Search

This study examined whether children’s speech and literacy skills were impacted by co-working among student speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and student teachers during an inter-professional education (IPE) initiative. Seven five-year-old children who demonstrated difficulties with speech and/or phonological awareness participated in three weeks of classroom-based instruction delivered by student SLP–teacher pairs during professional practice placements. A multiple single-participant design with repeated measures was utilized to examine the impact of the co-instruction on children’s speech and phonological awareness. Four out of seven children, each of whom were instructed by a different student professional pair, improved on at least one of two goal areas. More specifically, two out of six children improved their production of trained and untrained speech targets. Three out of seven children also improved on phoneme segmentation of trained and untrained words. Children’s improvement in phoneme awareness was accompanied by improved letter–sound knowledge and spelling. Moreover, analysis of instructional logs confirmed that children who improved on their target goals received classroom-based co-instruction from their student SLP–teacher pairs. The findings support the potential of the placement-based IPE in that most of the student pairs learned to establish co-instruction which positively influenced children’s speech and early literacy outcomes.

PurposeThis pilot study explored the effectiveness of an early storybook reading (ESR) intervention for parents with babies with hearing loss (HL) for improving (a) parents' book selection skills, (b) parent–child eye contact, and (c) parent–child turn-taking. Advancing research into ESR, this study examined whether the benefits from an ESR intervention reported for babies without HL were also observed in babies with HL.MethodFour mother–baby dyads participated in a multiple baseline single-case experimental design across behaviors. Treatment effects for parents' book selection skills, parent–child eye contact, and parent–child turn-taking were examined using visual analysis and Tau-U analysis.ResultsStatistically significant increases, with large to very large effect sizes, were observed for all 4 participants for parent–child eye contact and parent–child turn-taking. Limited improvements with ceiling effects were observed for parents' book selection skills.ConclusionThe findings provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of an ESR intervention for babies with HL for promoting parent–child interactions through eye contact and turn-taking.

Objective: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental impairment. To better understand the role of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in different countries in supporting children with ASD, the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) Child Language Committee developed a survey for SLPs working with children or adolescents with ASD. Method and Participants: The survey comprised 58 questions about background information of respondents, characteristics of children with ASD, and the role of SLPs in diagnosis, assessment, and intervention practices. The survey was available in English, French, Russian, and Portuguese, and distributed online. Results: This paper provides a descriptive summary of the main findings from the quantitative data from the 1,114 SLPs (representing 35 countries) who were supporting children with ASD. Most of the respondents (91%) were experienced in working with children with ASD, and the majority (75%) worked in schools or early childhood settings. SLPs reported that the children’s typical age at diagnosis of ASD on their caseload was 3–4 years, completed mostly by a professional team. Conclusions: The results support positive global trends for SLPs using effective practices in assessment and intervention for children with ASD. Two areas where SLPs may need further support are involving parents in assessment practices, and supporting literacy development in children with ASD.

Background Preliminary studies of inter-professional education (IPE) among student speech–language therapists (SLTs) and student teachers suggest that workshop-based applications are beneficial in preparing participants for elements of collaborative practice. Situating IPE within the students’ professional practice placements may provide another useful avenue to develop attitudes, knowledge and skills for inter-professional collaboration. Research examining the impact of different approaches to IPE is required to advance our understanding of effective design and evaluation of such initiatives. Aims To understand how student SLTs and student teachers develop competency for collaborative practice when co-working during professional practice placements to support children's speech and literacy development. Methods & Procedures A case study design was used to monitor the impact of the IPE. Student SLTs (n = 4) were paired with student teachers (n = 4) to participate in shared professional practice placements in junior school classrooms. An inductive thematic analysis of interviews conducted with participants after the IPE was employed to explore the development of competencies in collaborative practice. Change in inter-disciplinary knowledge and perceptions over the IPE was evaluated via survey to further explore the development of collaborative competencies. Outcomes & Results Integration of qualitative and quantitative findings suggested that participants began to develop four broad areas of collaborative competency: understanding of professional roles and expertise, communication skills to support shared decision-making, inter-dependency in supporting children's learning, and flexibility to implement alternative instructional practices. Interview analysis also revealed factors related to the facilitators and learning contexts that supported and/or limited the collaboration between participants. Conclusions & Implications Shared placement experiences between student SLTs and student teachers may be an effective method for building participants’ competencies in multiple aspects of collaborative practice. Active facilitation by both SLT and classroom teacher supervisors alongside careful consideration of learning contexts (e.g., classroom structure) will help to ensure that learning is maximized for prospective professionals.

Successful collaboration among speech and language therapists (SLTs) and teachers fosters the creation of communication friendly classrooms that maximize children’s spoken and written language learning. However, these groups of professionals may have insufficient opportunity in their professional study to develop the shared knowledge, perceptions and attitudes required for effective collaboration. This study examined the knowledge and perceptions of student teachers and student SLTs in the areas of language concepts, junior school literacy curriculum, service delivery and professional collaboration. An online survey was completed by 58 student primary school teachers and 37 student SLTs in their final year of professional study. The results indicated that these groups possessed limited understanding of each other’s expertise in literacy curriculum and spoken language concepts. Both groups demonstrated minimal knowledge of spoken–written language relationships and how SLTs can assist to develop children’s orthographic knowledge. Participants demonstrated acceptance of indirect methods of classroom-based service delivery (e.g. SLT acting as a consultant) but were less accepting of direct methods of classroom-based service delivery (e.g. shared teaching). Both groups also reported minimal experience with SLT–teacher collaboration during their pre-service education. The data suggest pre-service inter-professional education (IPE) with a focus on children’s early literacy learning is warranted to prepare prospective SLTs and teachers for collaborative instruction that enhances children’s communication.

Purpose. This study investigated the content validity of a computer-based phonological awareness (PA) screening and monitoring assessment (Com-PASMA) designed to evaluate school-entry PA abilities. Establishing content validity by confirming that test items suitably ‘fit’ and sample a spectrum of difficulty levels is critical for ensuring educators can deduce accurate information to comprehensively differentiate curricular reading instruction.Method. Ninety-five children, inclusive of 21 children with spoken language impairment, participated in a 1-year longitudinal study whereby the Com-PASMA was administered at the start, middle and end of the school year.Result. Estimates of content validity using Rasch Model analysis demonstrated that: (1) rhyme oddity and initial phoneme identity tasks were most appropriate at school-entry and sampled a spectrum of difficulty levels, (2) more challenging phoneme level tasks (e.g. final phoneme identity, phoneme blending, phoneme deletion and phoneme segmentation) became increasingly appropriate and differentiated between high- and low-ability students by the middle and end of the first year of school and (3) letter-knowledge tasks were appropriate but declined in their ability to differentiate student ability as the year progressed.Conclusion. Findings demonstrate that the Com-PASMA has sufficient content validity to measure and differentiate between the PA abilities of 5-year-old children on entry to school.

This study examined the effectiveness of low- and high-intensity early storybook reading (ESR) intervention workshops delivered to parents for promoting their babies language and social communication development. These workshops educated parents on how to provide a stimulating home reading environment and engage in parent-child interactions during ESR.Parent-child dyads (n = 32); child age: 3-12 months, were assigned into two intervention conditions: low and high intensity (LI versus HI) groups. Both groups received the same ESR strategies; however, the HI group received additional intervention time, demonstrations and support. Outcome measures were assessed pre-intervention, one and three months post-intervention and when the child turned 2 years of age.A significant time-group interaction with increased performance in the HI group was observed for language scores immediately post-intervention (p = 0.007) and at 2-years-of-age (p = 0.022). Significantly higher broader social communication scores were associated with the HI group at each of the time points (p = 0.018, p = 0.001 and p = 0.021, respectively). Simple main effect revealed that both groups demonstrated a significant improvement in language, broader social communication and home reading practices scores.ESR intervention workshops may promote language and broader social communication skills. The HI ESR intervention workshop was associated with significantly higher language and broader social communication scores.

This study investigated if the story retelling and comprehension task Ana Gets Lost, that is frequently used with school-aged children, has clinical utility with a preschool population. The study also assessed the task's concurrent and predictive validity with norm-referenced tests of language performance. A total of 92 typically-developing 4-year-old children participated. After 12 months, 57 children were available for a follow-up session. At each session, children listened twice to the story while looking at the pictures and then retold the story without the use of pictures. After the first exposure the children were asked comprehension questions to assess their oral narrative comprehension. Children's performance was analysed on measures of comprehension, narrative quality, semantics, morphosyntax, and verbal productivity to provide a Profile of Oral Narrative Ability (PONA). Results showed normal distribution of some of the measures and acceptable concurrent and predictive correlations with two norm-referenced measures of language ability. Although the results indicate the potential usefulness of this tool with preschool children, further research should investigate its potential as a screening measure of oral narrative performance.

Background: Personal narratives are descriptions of past events experienced by the speaker and are one of the most commonly found forms of narration in children. The ability to tell personal narratives is considered critical for socio-emotional wellbeing and academic performance. Aims: This study investigated the personal narrative skills of 25 children with Down syndrome (age 5;11–13;1 years) who attended predominantly mainstream primary schools in New Zealand and were classified as beginning readers. Methods & Procedures: Personal narrative samples were elicited by the children's speech–language therapists using a standard protocol commonly used with New Zealand children. Children were shown a series of 11 photographs with scripted introductory prompts and were asked if anything like that ever happened to them. Transcribed samples were analysed on measures of mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-M), semantics (number of different words; NDW), and personal narrative quality (PNQ). Outcomes & Results: Consistent with previous research, results showed wide variability in performance. Although 92% of the children produced at least 50 utterances in response to the prompts, in general MLU-M was very low (mean = 2.67, SD = 1.04). NDW ranged from 19 to 126 (mean = 61.52, SD = 25.39). Regression analyses showed no significant effect for age on MLU-M (p= 0.094), nor on PNQ. There was a significant effect for age on NDW (p= 0.03), with performance improving with age. Analysis of PNQ revealed that only four children (ages 9;11–12;7) were able to relate a personal narrative containing a high point. Correlational analyses indicated significant correlations between PNQ, MLU-M, NDW and performance on a standardized reading test. Conclusions & Implications: The findings highlight the difficulties children with Down syndrome have in producing personal narratives, despite exposure to a national English curriculum that encourages children to develop and convey ‘personal voice’. Clinical implications of these findings will be presented.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated phoneme awareness/ speech intervention in comparison to an alternating speech/morphosyntax intervention for specific areas targeted by the different interventions, as well as the extent of indirect gains in nontargeted areas. Method: A total of 30 children with co-occurring speech sound disorder and language impairment, average age 4;5, participated in the study, 18 from the United States and 12 from New Zealand. Children from matched pairs were randomly assigned to the 2 proven efficacious treatments, which were delivered in 6-week blocks separated by a 6-week break. Phoneme awareness, speech sound production, and oral language outcome measures were collected pretreatment and after each intervention block. Results and Conclusions: Both intervention groups made statistically significant gains in all measures, with the exception of a morpheme measure only approaching significance. There were clear trends in favor of the specificity of the interventions suggesting increased sample size might have led to some significant intervention differences. Results further implicate the need for early intervention that integrates oral language and phoneme awareness/early literacy skills for children with multiple deficits.

This investigation explored the effects of oral narrative elicitation context on children's spoken language performance. Oral narratives were produced by a group of 11 children with reading disability (aged between 7;11 and 9;3) and an age-matched control group of 11 children with typical reading skills in three different contexts: story retelling, story generation, and personal narratives. In the story retelling condition, the children listened to a story on tape while looking at the pictures in a book, before being asked to retell the story without the pictures. In the story generation context, the children were shown a picture containing a scene and were asked to make up their own story. Personal narratives were elicited with the help of photos and short narrative prompts. The transcripts were analysed at microstructure level on measures of verbal productivity, semantic diversity, and morphosyntax. Consistent with previous research, the results revealed no significant interactions between group and context, indicating that the two groups of children responded to the type of elicitation context in a similar way. There was a significant group effect, however, with the typical readers showing better performance overall on measures of morphosyntax and semantic diversity. There was also a significant effect of elicitation context with both groups of children producing the longest, linguistically most dense language samples in the story retelling context. Finally, the most significant differences in group performance were observed in the story retelling condition, with the typical readers outperforming the poor readers on measures of verbal productivity, number of different words, and percent complex sentences. The results from this study confirm that oral narrative samples can distinguish between good and poor readers and that the story retelling condition may be a particularly useful context for identifying strengths and weaknesses in oral narrative performance.

This study examined the effects of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning abilities in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and whether treatment order influenced outcomes. An alternating treatment design was implemented to evaluate whether phonological awareness, semantic awareness, or a combination of both interventions positively influenced children's word-learning ability and whether the order of the treatments influenced outcomes. Nineteen children with SLI, aged between 6;3 and 8;2 years, and 19 age-matched children with typical language development participated in this study. The children with SLI were randomly assigned either to treatment condition A (phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention) or treatment condition B (same interventions in reverse order). A word-learning paradigm was applied at pre-, mid-, and post-testing to evaluate which condition accelerated the receptive and expressive learning of novel words. Positive treatment effects on producing new words were found for the children who received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention. There was no improvement on the comprehension of new words for either group. The findings suggest that phonological awareness intervention may not only improve children's phonological skills, but may help to facilitate some aspects of word-learning when followed by an additional semantic based intervention.

This study is an examination of the longitudinal effects of an integrated phonological awareness approach for identical twin boys with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Genetic and environmental factors in the boys' responses to the intervention were also examined. Theo and Jamie (aged 4;5) each participated in 18 hours of intervention prior to school entry and were re-assessed at age 4;9, 5;3, and 5;9 respectively. Their speech, expressive morpho-syntactic, phonological awareness, reading, and spelling development were evaluated over their first year of schooling. Theo and Jamie experienced continued growth in speech and phonological awareness skills following participation in the intervention. They exhibited age-appropriate reading and spelling development during their first year of formal literacy instruction. They had persistent deficits in expressive morpho-syntactic skills despite speech production gains over the study. The results pointed to the benefit of integrating speech and phonological awareness goals within a preventative framework to ensure successful early literacy development for children with CAS. Findings suggested that language difficulties in children with CAS should be targeted during intervention as they do not resolve as the children's speech production difficulties minimize.

This study aimed to determine if oral narrative comprehension and production measures derived in a fictional story retelling task could be used to create a profile of strengths and weaknesses in oral narrative ability (Profile of Oral Narrative Ability: PONA) in young school-aged children. The story retelling task was field-tested with 169 typically developing children, aged between 5;0 and 7;6 years. Children listened twice to an unfamiliar story while looking at the pictures in a book. Comprehension questions were asked after the first exposure. Following the second exposure, children were asked to retell the story without the use of the pictures. Story retellings were analysed on measures of semantics, morphosyntax, verbal productivity, and narrative quality. Results indicated sensitivity for age on measures of comprehension, narrative quality, semantics, and verbal productivity, but not for morphosyntactic measures. Factor analysis indicated that oral narrative performance comprised three factors, explaining more than 80% of the variance. Two clinical case examples are presented, which show the potential of the PONA to reveal different patterns of strengths and weaknesses across the oral narrative measures. Although early evidence suggests the potential usefulness of the PONA, further research is now needed to test the validity, reliability and clinical application of this tool.

This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4—7 years with CAS participated in two 6-week intervention blocks (2 sessions per week), separated by a 6-week withdrawal block. Nine children with CAS made significant gains in their production of target speech sounds and these demonstrated transfer of skills to connected speech for at least one speech target. Eight children showed significant gains in at least one target phoneme awareness skill, and these children demonstrated transfer of skills to novel phoneme awareness tasks. As a group the children with CAS demonstrated improvement in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling ability. An integrated phonological awareness programme was an effective method of simultaneously improving speech, phoneme awareness, word decoding, and spelling ability for some children with CAS.

Purpose This study evaluated the effects of an intervention program aimed to improve reading and spelling ability through instruction in morphological awareness together with other forms of linguistic awareness, including knowledge of phonology, orthography, syntax, and semantics. Method Sixteen children aged between 8;07 (years;months) and 11;01 who demonstrated specific spelling difficulties were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. Participants received an average of 19.4 sessions of intervention that focused on increasing awareness of the morphological structure of words, with particular attention to the orthographic rules that apply when suffixes are added to the base word. Results Participants in the experimental group made significantly greater gains in reading and spelling accuracy than those in the control group on both experimental and standardized measures of reading and spelling. The results also show that participants were able to generalize to new words what they had learned in the intervention sessions. Conclusion Practitioners should consider the likely benefits of literacy intervention that focuses on developing morphological awareness in conjunction with other types of linguistic awareness.

Background: Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is associated with phonological awareness, reading, and spelling deficits. Comparing literacy skills in CAS with other developmental speech disorders is critical for understanding the complexity of the disorder. Aims: This study compared the phonological awareness and reading development of children with CAS and children with inconsistent speech disorder (ISD). Method & Procedures: Participants included twelve children with CAS aged 4-7 years. Their performance was compared with twelve children with ISD (and normal speech motor planning) and twelve children with typical development on tasks measuring phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, real and non-word decoding, and access to underlying phonological representations of words. There was no significant difference in the age, gender, socio-economic status, and receptive vocabulary of the groups. The two groups with speech disorder were matched for severity and inconsistency of their speech impairment. Outcomes & Results: The results indicated that the CAS group had inferior phonological awareness than the ISD and typical development groups. The CAS group had a greater proportion of participants performing below their expected age level than the comparison groups on phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge and decoding tasks. There was no difference in the performance of the CAS and ISD groups on the phonological representation task. Conclusions & Implications: Children with CAS are particularly susceptible to phonological awareness and reading delay. Intervention for children with CAS must facilitate skills underlying reading development in addition to resolving speech deficits in order to improve the spoke and written language outcomes of this population.

This 2-year longitudinal study investigated oral narrative ability in 14 children with mixed reading disability and their age-matched peers with typical development. The children were aged between 6;4 and 7;8 at the commencement of the study and assessments were administered individually to the children on three occasions over a 2-year period. Oral narratives were elicited in a personal narrative context (i.e., the child was encouraged to relate personal experiences in response to photo prompts) and a story retelling context. Oral narrative comprehension was assessed in a fictional story context through questions relating to story structure elements. Results indicated that the children with mixed reading disability demonstrated inferior oral narrative production and oral narrative comprehension performance compared to children with typical reading development at each assessment occasion. To further explore these children's difficulties in oral narrative ability, their performance was compared to a reading comprehension-age match control group at the third assessment trial. The results suggested the children with mixed reading disability had a specific deficit in oral narrative comprehension.

Ten children (aged between 7;11 and 9;2) with mixed reading disability participated in an oral narrative intervention programme that focused on enhancing children's story structure knowledge. The participants had all demonstrated persistent reading and oral narrative comprehension and production difficulties in a two-year longitudinal study prior to the intervention. A non-equivalent pretest—posttest control group design was used in which one group of five children was randomly selected to receive the intervention immediately and the other group of five children received the intervention delayed. A speech language therapist implemented the intervention in small group sessions twice weekly until 12 hours of intervention were completed. The results indicated significant treatment effects for oral narrative comprehension performance. Despite this improvement in children's ability to answer comprehension questions relating to story structure elements, there was little change in oral narrative production performance as a result of the intervention, and transfer to reading comprehension was not evident.

Purpose This study examined reading performance and morphological awareness development in 2 groups of children with speech impairment who had received differing types of intervention during their preschool years. Method The children were aged between 7;6 and 9;5 (years;months) at the time of the study. Group 1 ( n = 8) had received preschool intervention to facilitate phonological awareness and letter knowledge in addition to improving speech production. Group 2 ( n = 9) had received preschool intervention that focused solely on improving speech intelligibility. A third group of children with typical development (Group 3, n = 24) also participated in the study. Two reading tests were administered, one that assessed word recognition and another that assessed nonword decoding. Two tests of morphological awareness were also administered, one that tested the spelling of morphologically complex words and another that tested the oral generation of the base form of derived words. Results Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention (Group 1) performed significantly better on nonword decoding and on the spelling of morphologically complex words than did children with a history of speech impairment whose intervention focused on speech only (Group 2). The typically developing children (Group 3) were not significantly different from Group 1 on the spelling of morphologically complex words, and like Group 1, they outperformed Group 2 on this measure. However, Group 3 did not perform significantly better than Group 2 on nonword decoding, and both of these groups performed significantly more poorly than Group 1 on this measure. There were no group differences in the ability to orally generate base words. Conclusion Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention and who became proficient readers demonstrated an ability to use morphological awareness in the spelling process that was similar to that of their peers without speech impairment. These findings highlight the potential long-term benefits associated with early phonological awareness intervention.

Children with speech impairment are more likely to have difficulty learning to read compared with children with typical speech development. Researchers have hypothesized that a difficulty in accessing good-quality phonological representations of words stored in the memory may constrain these children's performance on phonological awareness tasks and subsequent early reading acquisition.The study investigated the following research questions. (1) Do preschool children with moderate or severe speech impairment show persistent difficulty on tasks designed to tap underlying phonological representations? (2) What is the relationship between performance on phonological representation tasks and measures of speech production, phonological awareness and early print decoding?Utilizing a longitudinal design, the performance of nine children (aged 3.09-5.03 years at initial assessment) with moderate or severe speech impairment and of 17 children of the same age with typical speech development were assessed on three occasions over a 12-month period. Assessments included receptive-based tasks designed to tap underlying phonological representations, speech production and phonological awareness measures.Children with speech impairment had greater difficulty judging correct and incorrect productions of words, and had difficulty in reflecting on the accuracy of newly learned non-words. Moderate correlations were observed between performance on phonological representation and phonological awareness tasks.Poorly specified underlying phonological representations will result in difficulties during listening, speaking and phonological awareness tasks, as well as create additional challenges during the decoding of written words for some children.

Purpose: This study explored the use of assessment tasks to examine underlying phonological representations in preschool children with speech impairment. The study also investigated the association between performance on phonological representation tasks and phonological awareness development. Method: The performance of 9 children (aged 3;09 [years;months] to 5;03) with moderate or severe speech impairment and 17 children of the same age with typical speech development was investigated on a range of novel receptive-based assessment tasks designed to tap underlying phonological representations. Results: Preschool children with speech impairment experienced more difficulty judging correct and incorrect speech productions of familiar multisyllable words and showed inferior performance in the ability to learn nonwords as compared to children without speech impairment. Performance on these tasks was moderately correlated with phonological awareness ability. Clinical Implications: Factors such as the precision and accessibility of underlying phonological representations of spoken words may contribute to problems in phonological awareness and subsequent reading development for young children with speech impairment. Receptive-based assessments that examine underlying phonological representations provide clinically relevant information for children with speech impairment.

Objective and Method: This article describes the profiles of a cohort of 77 New Zealand children with Down syndrome (aged between 5 and 14 years) in areas of particular importance to reading development, namely phonological awareness, word level reading and letter knowledge. Assessment of reading accuracy and comprehension of connected text, as well as further phonological awareness knowledge, was measured in 25 of the more advanced readers in this cohort. Results: The findings showed the expected development with increasing age for letter knowledge, phoneme level awareness and reading tasks. Forty-two percent scored significantly above chance on a phoneme identity task, and most of the participants knew more letter names than letter sounds. Only 17% of the group scored above chance on a rhyme oddity task, and rhyme knowledge was not significantly correlated with age. The majority of the participants could read 1 or more words in isolation and 6.5% demonstrated word level reading at a 7- to 8-year level. Phoneme awareness and letter sound knowledge significantly contributed to word level reading performance. In-depth assessment for the more advanced readers suggested the participants had a comparative strength in reading accuracy compared to reading comprehension and found phonological awareness blending tasks easier than phonological segmentation tasks. Only 1 participant demonstrated strength on a rhyme generation task. Conclusion: Discussion focuses on the implications of better understanding the differing language profiles of children with Down syndrome for enhancement of their educational success.

The present study evaluated the benefits of phonological processing skills training for children with persistent reading difficulties. Children aged between 9-14 years, identified as having a specific reading disability, participated in the study. In a series of three experiments, pedagogical issues related to length of training time, model of intervention and severity of readers' phonological processing skills deficit prior to intervention, were explored. The results indicated that improvement in poor readers' phonological processing skills led to a dramatic improvement in their reading accuracy and reading comprehension performance. Increasing the length of training time significantly improved transfer effects to the reading process. Children with particularly severe phonological processing skill deficits benefited from an extended training period, and both individual and group intervention models for phonological processing training proved successful. Implications for speech and language therapists are discussed.

The screening and monitoring of phonological awareness (PA) in the classroom is of great importance to the early identification and prevention of reading disorder. This study investigated whether a time-efficient computer-based PA screening and monitoring assessment (Com-PASMA) could accurately predict end-of-year reading outcomes for 5-year-old children in the first year of schooling. A longitudinal design was employed where the Com-PASMA was used to measure the PA ability of 95 5-year-old children at the start, middle, and end of the first year of school. Of this group, 21 children presented with spoken language impairment. Reading outcomes were formally measured after 1 year of schooling. School-entry measures of PA using the Com-PASMA (p < .001), in conjunction with language ability (p = .004), accounted for 68.9% of the variance in end-of-year word decoding ability. Sensitivity and specificity calculations demonstrated that the Com-PASMA was 92% accurate at school-entry, and 94% accurate by the middle of the school year in predicting reading outcomes at 6-years of age. Results suggest that a time-efficient computer-based method of screening and monitoring PA can support the early identification of reading difficulties in the first year of schooling.

Purpose Despite strong investment in raising literacy achievement for all children, significant inequalities in literacy outcomes continue to exist among some of the world's most advanced economies. This study investigated the influence of a short, intensive period of phonological awareness (PA) instruction implemented by classroom teachers on raising the literacy achievement of children with and without spoken language impairment (SLI). Method A quasi-experimental design was employed to measure the PA, reading, and spelling development of one hundred twenty-nine 5-year-olds. Thirty-four children received 10 weeks of PA instruction from their teachers. Ninety-five children continued with their usual reading program, which included phonics instruction but did not target PA. Results Children who received PA instruction demonstrated superior literacy outcomes compared to children who followed the usual literacy curriculum. Children with SLI showed significant improvements in PA, reading, and spelling but had a different pattern of response to instruction compared to children with typical language. Importantly, the number of children experiencing word decoding difficulties at the end of the program was 26% among children who followed the usual literacy curriculum compared to 6% among children who received the PA instruction. Implications A short, intensive period of classroom PA instruction can raise the literacy profiles of children with and without spoken language difficulties.

The efficacy of a program designed to remediate the spoken language deficits of students with specific reading disability was evaluated. The study investigated the learning of program content and the effects of training spoken language on reading accuracy and reading comprehension ability. The program consisted of two parts: one providing explicit instruction in phonological processing skills and the other providing training in semantic-syntactic skills. Ten students, aged between 10–12 years, who had demonstrated severe difficulties on written and higher-level spoken language tasks during the 2 years before the current study, participated in the intervention program. Subjects were randomly divided into two groups. Group 1 received the phonological training program first followed by the semantic-syntactic training program, and Group 2 received the programs in the reverse order. Subjects were trained for 12 hours over a 6-week period on each of the programs in their regular school environment. Results indicated that the phonological and semantic-syntactic deficits of students with specific reading disability can be remediated successfully. Improvement in these skills had significant positive effects on reading accuracy and comprehension performance. Training in phonological processing skills had a greater impact on reading accuracy than training in semantic-syntactic skills, but both programs contributed to improved reading comprehension ability. Results are discussed in terms of current theories of reading disability and implications for speech-language pathologists are addressed.

To investigate the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness intervention to improve the speech production, phonological awareness and printed word decoding skills for three children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) aged 7;3, 6;3 and 6;10. The three children presented with severely delayed phonological awareness skills before intervention.In consideration for the heterogeneity in the population with CAS, the study employed a multiple single-subject design with repeated measures. Baseline and post-intervention measures for speech, phonological awareness and decoding were compared. Each child received intervention for three 45-min sessions per week for 3 weeks (approximately 7 h of individual treatment). Sessions focused on developing phoneme awareness, linking graphemes to phonemes and providing opportunities for targeted speech production practice. Phonological awareness activities were linked with each child's speech production goals.Two participants significantly improved target speech and phonological awareness skills during intervention. These participants also generalized the phonological awareness skills from trained to untrained items and were able to transfer newly acquired knowledge to improved performance on a non-word reading task.The results suggest that integrated phonological awareness intervention may be an effective method simultaneously to treat speech production, phonological awareness and decoding skills in some children with CAS. The findings are discussed within the context of the phonological representational theory of CAS.

Purpose: This study investigated the phonological awareness and early literacy development of 12 children who presented at 3 years of age with moderate or severe speech impairment. The children’s response to early intervention that included specific activities to facilitate phoneme awareness and letter knowledge, in addition to improving speech intelligibility, was examined. Method: Using a 3-year longitudinal design, the children’s development in phonological awareness was monitored and compared to that of a group of 19 children without speech impairment. During the monitoring period from 3 to 5 years of age, the children with speech impairment received, on average, 25.5 intervention sessions. At 6 years of age, the children’s performance on phonological awareness, reading, and spelling measures was also compared to that of the 19 children without impairment as well as to a matched control group of children with speech impairment who had not received any specific instruction in phonological awareness. Results: The results indicated that (a) phoneme awareness can be stimulated in children with speech impairment as young as 3 and 4 years of age, (b) facilitating phoneme awareness development can be achieved concurrently with improvement in speech intelligibility, and (c) enhancing phoneme awareness and letter knowledge during the preschool years is associated with successful early reading and spelling experiences for children with speech impairment. Clinical Implications: The data provide evidence to support the clinical practice of integrating activities to develop phoneme awareness and letter knowledge into therapy for 3- and 4-year-old children with moderate or severe speech impairment.

The efficacy of phonological awareness intervention for children at risk for reading disorder has received increasing attention in the literature. This paper reports the follow-up data for participants in the Gillon (2000a) intervention study. The performance of twenty, 5-7-year-old New Zealand children with spoken language impairment, who received phonological awareness intervention, was compared with the progress made by 20 children from a control group and 20 children with typical language development approximately 11 months post-intervention. The children with spoken language impairment all had expressive phonological difficulties and demonstrated delay in early reading development. Treatment effects on strengthening phoneme-grapheme connections in spelling development were also investigated. The results suggested that structured phonological awareness intervention led to sustained growth in phoneme awareness and word-recognition performance. At the follow-up assessment, the majority of the children who received intervention were reading at, or above, the level expected for their age on a measure of word recognition. The phonological awareness intervention also significantly strengthened phoneme-grapheme connections in spelling as evidenced by improved non-word spelling ability. In contrast, the control group of children with spoken language impairment who did not receive phonological awareness intervention showed remarkably little improvement in phoneme awareness over time and the majority remained poor readers. The results highlight the important role speech-language therapists can play in enhancing the early reading and spelling development of children with spoken language impairment.

Purpose: This study investigated the efficacy of an integrated phonological awareness intervention approach for children with spoken language impairment (SLI) who demonstrated early reading delay. Ninety-one, 5- to 7-year-old New Zealand children participated in this study: 61 children with SLI and 30 children with typically developing speech and language skills. All of the children with language impairment exhibited expressive phonological difficulties and some also had delayed semantic and syntactic development. Method: The children with SLI participated in either: (a) an integrated phonological awareness program, (b) a more traditional speech-language intervention control program that focused on improving articulation and language skills, or (c) a minimal intervention control program over a 4 1/2-month time period. Results: Effects of the interventions on phonological awareness ability, reading performance, and speech production were examined. The children who received phonological awareness intervention made significantly more gains in their phonological awareness ability and reading development than the children receiving the other types of speech and language intervention. Despite significant delays in phonological awareness prior to training, children who received the phonological awareness intervention reached levels of performance similar to children with typically developing speech and language skills at post-test assessment. The phonological awareness intervention also improved the children's speech articulation. Clinical Implications: The findings suggest that integrated phonological awareness intervention may be an efficient method to improve phonological awareness, speech production, and reading development of children with SLI. Findings are discussed with reference to a speech-literacy link model.

Children with Down syndrome experience difficulty with both spoken and written language acquisition, however controlled intervention studies to improve these difficulties are rare and have typically focused on improving one language domain.To investigate the effectiveness of an integrated intervention approach on the speech, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness development of ten pre-school children with Down syndrome aged between 4;4 and 5;5.A multiple single-subject design was used to evaluate treatment effectiveness. Baseline and intervention measures for speech and pre- and post-intervention measures for letter knowledge and phonological awareness were compared. The intervention comprised three components: a parent-implemented home programme; centre-based speech-language therapy sessions, and 'Learning through Computer' sessions with a total intervention time of 20 hours over 18 weeks. Letter knowledge and phonological awareness activities were linked to each child's speech targets.Results indicated significant treatment effects on speech measures for all ten participants. Six of the ten participants showed increases on letter knowledge and nine showed increased awareness of initial phonemes in words but responses were not above binomial chance level (that is, 70% correct) for phonological awareness tasks. Individual results are presented and implications for parents and therapists are discussed.The findings of this study suggest an intervention approach that integrates speech, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness targets is effective in remediating speech error patterns at the single-word level in young children with Down syndrome. Phonological awareness and letter knowledge appeared to be stimulated through the intervention, but significant improvement above chance levels on untrained phonological awareness tasks was not evident. Follow-up investigation is necessary to determine longer-term outcomes.