological information. Case studies of 21 children with disordered speech and treatment case studies of 2 children are also presented. The disordered speech data supports current psycholinguistic models of speech processing the hypothesised levels of breakdown fit with the error profiles evident. The bilingual children with speech disorder validate Dodd's (1995) classification system: four different types of disorder were evident. The results of the two treatment case studies presented suggest that unless intervention targets the underlying deficit the effect of intervention will be language-specific. The investigation into bilingual children with disordered speech indicates that speechlanguage pathologists need to assess both languages of a bilingual child to determine the language-specific patterns and the type of disorder and that it is important to compare bilingual children to their bilingual normally developing peers, not to monolingual developmental data.

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.

The purpose of this study was to teach 3 children vocal imitation and to compare dev words and random words. A multiple baseline design was implemented across three participants two with an expressive and receptive language delay and one with Autism where the participants were taught to vocally imitate several sounds using the PEAK Relational Training curriculum. The sounds were divided into 2 groups: first set composed of age appropriate sound in sequential order of suggested acquisition and the second set were random but age appropriate sounds. Trial blocks began with the child being asked to imitate a sound from their specific sound set. If the child correctly imitated the sound, child was given their chosen reinforcement (bubbles, surprise eggs or a book). After a trial block of 5 imitation requests, the child is given 5 minutes of free play where the child is able to pick an activity around their home. The results of the study show that children with a language disorders and Autism Spectrum Disorder increased the correct number of sound imitations during the PEAK Relational Training System – Direct Training module. Given both sets of sounds, the age appropriate sound sequence emerged first. Two participants showed an increasing trend at a high level during intervention. The third participant showed an increasing trend but at a low level.

The purpose of this study was to perform the cultural adaptation of the Brazilian version of the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI). Two Brazilian bilingual speech-language pathologists (SLP) translated the original version of the VFI in English into Portuguese. The translations were reviewed by a committee of five voice specialist SLPs resulting in the final version of the instrument. A third bilingual SLP back-translated this final version and the same committee reviewed the differences from its original version. The final Portuguese version of the VFI, as in the original English version, was answered on a categorical scale of 0-4 indicating the frequency they experience the symptoms: 0=never, 1=almost never, 2=sometimes, 3=almost always, and 4=always. For cultural equivalence of the Portuguese version, the option "not applicable" was added to the categorical scale and 20 individuals with vocal complaints and dysphonia completed the index. Questions considered "not applicable" would be disregarded from the Brazilian version of the protocol; no question had to be removed from the instrument. The Brazilian Portuguese version was entitled "Índice de Fadiga Vocal - IFV" and features 19 questions, equivalent to the original instrument. Of the 19 items, 11 were related with tiredness of voice and voice avoidance, five concerned physical discomfort associated with voicing, and three were related to improvement of symptoms with rest or lack thereof. The Brazilian version of the VFI presents cultural and linguistic equivalence to the original instrument. The IFV validation into Brazilian Portuguese is in progress.

In summary, although multiple oppositions is a variation of the minimal pair approach, it is specifically designed to treat phoneme collapses, not variability. Treatment procedures provide systematic modeling of larger contrastive sets, not simply a series of minimal pairs.

No description available.

No description available.

Auditory and visual tests with matched word-level and sentence-level materials were compared in order to tease apart the effects of modality and linguistic factors on recall scores. Participants were 32 young adults (27 female, 5 male) in good or excellent health, who were native English speakers (mean age = 19.9 years, SD = 1.8, range 18-26) and had at least some post-secondary education. The complex auditory and visual stimuli were sentences taken from the Revised Speech Perception in Noise (RSPIN) Test materials. Participants completed each of the four tests (2 modalities x 2 linguistic levels): simple (word-level materials) auditory, complex (sentence-level materials) auditory, simple reading, complex reading. Using the total scores, recall was better for word- than for sentence-level materials by 8.9% and recall was better for auditory than for visual materials by 10.8%. There was a significant correlation between modalities for the sentence-level conditions, and a stronger correlation for word-level materials.

No description available.