Search

Background: There is evidence indicating that parent training programmes including interaction coaching of parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can increase parental responsiveness, promote language development and social interaction skills in children with ASD. However, there is a lack of research exploring precisely how healthcare professionals use language in interaction coaching. Aims: To identify the speech acts of healthcare professionals during individual video-recorded interaction coaching sessions of a Hanen-influenced parent training programme with parents of children with ASD. Methods & Procedures: This retrospective study used speech act analysis. Healthcare professional participants included two speech-language therapists and one occupational therapist. Sixteen videos were transcribed and a speech act analysis was conducted to identify the form and functions of the language used by the healthcare professionals. Descriptive statistics provided frequencies and percentages for the different speech acts used across the 16 videos. Outcomes & Results: Six types of speech acts used by the healthcare professionals during coaching sessions were identified. These speech acts were, in order of frequency: "Instructing," "Modelling," "Suggesting," "Commanding," "Commending" and "Affirming." The healthcare professionals were found to tailor their interaction coaching to the learning needs of the parents. A pattern was observed in which more direct speech acts were used in instances where indirect speech acts did not achieve the intended response. Conclusions & Implications: The study provides an insight into the nature of interaction coaching provided by healthcare professionals during a parent training programme. It identifies the types of language used during interaction coaching. It also highlights additional important aspects of interaction coaching such as the ability of healthcare professionals to adjust the directness of the coaching in order to achieve the intended parental response to the child's interaction. The findings may be used to increase the awareness of healthcare professionals about the types of speech acts used during interaction coaching as well as the manner in which coaching sessions are conducted.

Introduction: This small-scale study explored the feasibility of the Global TALES protocol in eliciting personal narratives in typically developing monolingual Irish children, using the online Zoom platform. We investigated children's performance on measures of productivity (total number of utterances; total number of words) and syntactic complexity (MLU in words). We also documented the topics children talked about in response to the six emotion-based prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol. Methods: Nineteen typically developing children (6 male, 13 female), aged between 10.0 and 10.11 years produced personal narratives in response to the Global TALES protocol. Given COVID-19 pandemic-related public health restrictions, the language samples were elicited using Zoom. All stories were transcribed and analysed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Qualitative content analysis was used to code the topics of the children's stories. Results: Sixteen participants responded to all prompts. One participant only responded to three of the six prompts. The prompt that was least successful in eliciting a response was the "problem" prompt; 15.7% (n = 3) of the children did not provide a response to this prompt. On average, children produced 40 utterances, although individual variability was high. On average, MLU was 8.7, ranging from 6 to 11. Children's topics closely resembled those reported in the Global TALES feasibility study despite the fact, the current study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most frequent topics were related to family (events, illnesses, relationships, siblings) and finding or fixing something. Conclusion: The Global TALES protocol was successful in eliciting personal narratives from 10-year-old Irish English-speaking children. Future larger scale studies are now needed to investigate if the results generalise to the wider Irish population with a view to create local benchmarks of personal narrative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disabled children experience many barriers to inclusion in society. Such barriers include public attitudes, knowledge, and perceptions towards disability. There is a specific gap in the literature examining the representation of disabled children in mass media, especially within an Irish context. Previous research primarily focuses on representations of disabled adults. Eighty-nine Irish broadsheet newspaper articles from a 12-month period were analysed using qualitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis. Although disabled children featured within the discourse, the child's voice was predominantly absent. Reports regarding the lived experience predominantly came from the third person, providing a non-authentic voice of disability in childhood. Articles highlighted some of the challenges faced by children e.g. difficulty in accessing educational placement. Opportunities for disabled children to share their experiences using their preferred communication means offer valuable insights into their lives. Media professionals should be supported in facilitating children to have their voice heard. Two methods were used to examine how disabled children were represented in three Irish newspapers and what types of words were used to represent them Although disabled children are featured within Irish newspaper articles, parents and people who work with disabled children tended to speak on their behalf Sometimes disabled children were labelled using impairment first terminology Irish newspapers highlight some of the challenges faced by disabled children e.g. accessing appropriate schools and social outlets Healthcare professionals have a role in advocating for and supporting disabled children to actively participate and have their voices and stories heard in the media Healthcare professionals have a role in educating media professionals to support communication with disabled children so as to deliver a first-person account of living with a disability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate how peers influence adolescent body image, and whether this influence was positive and/or negative from young peoples’ perspectives. One hundred and eleven adolescents aged 13 to 18 years from the Republic of Ireland participated in this study, in 17 focus groups. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Findings demonstrated that peers have an overwhelming negative impact on adolescent body image, and consequently, health. Both boys and girls revealed that the peer environment is characterized by a significant pressure to conform to appearance expectations, and deviations from such expectations lead to negative peer experiences. Positive peer influences were also revealed but to a far lesser extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an aspect of speech and language therapy practice that has not been studied extensively: published exemplars of professional report writing for speech and lan-guage therapists (SLTs), both in training and in practice. The research question addressed in this qualitative study is: 'How are clients' speech, language, communication, and feeding eating, drinking and swallowing (FEDS) abilities evaluated in diagnostic report writing exemplars? Specifically, the data consists of sample reports from the speech and language therapy educational literature, that is, texts that aim to demonstrate 'best practice' in relation to 'professional' report writing. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics, the study uses Appraisal Analysis to examine naturalised representations of clients in eighteen sample diagnostic reports. The findings show that the predominant form of evaluation of clients is negative appreciation, as evidenced by lexical choices including terms such as deficits, disorder, difficulties, and adequate, within normal limits, within functional limits. The emphasis in the report exemplars is primarily on problems or presenting complaints/concerns. Positive appreciation lexical items tend to have weak positive valence built into their semantic features. For instance, the strongest positive appreciation can be found in lexical items such as adequate, within normal limits, within functional limits, etc. An additional form of positive appreciation is expressed in the absence of a problem (e.g. There appeared to be no deficit with comprehension of concrete information). Positive evaluations of client communicative competency were not identified in the reports. Inclusion of affect or emotion was rare in the data set. Occasional instances of judgements were identified in the data. The focus of this paper is on appreciation in particular. This aspect of evaluation in the report exemplars results in reports in which the client's communicative competence and perspectives on his/her communication are excluded. The implications for the profession are discussed and alternative evaluation options which retain the same underlying meanings are explored. This paper contributes originality to the field by exploring an under-researched aspect of professional speech and language therapy practice which has applications for many healthcare professionals both in clinical practice and in clinical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]