Working Papers in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. Volume XIII.

Six papers contributed by graduate students report on studies that focused on the application of theory to practice in speech-language pathology and audiology. The first study revealed the ability of an autistic child to adapt to conversational partners of various ages and linguistic abilities. In the second paper, a language impaired child's communicative interactions were studied in the clinic and the home, and home samples yielded the highest mean length of utterances and the greatest total output of language. In the third study, five hearing impaired adults demonstrated the effectiveness of the Hearing Performance Inventory in measuring changes after amplification. The fourth study explored, via brain stem evoked response audiometry, the frequency of interear asymmetries occurring in peak latency and amplitudes in 15 normal hearing Ss. Also concerning auditory brain stem response (ABR), the fifth study found that head size is a factor to be considered in using ABR to make a differential diagnosis. The final study devised a comprehension task within a naturalistic context to test the ability of preschoolers to understand synthetic speech. (CL)