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This study aims to investigate the perception of phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures by 8 children (age range: 8;2–9;5) with developmental language disorders (DLD). Another 8 age-matched (age range: 8;4–10;0) typically developing (TD) children served as controls. The results demonstrated that children with DLD had lower performance than children with TD in the phonology and grammar tests, corroborating earlier findings, which reported difficulties of children with DLD in discriminating voicing contrasts and perceiving grammatical structures. However, both groups had similar performance in the semantic test. The absence of semantic atypicality can be explained possibly due to the simplicity of the sentences included in the test. The study offers important clinical implications for the identification and treatment of the disorder.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate risk factors for self-perceived voice disorders in teachers in Cyprus in order to determine the necessity for a preventative vocal hygiene education program which could improve their work performance. Methods: An online questionnaire was completed by 449 teachers. The questionnaire extracted data regarding risk factors that may contribute to the development of voice disorders, occupational consequences of voice disorders and vocal hygiene education, as well as, a self-perceived severity of a participant’s voice problem. Subjects were split into two groups, teachers with VDI ≤ 7 and teachers with VDI > 7. The chi-squared test was used to explore the differences in responses for each voice risk factor, occupational consequence and vocal hygiene education between the two groups. Results: Teachers in the VDI > 7 group were more likely to frequently experience nasal allergies and respiratory infections, coughing, throat clearing, stress and yelling, have shorter breaks between classes, use loud voice, use their voice to discipline students, teach above students talking, etc. than teachers in the VDI ≤ 7 group. Moreover, teachers in the VDI > 7 group were more likely to limit their ability to perform certain tasks at work and reduce their activities or interactions “3-5 or more days” annually due to voice problems. Conclusions: Health, voice use, lifestyle, and environmental factors may play a part in the development of voice disorders in teachers and have an impact on their job. Therefore, a preventative vocal hygiene education program is suggested., Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, Vol. 61 No. 2 (2020): 2020612

Download our protocol to elicit personal narrative language samples from children and adolescents using 6 simple prompts. Updates and translations are posted here.

Developing an international protocol for eliciting and analysing personal event narratives from children and adolescents.

Although most children learn language relatively quickly, as many as 10 per cent of them are slow to start speaking and are said to have developmental language disorder (DLD). Children with DLD are managed by a variety of different professionals in different countries, are offered different services for different periods of time and are given a variety of different therapeutic treatments. To date, there has been no attempt to evaluate these different practices. Managing Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Theory and Practice Across Europe and Beyond does just this, reporting on the findings of a survey carried out as part of the work of COST Action IS1406, a European research network. Law and colleagues analyse the results of a pan-European survey, looking at how different services are delivered in different counties, at the cultural factors underpinning such services and the theoretical frameworks used to inform practice in different countries. The book also provides a snapshot of international practices in a set of 35 country-specific "vignettes", providing a benchmark for future developments but also calling attention to the work of key practitioners and thinkers in each of the countries investigated. This book will be essential reading for practitioners working with children with language impairments, those commissioning services and policy in the field and students of speech and language therapy.

Public awareness of language impairment in childhood (Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)) has been identified as an important determiner of research and clinical service delivery, yet studies directly assessing public awareness are lacking. This study surveyed awareness across 18 countries of Europe., Method: A questionnaire developed by an international team asked whether respondents had heard of language impairment affecting children, what they thought its manifestations and causes were and where they had heard of it. Respondents were also asked whether they had heard of autism, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD and speech disorder. The questionnaire was administered to members of the public in 18 European countries. A total of 1519 responses were obtained, spanning 6 age groups, 4 educational level groups and 3 income level groups., Results: Across all but one country, significantly fewer people had heard of language impairment than any of the other disorders (or 60 % compared to over 90 % for autism). Awareness tended to be lowest in Eastern Europe and greatest in North-Western Europe, and was influenced by education level, age and income level. People in countries with overall low and overall high awareness differed in their views on manifestations and causes. People had heard of language impairment and autism the same way - most frequently through the media, including Internet, and less frequently through their child’s school or a medical professional., Discussion: The study confirms that awareness of language impairment and knowledge of the breadth of its manifestations are low. It also suggests opportunities for how to increase awareness, including greater media coverage of language impairment and more efficient use of venues such as schools and healthcare. Ways in which cultural and linguistic differences may influence public awareness efforts are discussed, including the translatability of clinical labels and scientific terms. These may impact the acceptance of a common term and definition across all countries. As awareness campaigns are gaining momentum, the findings of this study can serve as a baseline against which to compare future findings., peer-reviewed

Two-phase fluids consist of a dispersed phase suspended in a continuous medium with the former having the form of cells, particles, liquid droplets or gas bubbles. Understanding multiphase flows is important since they occur in many areas such as biological systems and industrial applications. Blood is a complex fluid which consists of various cells, proteins and other macromolecules. The main constituent of blood is the red blood cell (RBC) which accounts for approximately the 45% of the fluid at normal conditions and therefore blood can be approximated as a two phase fluid. The flow of blood at low shearing flow conditions is dominated by the effects of RBC aggregation (a reversible clustering of the cells) and other secondary effects such as network formation. This project aims at studying blood flow in simple shearing flows and to analyze the changes in the flow characteristics (velocity, shear rate profiles, etc.) caused by the phenomenon of RBC aggregation. More specifically this project aims at studying specific parameters affecting the flow properties of blood, measuring the mean velocity of RBCs and how the velocity is affected by the phenomenon of aggregation and studying the various aggregation states, and how the shear forces affect the aggregation. Specialized software packages and particle tracking techniques will be used for the analysis of the flow with the prospect of modeling the observed flow behavior. The main outcome of this present work is that the flow of blood at low shearing flow conditions is dominated by the effects of RBC aggregation and other secondary effects such as network formation. Analyzing the changes in the velocity profiles caused by the phenomenon of RBC aggregation and cell sedimentation can be support that the aggregation affects blood flow; in aggregative case of D70 and D2000 is observed medium for D70 and high aggregation for D2000 at low shear rates. Completed

Lahey & Edwards (1996, 1999) show that children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or word-finding difficulties (WFDs) are less accurate at naming pictures of nouns than age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD). It is suggested that these lexical difficulties are related to a breakdown at the level of the phonological word form: children with SLI/WFD are unable to process this information successfully to retrieve the target word (Bishop 1997, Edwards & Lahey 1998). However, no picture-naming study involving children with SLI has investigated the category of verbs. Nouns and verbs are highly variable in meaning, referring to objects and denoting states/ events, respectively. Since verb processing requires an understanding of relational concepts (nouns are often non-relational requiring single-object reference), they appear semantically more complex. Furthermore, a verb’s central meaning is linked to two kinds of information, thematic role assignment and argument structure. The same verb often has multiple meanings when accompanied by different nouns, making its underlying meaning less transparent. Beyond reporting whether Cypriot Greek-speaking children with SLI/WFDs are less accurate than age-matched peers on naming, the aims of this study are to: 1. look for any grammatical word class effects in SLI and WFD naming performances; 2. examine naming errors considering psycholinguistic models of word processing; 3. determine whether error types differentiate children with SLI and WFDs from peers; 4. determine effects of lexical/psycholinguistic variables on naming accuracies; 5. compare quantitative/qualitative differences between bilingual and monolingual SLI. Four groups participated: (i) 10 monolingual children diagnosed with SLI, (ii) 13 monolingual children with WFD, (iii) 30 six-year-old monolingual children with TLD, and (iv) 5 bilingual children with SLI. Inclusion criteria included no history of neurological, emotional or behavioural problems, hearing and vision adequate for test purposes, normal performance on screening measures of nonverbal intelligence or as reported by school psychologist, normal articulation, and no gross motor difficulties. The Greek Object and Action Test (Kambanaros 2003) designed to assess noun- and verbaccess/retrieval was used. The subtests contained 42 items each, stimuli were concrete inanimate object nouns and action verbs depicted by coloured photographs, such as (1) and (2). On the comprehension task, children were asked to point to the correct photograph from a set comprising the target object/action and two semantic distractors for each. For production, children were asked to name the object/action in one word. The results of the four subtests revealed no significant differences in comprehension between the 4 groups. Action names were significantly more difficult to retrieve than object names for TD and WFD children but not for children with SLI, who found both word types equally difficult. The results of simultaneous multiple regression analyses for the errors in naming compared to the psycholinguistic variables showed that age-of-acquisition, word imageability, and picture complexity (but not frequency or syllable length) affected picture naming performances for all groups. The error analysis further indicated that object and actions elicited different error types in all four groups of children and will be discussed in relation to (adult) models of lexical processing.

The authors assessed the impact of using the structure strategy as a base for an intergenerational Internet tutoring program in which older adults, with strategy training, provided Internet-based tutoring for 5th-grade students learning the strategy through an instructional Web site. Students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: structure strategy with tutors, structure strategy without tutors, and control. Both tutors and children in the structure strategy group with tutors increased strategy use, total and main idea recall, and self-efficacy. Program effects were apparent months after instruction. Posttest performance was related both to careful completion of Web lessons and amount of tutor feedback and content-related questions. Findings have implications for learning from computers, intergenerational tutoring, and reading instruction.