Commentary on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Research Needs in the General Population.

[Figure: see text].

Best Practices for Building Interprofessional Telehealth: Report of a Conference.

The Arizona Biomedical Research Centre (ABRC) has funded a series of workshops and conferences since 2016 to build the capacity of local, tribal, and state agencies, healthcare delivery organizations, and non-governmental organizations to engage in meaningful research related to health disparities. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telehealth has dramatically increased, particularly in nursing, occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), and speech-language pathology (SLP). The purpose of this paper is to summarize the presentations and discussion from the conference titled "Telerehabilitation and Telepractice: An Interprofessional Conference to Build Connections and Best Practices," held remotely on March 4-5, 2021. Terminology and concepts from the conference were debated, modified, and refined, based on an interprofessional audience. Presenters at the conference, all leaders in their field, discussed the current status of telehealth in their professions, including best practices, challenges, future trends, and research needs.

Script Training Using Telepractice with Two Adults with Chronic Non-Fluent Aphasia.

Two male participants with chronic (> 2 years), non-fluent aphasia and their family members participated in script training using videoconferencing. Functional scripts were developed by people with aphasia (PWA) and their family members. Accuracy of scripts was measured by total target words produced per turn. Participant 1 with Broca's aphasia produced scripts with 0% accuracy pre-treatment and 87.5% accuracy post-treatment. Participant 2 with Transcortical Motor aphasia produced scripts with 20.2% accuracy pre-treatment and 63.5% accuracy post-treatment. Pre- and post-questionnaires for communication effectiveness and the use of telepractice for speech therapy indicated improvements in answering yes/no questions, participating in conversations with strangers, and increasing confidence and satisfaction with technology delivered treatment. The use of videoconferencing to deliver script training appears beneficial for individuals with chronic aphasia.

Provision of Speech-Language Pathology Telepractice Services Using Apple iPads.

This exploratory study evaluated the effectiveness of Apple (Cupertino, CA) iPad(®) (second generation) to deliver telepractice speech and/or language services. Five children and their parents/guardians, as well as four adult participants, received services for communication disorders in a university clinic setting over two academic semesters. The children met some of their speech goals and all of their language goals. All adult clients met some of their communication goals. Personal opinions about telepractice did not change statistically before and after therapy. The major problem identified during the study was skipping and/or freezing of images on the iPads during interactions with FaceTime(®) (Apple). Further studies are needed to investigate the feasibility of using Apple iPads in telepractice.

Facial Affect Recognition Training Through Telepractice: Two Case Studies of Individuals with Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury.

The use of a modified Facial Affect Recognition (FAR) training to identify emotions was investigated with two case studies of adults with moderate to severe chronic (> five years) traumatic brain injury (TBI). The modified FAR training was administered via telepractice to target social communication skills. Therapy consisted of identifying emotions through static facial expressions, personally reflecting on those emotions, and identifying sarcasm and emotions within social stories and role-play. Pre- and post-therapy measures included static facial photos to identify emotion and the Prutting and Kirchner Pragmatic Protocol for social communication. Both participants with chronic TBI showed gains on identifying facial emotions on the static photos.

Contributions of language and memory demands to verbal memory performance in language-learning disabilities.

UNLABELLED: The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of adults with language-based learning disorders (L/LD) and normal language controls on verbal short-term and verbal working memory tasks. Eighteen adults with L/LD and 18 normal language controls were compared on verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory tasks under low, moderate, and high linguistic processing loads. Results indicate no significant group differences on all verbal short-term memory tasks and verbal working memory tasks with low and moderate language loads. Statistically significant group differences were found on the most taxing condition, the verbal working memory task involving high language processing load. The L/LD group performed significantly worse than the control group on both the processing and storage components of this task. These results support the limited capacity hypothesis for adults with L/LD. Rather than presenting with a uniform impairment in verbal memory, they exhibit verbal memory deficits only when their capacity limitations are exceeded under relatively high combined memory and language processing demands. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will (1) understand the relationship between increased linguistic demands and working memory, and (2) learn about working memory skills in adults with language learning disorders.