The effect of frequency altered feedback (FAF) and audience size on stuttering frequency was examined. Nine adults who stutter orally read to audiences of two, four and 15 people under conditions of FAF (one-half octave shift down) and non-altered auditory feedback (NAF). There was no statistically significant effect of audience size on stuttering frequency (p > 0.05). A statistically significant reduction in stuttering frequency was found under FAF relative to NAF (p < 0.5). Collapsed across audience conditions, stuttering frequency was reduced by 74%. These findings suggest that FAF may be useful as a treatment tool.
International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersVolume 32, Issue 1 p. 83-83 FACILITATED COMMUNICATION TRAINING: COMMENTS FROM A HEAD TEACHER Pat Derbyshire, Pat Derbyshire Ewing School, Manchester, UKSearch for more papers by this author Pat Derbyshire, Pat Derbyshire Ewing School, Manchester, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 January 2011 https://doi.org/10.3109/13682829709021460AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume32, Issue1January‐March 1997Pages 83-83 RelatedInformation
Facilitated communication training (FCT) is an educational technique intended to allow people who cannot speak or sign fluently to develop the hand skills necessary to use other non-speech communication strategies. It involves support to the arm, wrist or hand of the student, who is thus enabled to control his pointing, and has recently been the subject of considerable debate. Critics of the technique have cast doubt on the existence of any language problem remediable by touch. This study discusses the case of a person who had a language problem that did not appear to be connected with overt neuromotor impairment, was not accompanied by behavioural disturbance, and was remediable by touch alone. The case raises some interesting questions about the relation of physical prompts to language use.
The study reported describes the phonological rules typical of normal development of Turkish-speaking children. The processes identified include: reduplication, syllable deletion, consonant deletion, assimilation, cluster reduction, liquid deviation, stopping, fronting, affrication, and backing. From a crosslinguistic perspective, the phonological process patterns exhibited coincide broadly with universal tendencies, although some language specific patterns were also evident. In contrast, a case study of a phonologically disordered child indicated that her system was characterised by the use of idiosyncratic phonological rules as well as delayed acquisition of some aspects of the system. This atypical pattern reflects reports of phonologically disordered children learning other languages. The findings indicate that the deficit underlying this type of phonological disorder leads to similar phonological behavior irrespective of the language being acquired.
A client with dysphasia was treated during the first six months following onset. A cognitive neuropsychological model of language processing was used to establish the levels of impairment in auditory comprehension. Three separate phases of therapy were administered: a semantic therapy; a period of therapy where both semantics and auditory processing were treated; and therapy designed to enhance the processing of words in a sentence. Four assessments were used to measure changes between each therapy phase and the results demonstrate that improvement occurred in a pattern which suggests specific effects of treatment.
This research aimed to compare three different approaches to delivering a speech and language therapy service to people with learning disabilities, in order to make recommendations for future service delivery. The three approaches all involved working with key communication partners in the environment. They were: (i) working directly on a one-to-one basis with the person and partner; (ii) working indirectly by providing teaching for partners; and (iii) a combination of these two approaches. A teaching course called 'Talkabout' was used. Talkabout aims for staff to reach a recognised level of knowledge and competence in communication skills, thus facilitating the communication skills of their service users. The results indicated that whilst communication changed in all three approaches, overall changes were greater in the combination approach. Only the combination approach demonstrated statistically significant differences following intervention, in terms of staff initiations, service user responses, and their use of additional modalities.
Bilingual children were found to form a distinct subgroup within a large cohort of children with specific language-impairment (SLI) attending language units across England. They differed from the cohort as a whole, and from a language-matched monolingual 'control' group, on measures including language profile on entry to the unit, performance on standardised tests, emotional-behavioural state and probable future educational placement. This paper sets out the nature of these differences in more detail, and suggests some possible explanations for them.
This study addresses the assessment of developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) in children. For this, 11 children with a clear diagnosis of DAS were selected, based on documented speech history and perceptual evaluation of speech. The children with DAS, as well as 11 normal-speaking children, produced singleton real word and nonsense word imitations elicited in a standardised way. Phonetic transcriptions were analysed and errors in consonants classified. The results showed, firstly, that the children with DAS produced similar types of consonant errors as has been reported in the literature, which corroborates the method of elicitation as a valid procedure to assess relevant speech symptoms of DAS. Secondly, a large quantitative difference between children with DAS and normal-speaking children was found, in that children with DAS produced an overall higher rate of singleton consonant errors (substitutions, omissions, distortions) and cluster errors (cluster reductions) than the normal-speaking children. For the DAS group, the substitution-rate, particularly in real words (as opposed to nonsense words), was significantly correlated with severity as rated by two speech and language pathologists. This suggests that substitution-rate yields an adequate measure of severity of DAS. Thirdly, a qualitative difference between both subject groups emerged. Children with DAS did not benefit from the lexical status of the utterance (real versus nonsense word) to the same extent as normal-speaking children. Based on these findings the nature of the underlying deficits in speech production in DAS is discussed.
As part of a wider study, 242 children attending language units attached to mainstream schools were assessed on a number of formal language assessments. In addition, each child's teacher was asked to state whether, for each of four areas of language difficulty, the participant exhibited this impairment. The four areas were: articulation, phonology, syntax/morphology and semantic/pragmatic impairment. This report compares test results between children thought by their teacher or therapist to show each impairment and those not thought clinically to show the difficulty. Investigations into suitable cut-off scores for the tests used were also examined using level of agreement between the two modes of assessment as criteria. For articulation, phonology and syntax/morphology, teacher opinion was found to discriminate significantly on at least some formal tests. However, for children with semantic/pragmatic impairment, no tests used identified their problems. Furthermore, by use of 25th centile cut-off scores, 66% agreement levels between teacher and test groupings were found in all but the group with semantic/pragmatic impairments. The importance and limitations of analysis of teacher-test concordance is discussed as well as the current lack of suitable formal assessment material for semantic and pragmatic language impairment.
International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersVolume 32, Issue 1 p. 75-81 THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY TO UNDERSTANDING THE REMEDIATION OF COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS THROUGH FACILITATED COMMUNICATION Julie E. Dockrell, Julie E. Dockrell Institute of Education, London, UKSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher Sterling, Christopher Sterling University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this author Julie E. Dockrell, Julie E. Dockrell Institute of Education, London, UKSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher Sterling, Christopher Sterling University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 January 2011 https://doi.org/10.3109/13682829709021458AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume32, Issue1January‐March 1997Pages 75-81 RelatedInformation
International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersVolume 32, Issue 1 p. 81-82 A NEUROLOGICAL COMMENTARY Lewis Rosenbloom, Lewis Rosenbloom Royal Liverpool Children's NHS Trust, UKSearch for more papers by this author Lewis Rosenbloom, Lewis Rosenbloom Royal Liverpool Children's NHS Trust, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 January 2011 https://doi.org/10.3109/13682829709021459AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume32, Issue1January‐March 1997Pages 81-82 RelatedInformation
Twins provide a natural set-up for the study of some of the basic issues that concern the field of language acquisition and of developmental language disorders and brain pathology, in that they present a unique hereditary and environmental situation within which development takes place. Yet, few studies have detailed the development of formal aspects of language in twins. This paper reports on a prospective, longitudinal study of the acquisition of selected aspects of Hebrew syntax and morphology in a pair of DZ twin boys, aged 3;6-4;0, one of whom had a congenital brain abnormality. MLU levels suggest a marked delay for both children in the onset and progression of language development. However, both the healthy and the brain-injured twin followed a normal developmental course. Data to that effect concern frequency of sentences of various lengths, distribution of sentence types, use of tenses, use of pronouns, correct usage of various syntactic markers, variability of verb types and tokens and the distribution of errors of morphology and morphophonology. It is argued that this case study offers support for claims concerning brain plasticity for language. Furthermore, it is in line with previous studies of normal and brain-injured children which, rather unexpectedly, pointed at the relative ease with which formal, linguistic systems were acquired.
The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the relation of storytelling skills to achievement in reading comprehension in African-American children. Socioeconomic status (SES), gender and developmental level of children's stories were examined as predictors of reading achievement. A total of 80 children in the fourth and sixth grades served as subjects. Results indicated that correlations of the narrative variables with reading achievement were significant for story level (0.37) and clauses per T-unit (0.33). These results are discussed relative to the effect of oral language on academic achievement and the importance of examining this relationship in culturally and linguistically diverse groups.
For children to progress in their use of augmentative communication systems, in-service training of staff in schools is required. This paper presents preliminary evaluation of a training package entitled 'My Turn to Speak'. Nineteen participants and 10 comparison staff were filmed before and after a five-session training workshop, interacting in the classroom in naturally occurring situations with a non-speaking physically disabled child. Significant improvements in the quality of adults' facilitation of the children's communication was discernible at follow-up, four months after completion of the training. However, teachers were found to alter their behaviour more quickly after training than non-teaching staff. The requirements for setting up successful multidisciplinary training are discussed.
International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersVolume 32, Issue 2 p. 261-266 The Lidcombe Programme: Maverick or Not? Mark Onslow, Mark Onslow The University of Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this authorSue O'Brian, Sue O'Brian The University of Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this authorElisabeth Harrison, Elisabeth Harrison Bankstown Health Service, Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author Mark Onslow, Mark Onslow The University of Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this authorSue O'Brian, Sue O'Brian The University of Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this authorElisabeth Harrison, Elisabeth Harrison Bankstown Health Service, Sydney, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 31 December 2010 https://doi.org/10.3109/13682829709020408Citations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume32, Issue2April‐June 1997Pages 261-266 RelatedInformation
This study examines phonological awareness in a group of 10 dyslexic children, compared with two groups of children (a reading-equivalent control group and a group of beginning readers). Five of the dyslexic children exhibited an early speech-language impairement, and five others were not language-impaired. The experimental design consisted of a set of 10 tasks involving sensitivity to phonological strings, phonetic identification, and phoneme segmentation and manipulation. The major findings reveal that (a) the two subgroups of dyslexic children exhibit a metalinguistic impairment and (b) dyslexic children with speech-language impairment exhibit (besides metalinguistic impairment) a deficit concerning early precursors of the phonological awareness (rhyme and syllables). These findings provide additional support for including speech-language impairment as an operational criterion within the heterogeneous group of dyslexic children.
The hypothesis that the modification of parent-child interaction would reduce the dysfluency of a pre-school child was tested in an experimental single-case study. The subject, a four-year-old boy with a moderate to severe stutter, and his parents attended their local clinic for a total of 17 weeks. On each visit, 20-minute play periods with each parent were recorded and measures of fluency taken. No advice was offered in the first six weeks and these measures were used as a baseline for subsequent therapy. Therapy was given over the next six weeks. The parents were advised to make changes in their style of interaction and were asked to practise these at home each day. During the final five weeks, which served as consolidation, the parents continued to practise their skills at home but no new advice was offered. The analysis found no significant trend in the child's dysfluency during the baseline period, a significant improvement during therapy and stabilisation of the lower rate of dysfluencies during the maintenance period.
Augmentative communication systems enable non-speaking people to communicate using letters, words, phrases and sentences. Few systems provide support for longer lengths of text despite the fact that most day-to-day conversation is characterised by 'story telling'. This paper discusses the need for communication systems to facilitate this type of interaction, whilst allowing for other modes of communication. A case history detailing the use of a prototype system with an adult with dysphasia illustrates that providing augmentative communication should not be restricted to expression of 'needs and wants', but should enable the non-speaking individual to share past experience and future hopes.
Syntactic bootstrapping was assessed in six children with normally developing language (NL) and six children with specific language impairment (SLI), ages 6 and 8, respectively. Children earned normal range non-verbal IQs and were matched by raw scores on a test of sentence comprehension. They were asked to listen to sentences containing novel verbs and to act out the meanings with toys. The SLI children earned reliably lower scores, but their errors suggested processing limitations rather than deficits in syntactic representation.
The development of outcome measures is now seen as crucial within the National Health Service (NHS), and the outcome of aphasia therapy is an area which has for some years been under particular scrutiny. Many districts have developed their own measures and others have taken part in cross-district pilot schemes, but it is not clear how widely used measures are, nor what form they take. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey of speech and language therapy services in England and Wales regarding their use of outcome measures for aphasia therapy. The questionnaire requested factual information about the use of measures, and therapists' opinions of their benefits and drawbacks, and also asked for examples of outcome measures currently in use. We summarise the results of the questionnaire and discuss the therapists' and our own perceptions of the merits of the different approaches reported.
