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Objectives: A few clinical screening tools for auditory processing disorder (APD) are currently available. However, most of these tools are in English and cannot be used to screen individuals with a first language other than English. This study aimed to develop an APD screening test battery in French and to assess its psychometric properties in detecting school-age children at risk of APD. Method: Prior to their complete audiological APD assessment, 53 children (7-12 years old) were recruited from an audiology clinic. The APD assessment lasted between 2 and 3 hr, including 15-20 min for the screening test battery. The screening test battery was composed of four behavioral subtests and two questionnaires (parent and teacher). Results: When combined, two among the four behavioral subtests showed a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 80%. Conclusion: The newly developed screening tool could help reduce the number of unnecessary APD assessments, therefore allowing early diagnosis in children with APD and increasing their chances of receiving adequate intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to (a) provide speech-language pathologists and researchers with a play-based procedure to measure the expression of spoken communicative intents by children aged 3 to 4.5 years and (b) present indicators of these children's capacity to produce these intents in this context. Method: A method inspired by TRIAGE (Technique de Recherche d'Informations par Animation d'un Group d'Experts) allowed an advisory group of 16 speechlanguage pathologists to select and agree on definitions of intents to include in this procedure, among a set of 13 preselected intents based on the scientific literature. A longitudinal design including four measuring times was used to verify the production of these intents by 99 French-speaking children (46 boys; Mage = 36.09 months) at 36, 42, 48, and 54 months using the Neighborhood Game, a previously developed elicitation procedure of communicative intents conducted within the context of symbolic play. For each measurement time, the average percentage of children who had produced each intent at least 3 times was calculated with a 95% confidence interval. Nonparametric analysis of variance for longitudinal data was carried out to verify progression with age. Results: A finalized list of eight communicative intents was selected along with their definition and a standardized script to elicit them during symbolic play. The production frequency of most intents showed significant progression between the first and the fourth measurement time. Arguing is the only intent that is still not produced by more than 90% of children at the age of 54 months. Conclusions: This study led to the development of an assessment procedure, which presents ecological validity and elicits the expression of eight communicative intents among 3- to 4.5-year-olds. This procedure can support the work of speech-language pathologists and researchers. The accompanying indicators of children's capacity to produce these intents at a given age in this kind of context are a notable addition to the knowledge on typical language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigates how the variables of culture and hearing status might influence the amount of parent-child talk families engage in throughout an average day. Method: Seventeen Vietnamese and 8 Canadian families of children with hearing loss and 17 Vietnamese and 13 Canadian families with typically hearing children between the ages of 18 and 48 months old participated in this cross-comparison design study. Each child wore a Language ENvironment Analysis system digital language processor for 3 days. An automated vocal analysis then calculated an average conversational turn count (CTC) for each participant as the variable of investigation. The CTCs for the 4 groups were compared using a Kruskal-Wallis test and a set of planned pairwise comparisons. Results: The Canadian families participated in significantly more conversational turns than the Vietnamese families. No significant difference was found between the Vietnamese or the Canadian cohorts as a function of hearing status. Conclusions: Culture, but not hearing status, influences CTCs as derived by the Language ENvironment Analysis system. Clinicians should consider how cultural communication practices might influence their suggestions for language stimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Impairments in the social use of language are universal in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but few standardized measures evaluate communication skills above the level of individual words or sentences. This study evaluated the Expression, Reception, and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI; Bishop, 2004) to determine its contribution to assessing language and communicative impairment beyond the sentence level in children with ASD. Method: A battery of assessments, including measures of cognition, language, pragmatics, severity of autism symptoms, and adaptive functioning, was administered to 74 8- to 9-year-old intellectually able children with ASD. Results: Average performance on the ERRNI was significantly poorer than on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition (CELF-4). In addition, ERRNI scores reflecting the number and quality of relevant story components included in the participants' narratives were significantly positively related to scores on measures of nonverbal cognitive skill, language, and everyday adaptive communication, and significantly negatively correlated with the severity of affective autism symptoms. Conclusion: Results suggest that the ERRNI reveals discourse impairments that may not be identified by measures that focus on individual words and sentences. Overall, the ERRNI provides a useful measure of communicative skill beyond the sentence level in school-aged children with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]