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This paper reports on findings from a doctoral study that explored the efficacy of a home-based literacy intervention in advancing preschool children’s foundational literacy skills. Two key cognitive skills critical for early literacy success were examined in particular, those being phonological awareness, and elements of oral language, including vocabulary knowledge, which is the specific skill discussed in this paper. The intervention consisted of two main areas of focus – one, named Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR), concentrated on stimulating children’s oral language skills, and the other, called Stimulating Sound Sensitivity (SSS), aimed to generate shifts in children’s phonological awareness abilities. Data sets were gathered with eight children and their families over a twelve-week period, which corresponded with the duration of the intervention. A final set of data was collected six months after the intervention ceased. The study employed a crossover design, where four children and their families participated in the RRR component of the intervention, which ran for six weeks, followed by the SSS portion of the intervention. The remaining four children participated in the same parts of the intervention but in reverse order of delivery. The crossover approach established a control in the study, and allowed the effects of each part of the intervention on the children’s early literacy skills to be more clearly revealed. This paper reports on two children – one from each cohort – whose results are evidence of the efficacy of the intervention in advancing key aspects of children’s foundational literacy skills. Key Findings The children who participated in the RRR component of the intervention first showed improvements in vocabulary knowledge mid-intervention. Conversely, the children who participated in the SSS component first made gains in their phonological awareness skills before the other cohort of children did. These findings have implications for early childhood educators and families concerning the strategies adopted by these stakeholders which aim to foster strong cognitive skills critical for literacy success.

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.

Increasing evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to opioids can adversely influence brain development, yet, limited data exists on the effects of opioid-exposure on preschool language development. Our study aimed to characterize the nature and prevalence of language problems in children prenatally exposed to opioids, and the factors that support or hinder language acquisition. A sample of 100 children born to pregnant women in methadone maintenance treatment and 110 randomly identified non-exposed children were studied from birth to age 4.5 years. At 4.5 years, 89 opioid-exposed and 103 non-exposed children completed the preschool version of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-P) as part of a comprehensive neurodevelopmental assessment. Children prenatally exposed to opioid had poorer receptive and expressive language outcomes at age 4.5 years compared to non-exposed children. After adjustment for child sex, maternal education, other pregnancy substance use, maternal pregnancy nutrition and prenatal depression, opioid exposure remained a significant independent predictor of children’s total CELF-P language score. Examination of a range of potential intervening factors showed that a composite measure of the quality of parenting and home environment at 18 months and early childhood education participation at 4.5 years were important positive mediators.

This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was still evident 6 years after the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011. The teachers implemented the intervention at the class or large group level for 20 h (four 30-min sessions per week for 10 weeks). A stepped wedge research design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Children with lower oral language ability made significantly more progress in both their phonological awareness and targeted vocabulary knowledge when the teachers implemented the intervention compared to progress made when teachers implemented their usual literacy curriculum. Importantly, the intervention accelerated children’s ability to use improved phonological awareness skills when decoding novel words (treatment effect size d = 0.88). Boys responded to the intervention as well as girls and the skills of children who identified as Māori or Pacific Islands (45.5% of the cohort) improved in similar ways to children who identified as New Zealand European. The findings have important implications for designing successful teacher-implemented interventions, within a multi-tier approach, to support children who enter school with known challenges for their literacy learning.

Parents’ (n = 113) opinions of early storybook reading (ESR) with their baby or toddler (newborn to three-years-old) and their home reading practices were explored using a questionnaire. Parents from both a more advantaged socioeconomic area and less advantaged socioeconomic area were included. The results signified that parents value ESR and participate in regular ESR with their baby. However, data suggests that some parents have difficulty choosing suitable books and have limited knowledge of how to promote early communication skills while sharing the storybook with their baby. Parents from the less advantaged area reported a lower frequency of ESR, owned fewer children’s books and demonstrated more difficulties with book selection compared with parents from a more advantaged area. Future research targeting education on book selection and strategies to facilitate babies’ early communication development during ESR may be beneficial to maximise the effectiveness of ESR on young children’s language and social skill development. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood—Volume 42 Number 2 June 2017.

PurposeIn New Zealand, Pacific immigrants are among the fastest growing ethnic minorities but, as a group, they are also at most risk of not realising their literacy and educational aspirations critical for achieving their human potential and wellbeing. This may be due, in part, to a misalignment in the shared understanding of academic success between students, parents and their teachers within largely non-Pacific school environments. This study aims to report levels of agreement in child-mother, child-teacher, and mother-teacher perceptions of Pacific children's academic performance at age 6 years.MethodA cohort of Pacific infants born during 2000 in Auckland, New Zealand, was followed as part of the Pacific Islands Families study. Maternal home interviews were conducted at 6-weeks and 6-years postpartum, together with separate child and teacher elicitations at 6-years. Pairwise agreement of academic performance responses was assessed using Cohen's weighted κ statistic, along with symmetry and marginal homogeneity tests.ResultsAt 6-years, information was available for 1,001 children and their mothers, and teachers' evaluations for 549 children. Negligible to slight agreements and significant asymmetry were found between the child-mother (κ = 0.03, 95% CI: -0.03, 0.09), child-teacher (κ = 0.04, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.08), and mother-teacher (κ = 0.07, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.11) pairwise assessments-with children and mothers more likely to rate Pacific children's academic performance higher than their teachers. Significantly higher concordances with teacher assessments were found among mothers with post-secondary education, proficiency in English, and stronger alignment with New Zealand culture and for children who performed strongly on a standardised measure of performance relative to their peers.ConclusionStrategies are needed to align Pacific students' and parental perceptions with documented educational achievement outcomes and to facilitate more effective and timely feedback on achievement results and home-school communication. The importance of removing language, cultural and socio-economic barriers to achieving shared understanding of academic performance between teachers and families is highlighted.

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.

Increasing evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to opioids may affect brain development, but limited data exist on the effects of opioid-exposure on preschool language development. Our study aimed to characterize the nature and prevalence of language problems in children prenatally exposed to opioids, and the factors that support or hinder language acquisition. A sample of 100 children born to pregnant women in methadone maintenance treatment and 110 randomly identified non-exposed children were studied from birth to age 4.5 years. At 4.5 years, 89 opioid-exposed and 103 non-exposed children completed the preschool version of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-P) as part of a comprehensive neurodevelopmental assessment. Children prenatally exposed to opioids had poorer receptive and expressive language outcomes at age 4.5 years compared to non-opioid exposed children. After adjustment for child sex, maternal education, other pregnancy substance use, maternal pregnancy nutrition and prenatal depression, opioid exposure remained a significant independent predictor of children’s total CELF-P language score. Examination of a range of potential intervening factors showed that a composite measure of the quality of parenting and home environment at age 18 months and early childhood education participation at 4.5 years were important positive mediators.

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.

Literacy success lays the foundation for children's later educational, health, and well-being outcomes. Thus, early identification of literacy need is vital. Using data from New Zealand's national preschool health screening program for fiscal years 2010/2011-2014/2015, demographic and health variables from 255,090 children aged 4 years were related to whether they received a literacy intervention in early primary school. Overall, 20,652 (8.1%) children received an intervention. Time-to-event analysis revealed that all considered variables were significantly related to literacy intervention (all p < .01), but the full model lacked reasonable predictive power for population screening purposes (Harrell's c-statistic = .624; 95% CI [.618, .629]). Including more direct literacy measures in the national screening program is likely needed for improvement.

Aim: Pacific children fare poorly on health and educational outcomes, including literacy. Early interventions are considered critical in reducing educational disparities. A prediction model was constructed to analyse the factors associated with Pacific children's English receptive vocabulary, an important component of English language development. Methods: A birth cohort study of Pacific children was used to construct a classification tree model and predict the proportions of Pacific children who performed strongly in a standardised test of English receptive vocabulary at 6 years of age (n = 1019). Classification trees were constructed using 10-fold cross-validation (CV) and pruned using the one-standard-error rule. Prediction errors were directly estimated using leave-one-out CV. Results: Analyses of misclassification errors from the pruned model gave false negative and positive rates of 19 and 19% from re-substitution and 54 and 21% from leave-one-out CV estimation, respectively. Of the predictors, maternal acculturation, small birthweight and performance in early developmental screening test at 4 years of age were found to have the highest goodness of split. Conclusions: The cultural environment to which Pacific children were exposed in early childhood, indicated by the maternal acculturation, was more crucial in distinguishing children with strong English-receptive vocabulary skills than socio-economic or prenatal conditions. This highlights the importance of integrating the cultural environment into designing measures for facilitating Pacific children's language development.

Ensuring teacher and speech and language pathology graduates are prepared to work collaboratively together to meet the diverse language literacy learning needs of children is an important goal. This study investigated the efficacy of a 3-h inter-professional education program focused on explicit instruction in the language skills that underpin early reading and spelling acquisition. The combined program incorporated student teachers and student speech and language pathologists (SLPs) working together on case-based instructional planning supplemented with structured opportunities for the groups to share their respective expertise in curriculum and linguistic knowledge. Student teachers (n = 18) and student SLPs (n = 27) were randomly assigned to this combined intervention or a comparison intervention that replaced the structured opportunities to share curriculum and linguistic knowledge with spending time together focused on non-language/literacy based activities. Before-and-after comparisons indicated that only the students in the combined condition increased their linguistic/curricular knowledge (p

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.

This study investigated the emergent literacy and language skills of four-year-old children in New Zealand during their kindergarten year prior to school-entry. A total of 92 four-year-old children from a range of socio-economic areas were seen individually at their local kindergarten and were assessed on code-related measures (letter name knowledge, initial phoneme awareness, emergent name writing) and meaning-related measures (story comprehension and retelling ability). Approximately, 60% of the parents completed a home literacy questionnaire. Regression analyses showed no effect for age on any of the code-related measures. In contrast, significant effects for age were found on story comprehension and retelling ability. There were no differences in performance based on gender with two exceptions: Girls performed better than boys on letter name knowledge and early name writing. Questionnaire results suggested literacy activities were valued in the home environment with most parents reporting reading to t...

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.

Literacy success is critical to unlocking a child’s potential and enhancing their future wellbeing. Thus, the early identification and redressing of literacy needs is vital. Pacific children have, on average, the lowest literacy achievement levels in New Zealand. However, this population is very diverse. This study sought to determine whether the current national health screening programme of pre-school children could be used as an early detection tool of Pacific children with the greatest literacy needs. Time-to-event analyses of literacy intervention data for Pacific children born in years 2005–2011 were employed. A multivariable Cox proportional hazard model was fitted, and predictive assessment made using training and test datasets. Overall, 59,760 Pacific children were included, with 6,861 (11.5%) receiving at least one literacy intervention. Tongan (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.33; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.23, 1.45) and Cook Island Māori (HR: 1.33; 95% CI: 1.21, 1.47) children were more likely to receive an intervention than Samoan children; whereas those children with both Pacific and non-Pacific ethnic identifications were less likely. However, the multivariable model lacked reasonable predictive power (Harrell’s c-statistic: 0.592; 95% CI: 0.583, 0.602). Regardless, important Pacific sub-populations emerged who would benefit from targeted literacy intervention or policy implementation.

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 examined the effectiveness of an enhanced classroom listening environment through a sound field amplification (SFA) system combined with phonological awareness (PA) intervention to improve children's PA and early word reading ability. Participants were 38 New Zealand children from two primary school Year 2 classes in a low socioeconomic area. PA and word reading were measured three times over 10 weeks (term 1) prior to SFA installation in both classrooms, as well as pre- and post-intervention. In term 2, children in class 1 were randomly assigned to receive SFA and an 8-week class-based PA program. Class 2 received SFA only. A learning effect for all children occurred during the first phase of the baseline period under normal classroom listening conditions. However, a plateau was reached for most children between assessment times 2 and 3 prior to intervention. Following intervention, class 1 demonstrated a significant difference compared to class 2 in PA performance. Visual data analyse...

Children with Down syndrome face considerable challenges in developing spoken and written language which can have serious implications for their social, emotional, and academic success. Given the persistent nature of these challenges it is vital that interventions to support this development address both immediate and longer term intervention effects. A case study evaluation was used to describe the speech, phonological awareness, and literacy development of Ben (pseudonym), a boy with Down syndrome aged 5;2 at the start of the study. Ben was one of 10 pre-school children with Down syndrome who participated in an integrated phonological awareness intervention designed to simultaneously facilitate speech, phonological awareness, and early literacy skills. The intervention was conducted over 18 weeks. Ben's speech and literacy development were monitored up to the age of 8;0 (34 months post pre-school intervention). The evaluation revealed continued speech development characterized by increased speec...

The purpose of this research was to examine the expressive morphosyntactic development of three children aged 6 and 7 years with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and language impairment. Participants' performance in normative assessments tapping expressive and receptive morphological and/or syntactic skills was examined. Their mean length of utterance, finite verb morphology, personal pronoun and irregular past tense use in a personal narrative task was also examined on three occasions over a year around participation in a phonological awareness intervention. At initial assessment the participants exhibited expressive morphosyntactic deficits when compared with a normative database and showed relative strength in receptive versus expressive morphosyntactic ability on standardized language assessment. The results showed that participants' expressive morphosyntactic difficulties were ongoing and could not be explained solely by their speech errors. The findings add to the growing body of evidence i...

This study examined the phonological awareness skills of 699 education professionals and paraprofessionals working in New Zealand primary schools. Performance in a phonological awareness test was compared across speech-language pathologists (SLPs, n = 34), primary school teachers (n = 208), teacher aides (n = 49), Resource Teachers of Literacy (RTLits, n = 80), Resource Teachers of Learning and Behavior (RTLBs, n = 26), early childhood educators (ECEs, n = 51), third year College of Education students (3YRBT, n = 98), and first-year College of Education students (1YRBT, n = 153). The results indicated large variability in New Zealand educators' capacity to segment words into sounds. SLPs performed at near ceiling (98% accuracy), whereas junior school teachers performed at 74% accuracy, teacher aides at 63%, ECEs at 56%, RTLits at 89%, RTLBs at 78%, 3rd year College of Education students at 68%, and 1st year College of Education students at 55%. The data suggest professional development in phonolog...

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.

The longer-term effectiveness of phonological awareness intervention for children with reading difficulty is likely to be influenced by the quality of general classroom instruction. This descriptive project used a case study design to follow the literacy progress of three children aged six and seven years with speech and language impairment after responding strongly to an intensive phonological awareness intervention. The study analysed the opportunities provided in the children's general classroom programme within the New Zealand English curriculum for ongoing facilitation of phonological awareness skills. Findings indicated that the classroom environment provided multiple opportunities for implicit teaching of phonological awareness skills which may have contributed to the children's ability to maintain skills taught within the intervention. Children with significant reading difficulties underpinned by poor phonological awareness are likely to require ongoing access to intensive intervention in addition to quality classroom instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Phonological awareness (PA) ability at school entry is a powerful predictor of early literacy success. Equipping classroom teachers with tools to accurately and efficiently monitor young children's PA development to help inform reading and writing instruction is critical for raising literacy achievement for all children. Computer-based assessment (CBA) is one conduit through which time-efficient monitoring of PA can be achieved within busy curricular environments. This study investigated whether computer-based administration of PA test content could generate equivalent results to paper-based administration with an examiner. Methods: Thirty-three children aged between 4 years, 10 months and 5 years, 0 months participated in the study. Twenty-one children presented with typical speech and language development and 12 children presented with moderate-severe speech delay. A crossover research design was used whereby participants were allocated to one of two experimental assessment conditions....

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.

Background: The link between spoken and written language has prompted the development of phonological awareness interventions for children with literacy difficulties. Aims: This study examined the longer term effects of an integrated phonological awareness intervention for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Method: Twelve children aged 4 to 7 years with CAS participated in the 18-hour intervention, administered over 12 weeks. Speech, phonological awareness, letter-knowledge, word decoding, and spelling were assessed 6 months following completion of the intervention and compared to preintervention and postintervention scores. The rate of development in these measures were compared to 12 children with typical development. The reading accuracy and comprehension of children with CAS in a connected reading task was examined. Results: The improvement in the participants' phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling immediately postintervention was maintained. Further accelerated growth ...

The present study sought to investigate word and segment duration and variability in four preschool-aged children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and four control children with typical development. Group comparisons revealed that the children in the SSD group produced significantly longer word and vowel durations than their peers. No group differences were found for any of the variability measures. The results are suggestive of delayed neuromotor maturation in the children in the SSD group. The findings are interpreted as lending support to the biological theory of phonological development (Kent, 1992), which suggests motor involvement in speech development in children.

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.

This study investigated whether phonological awareness intervention is effective for children at risk when administered in a small group setting and whether such intervention is more effective following a period of language stimulation. A group of 20 children aged between 5;05 and 7;08 who attended a school in New Zealand with a government-defined low socioeconomic status participated in the study. These children displayed poor phonological awareness and weakness in some aspect of their spoken semantic and syntactic language development prior to intervention. The participants were randomly assigned to intervention groups. Group 1 received 16 hours of phonological awareness intervention, followed by 16 hours of language intervention, whereas Group 2 received the same interventions in the reverse order.The results indicated that the phonological awareness intervention implemented was effective in rapidly accelerating the participants' phonemeblending, segmentation, and manipulation skills and signi...

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.