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Outcomes are critical for informing evidence-based, shared decision-making about health supports for children. These outcomes should be important and meaningful to all interested parties, particularly to children and their families, and should be included within research and practice. The work in the present manuscript represents three studies that 1) investigated how service outcomes were being used in school-based, speech-language therapy 2) explored what service outcomes were meaningful and important according to interested parties, and 3) identified a set of core service outcomes using the aggregate input of the interested parties to guide future research and practice. In the first study, I analyzed interview transcripts from 24 senior, school-based speech-language therapists and clinical managers to explore how clinicians working in schools determined the impact of their services. I identified seven outcomes and common facilitators and barriers to the meaningful use of outcomes to determine service impact through this qualitative analysis. In the second study, I interviewed 14 school-based speech-language therapists, teachers, and family members of children receiving supports. I asked participants to speak to the outcomes or impacts of these services they thought were most important or valuable. I identified six outcomes using both qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques. In the third study, I combined the perspectives of these three groups of interested parties into a single set of core outcomes for school-based, speech-language services. The result is a suggested set of impacts to include in research and practice. Including these core outcomes in research will improve the relevance of clinic-external evidence (research studies), providing more pertinent information to shared decision making about speech-language supports in schools. Their inclusion in clinical practice with strengthen clinic-internal evidence (data about specific programs or services) about the appropriateness of supports in context, and will assist the development of local, contextualized evidence for speech-language services. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / School-based speech-language services provide important social and academic supports to children throughout their school years. To better understand if these services are achieving meaningful results for children and families, we wanted to know what people think is a meaningful result. In our first study, we asked speech-language therapists working in schools how they knew they were achieving meaningful results from their work. In our second study, we discussed what results were most important with family members, teachers, and speech-language therapists. Finally, in our third study, we combined all perspectives into a single list of most important service results to guide future research and quality improvement work. Together, these three studies provide important information on what results we want to achieve, which include important results for students, teachers and families, and the school system. The most important result was providing a holistic approach to support children, their families, and school communities.

Background: Cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) is a complex, heterogeneous disorder which occurs due to the interplay between environmental and biological risk factors. Individuals in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) are exposed to a multitude of risk factors resulting in a greater occurrence of CL/P. Research and knowledge of which risk factors are associated with CL/P in LMICs may aid health care professionals such as speech-language therapists in low-income countries in the early identification of at-risk infants. Objective: To identify and review published data on the risks associated with CL/P in LMICs. Design: A systematic review of literature was performed on electronic databases using the PRISMA-P. Literature on risks associated with CL/P in LMICs, from 2010 to 2020 was included. Results: Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria. All studies adopted an observational study design. Biological and environmental risks were identified. Maternal and paternal age (n=7) and low socioeconomic status (n=5) were the most prominently associated environmental risk factors. Regarding biological risk factors, a strong association was identified between family history of cleft (n=7) and CL/P occurrence. Conclusion: Environmental risk factors are now being investigated more than biological risk factors in LMICs, hindering health care workers in the early identification (EI) of the possible cumulative effects of risks in CL/P. Contextually-relevant tools are recommended to promote the EI of at-risk infants. / Dissertation (MA (Speech-Language Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / MA (Speech-Language Pathology) / Unrestricted

Background Early literacy skills have a crucial influence on the reading abilities and overall academic success of a child during the school years. The development of phonological awareness skills starts in the pre-school years. While phonological awareness predicts later reading success, working memory is also vital in higher cognitive skills such as reading. Phoneme-grapheme association supports and improves the lexical representation of words in the memory. The phoneme-grapheme association rules in transparent orthographies are in general more predictable and more words can be accurately read at an early stage. Therefore, reading accuracy and fluency seem to develop more straightforwardly since the phoneme-grapheme association is less complicated. As yet, the researcher has come across no studies which explored the role of phonological awareness and working memory in Afrikaans with its transparent orthography. Purpose To explore and describe the role of working memory in the acquisition of phonological awareness skills and ultimately reading in Afrikaans, a language with a transparent orthography. Method A cross-sectional descriptive design with correlational components was used to obtain data from the participants, aged 7 years to 8 years 11 months. Thirty-five participants from five private schools with Afrikaans as language of learning and teaching (LoLT) were assessed. Results The participants employed phonetic decoding more than eidetic decoding. The word reading skills of the participants developed rapidly and exceeded regular expectations. An overall high reading rate was displayed by the participants, likely due to the transparent orthography of Afrikaans. A higher score for the reading comprehension test was obtained by participants who read the comprehension test fluently. Text reading fluency made a more significant contribution to the performance of the participants on the reading comprehension test than word reading fluency. The number memory reversed subtest was more challenging than number memory forward. Shorter words were recalled more easily than longer words. It was less challenging for the participants to recall an eight- to ten-word sentence than to recall a list of words. Visual spatial memory had no significant relationship to the decoding or reading comprehension skills of the participants. The rhyming production subtest was more challenging than the rhyming discrimination subtest. The impact of syllable awareness skills on the word decoding skills of the participants was not significant. The segmenting and blending scores exceeded the expected performance of the participants. The correlation coefficient between reading comprehension and WM was not statistically significant. The relationship between WM and reading skills seems to be the same in both opaque and transparent orthographies. The correlations of PA and PhA skills with the word reading skills of the participants were moderate in strength. A fairly strong correlation between reading comprehension and PA as well as PhA skills was, however, observed. Conclusion The fairly strong statistically significant correlation between word reading skills and WM supports reading development in the early phases. The reasoning behind this deduction is that children who cannot hold and manipulate information in memory will find phoneme-grapheme association difficult. Keywords: Afrikaans, phonological awareness, reading, transparent orthographies, working memory. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / MA (Speech-Language Pathology) / Unrestricted

Tinnitus has been bothering humanity since Ancient Babylon, plaguing everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin. Today, roughly one in seven people worldwide experiences this auditory sensation. So what exactly is tinnitus, and where does this persistent sound come from? Marc Fagelson travels into the auditory system to explore the loss of silence.

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Abstract available in the The Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal.

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Book Summary: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders is an in-depth encyclopedia aimed at students interested in interdisciplinary perspectives on human communication—both normal and disordered—across the lifespan. This timely and unique set will look at the spectrum of communication disorders, from causation and prevention to testing and assessment; through rehabilitation, intervention, and education. Examples of the interdisciplinary reach of this encyclopedia: A strong focus on health issues, with topics such as Asperger's syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, anatomy of the human larynx, dementia, etc.Including core psychology and cognitive sciences topics, such as social development, stigma, language acquisition, self-help groups, memory, depression, memory, Behaviorism, and cognitive developmentEducation is covered in topics such as cooperative learning, special education, classroom-based service delivery The editors have recruited top researchers and clinicians across multiple fields to contribute to approximately 640 signed entries across four volumes.