A Cross-cultural Mixed Methods Investigation of Language Socialization Practices.

This embedded mixed methods study explores how cultural differences in language socialization practices influence parent-child verbal interactions. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System audio recorded families of children who are and are not deaf and hard of hearing in Canada and Vietnam. Software automatically calculated an average conversational turn count. Canadian families participated in more turns than Vietnamese families regardless of hearing status. Interviews with the children's caregivers provided context for these results. Within Vietnamese families, the language socialization practice "Intelligence" results in reduced opportunities for turn-taking, while the Canadian focus on creating personal "Identity" encouraged them. "Intelligence" encompasses Vietnamese participants' desire to ensure their children are learning and "Identity" expresses the Canadian participants' appeal to encourage individuality in their children. The findings suggest directions for the adaptation of intervention. It is the first known study to incorporate LENA results into a mixed methods design.

Using the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System to Investigate Cultural Differences in Conversational Turn Count.

Purpose: This study investigates how the variables of culture and hearing status might influence the amount of parent-child talk families engage in throughout an average day. Method: Seventeen Vietnamese and 8 Canadian families of children with hearing loss and 17 Vietnamese and 13 Canadian families with typically hearing children between the ages of 18 and 48 months old participated in this cross-comparison design study. Each child wore a Language ENvironment Analysis system digital language processor for 3 days. An automated vocal analysis then calculated an average conversational turn count (CTC) for each participant as the variable of investigation. The CTCs for the 4 groups were compared using a Kruskal-Wallis test and a set of planned pairwise comparisons. Results: The Canadian families participated in significantly more conversational turns than the Vietnamese families. No significant difference was found between the Vietnamese or the Canadian cohorts as a function of hearing status. Conclusions: Culture, but not hearing status, influences CTCs as derived by the Language ENvironment Analysis system. Clinicians should consider how cultural communication practices might influence their suggestions for language stimulation.

Language ENvironment analysis (LENA) system investigation of day long recordings in children: A literature review.

The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System is a relatively new recording technology that can be used to investigate typical child language acquisition and populations with language disorders. The purpose of this paper is to familiarize language acquisition researchers and speech-language pathologists with how the LENA System is currently being used in research. The authors outline issues in peer-reviewed research based on the device. Considerations when using the LENA System are discussed.

Imitation of Non-Speech Oral Gestures by 8-Month-Old Infants.

This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual presentation of lip and tongue smacks. Infants exhibited more lip gestures than tongue gestures following adult lip smacks and more tongue gestures than lip gestures following adult tongue smacks. The findings, which are consistent with predictions from Articulatory Phonology, imply that 8-month-old infants are capable of producing goal-directed oral gestures by matching the articulatory organ of an adult model.

Teachers' perceptions of the inclusion of children with hearing loss in general education settings.

A questionnaire was used to document the attitudes of 63 classroom teachers in Ottawa, Canada, toward inclusive education for students with hearing loss. The objective was to determine whether teachers had the attitudes, knowledge, and teaching skills proposed to underlie the effective inclusion of these students in regular classrooms. It was found that the teachers had favorable attitudes toward inclusion for students with hearing loss, felt confident in their ability to teach them, and were knowledgeable about the effects of hearing loss on language and learning. They also clearly indicated that their teacher education programs had insufficiently prepared them to teach these students effectively. The results highlight the need for increased emphasis on the unique educational requirements of students with hearing loss in teacher education programs, and for the provision of appropriate supports for both teachers and students to promote successful inclusion.

Medidas de evaluación del lenguaje espontáneo en niños hispanohablantes en edad preescolar / Spontaneous language measures in monolingual Spanish-speaking preschool children

En este estudio se han examinado algunas medidas del lenguaje espontáneo (SLM, por sus siglas en inglés) a partir de una narración en un grupo de niños hispanohablantes en edad preescolar. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una descripción del desarrollo de esas SLM y comprobar si muestran cambios significativos a lo largo del desarrollo lingüístico de los niños hispanohablantes. Los participantes en este estudio fueron 110 niños hispanohablantes monolingües divididos en 3 grupos de edad: de 3, de 4 y de 5 años. Se tomaron 2 medidas generales del lenguaje: el vocabulario receptivo con el TVIP (Test de vocabulario en imágenes) y la existencia de dificultades de habla y lenguaje por medio de un informe de los padres (PRSLP). Además, se utilizaron 4 medidas de lenguaje espontáneo extraídas de la muestra de lenguaje: Número de unidades T (NU-TU), Longitud media de unidades T (MLTU), Índice de subordinación (SUB-I), y Número de errores gramaticales por unidades T (GRE-TU). No se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los grupos en los resultados del TVIP y del PRSLP, lo que ponía de manifiesto que los grupos eran iguales en habilidades lingüísticas generales. Las medidas NU-TU, MLTU y SUB-I mostraron un perfil evolutivo ascendente, con diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los grupos. Estos datos son importantes para la caracterización del desarrollo típico del lenguaje en niños hispanohablantes, y pueden ser utilizados por logopedas y fonoaudiólogos para identificar trastornos de lenguaje en población de habla hispana (AU)

This study investigated spontaneous language measures (SLM) derived from a narrative task among Spanish-speaking (SS) preschool children to provide clinicians with developmental data on SLM and to examine whether SLM show changes in development for SS preschool children. A total of 110 monolingual SS children participated in this study. Children were divided into 3 age groups: 3, 4, and 5 years of age. Two general language measures were collected from the children: a standardized receptive vocabulary measure (Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes, TVIP), and a parental report of speech and language problems (PRSLP). In addition, four developmental language measures were calculated from a language sample collected using a story-retelling task: number of T-units (NU-TU), mean length of T-units (MLTU), subordination index (SUB-I), and grammatical errors per T-unit (GRE-TU). No statistically significant differences were found between the age groups on the standard scores for the TVIP or problem scores for the PRSLP, showing that the age groups were comparable. Increasing developmental patterns were found for NU-TU, MLTU and SUB-I. These data represent an important step in the characterization of typical language development for Spanish-speaking children. The use of the means and standard deviations obtained in this study may assist clinicians and researchers in the identification of potential language disorders in SS children (AU)

Medidas de evaluación del lenguaje espontáneo en niños hispanohablantes en edad preescolar / Spontaneous language measures in monolingual preschool Spanish-speaking children

En este estudio se han examinado algunas medidas del lenguaje espontáneo (SLM, por sus siglas en inglés) a partir de una narración en un grupo de niños hispanohablantes en edad preescolar. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una descripción del desarrollo de esas SLM y comprobar si muestran cambios significativos a lo largo del desarrollo lingüístico de los niños hispanohablantes. Los participantes en este estudio fueron 110 niños hispanohablantes monolingües divididos en tres grupos de edad: de 3, de 4 y de 5 años. Se tomaron dos medidas generales del lenguaje: el vocabulario receptivo con el TVIP (Test de vocabulario en imágenes) y la existencia de dificultades de habla y lenguaje por medio de un informe de los padres (PRSLP). Además, se utilizaron cuatro medidas de lenguaje espontáneo extraídas de la muestra de lenguaje: Número de unidades T (NU-TU), Longitud media de unidades T (MLTU), Índice de subordinación (SUB-I), y Número de errores gramaticales por unidades T (GRE-TU). No se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los grupos en los resultados del TVIP y del PRSLP, lo que ponía de manifiesto que los grupos eran iguales en habilidades lingüísticas generales. Las medidas NU-TU, MLTU y SUB-I mostraron un perfil evolutivo ascendente, con diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los grupos. Estos datos son importantes para la caracterización del desarrollo típico del lenguaje en niños hispanohablantes, y pueden ser utilizados por logopedas y fonoaudiólogos para identificar trastornos de lenguaje en población de habla hispan (AU)

This study investigated spontaneous language measures (SLM) derived from a narrative task among Spanish-speaking (SS) preschool children to provide clinicians with developmental data on SLM and to examine whether SLM show changes in development for SS preschool children. A total of 110 monolingual SS children participated in this study. Children were divided into 3 age groups: 3, 4, and 5 years of age. Two general language measures were collected from the children: a standardized receptive vocabulary measure (Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes, TVIP), and a parental report of speech and language problems (PRSLP). In addition, four developmental language measures were calculated from a language sample collected using a story-retelling task: number of T-units (NU-TU), mean length of T-units (MLTU), subordination index (SUB-I), and grammatical errors per T-unit (GRE-TU). No statistically significant differences were found between the age groups on the standard scores for the TVIP or problem scores for the PRSLP, showing that the age groups were comparable. Increasing developmental patterns were found for NU-TU, MLTU and SUB-I. These data represent an important step in the characterization of typical language development for Spanish-speaking children. The use of the means and standard deviations obtained in this study may assist clinicians and researchers in the identification of potential language disorders in SS children (AU)

Use of simulated patients for a student learning experience on managing difficult patient behaviour in speech-language pathology contexts.

A student learning experience about managing difficult patients in speech-language pathology is described. In 2006, 40 students participated in a daylong learning experience. The first part of the experience consisted of presentations and discussions of different scenarios of interpersonal difficulty. The theoretical introduction was followed by an active learning experience with simulated patients. A similar experience without the simulated patients was conducted for 45 students in 2010. Both years of students rated the experience with an overall grade and gave qualitative feedback. There was no significant difference between the overall grades given by the students in 2006 and 2010. The qualitative feedback indicated that the students valued the experience and that they felt it added to their learning and professional development. The students in 2006 also provided detailed feedback on the simulation activities. Students endorsed the experience and recommended that the learning experience be repeated for future students. However, the students in 2006 also commented that they had felt inadequately prepared for interacting with the simulated patients. A learning experience with simulated patients can add to students' learning. The inclusion of simulated patients can provide a different, but not automatically better, learning experience.

Bilingual dialogic book-reading intervention for preschoolers with slow expressive vocabulary development.

UNLABELLED: This study examined the feasibility of using a dialogic book-reading intervention for 22-41-month-old bilingual preschool children with expressive vocabulary delays. The intervention was provided in English and Spanish concurrently to an experimental group of six children, while six other children were in a delayed treatment control group. Thirty 15-min sessions using dialogic book-reading strategies were provided in each language in the children's homes, in English by the primary investigator and in Spanish by the children's mothers, who were trained in the techniques of dialogic book-reading. Results showed that the children in the intervention group learned significantly more target words in each language following the intervention than the children in the control group. The children in the intervention group were also able to produce the acquired words at the time of a follow-up test 6 weeks after the end of the intervention. The gains in the overall vocabulary of the two groups of children did not differ significantly. The children's mothers expressed satisfaction with the program, and confirmed the benefits of dialogic book-reading for their children's learning of target words. LEARNING OUTCOMES: The current paper describes a unique bilingual vocabulary intervention program for preschool children. Readers will gain an appreciation for the rationale for this intervention, and an insight in the implementation of dialogic book-reading. The main goal of the article is to provide the readers with the evaluation of the feasibility of this intervention.

Part of the problem or part of the solution? Communication assessments of Aboriginal children residing in remote communities using videoconferencing.

The current article describes the results, inter-scorer reliability, and potential sources of bias in conducting speech-language assessments with Aboriginal children in remote Ontario communities using videoconferencing. A main focus of this pilot study was to examine scoring bias, an issue that might arise with videoconferencing for any population but that could potentially interact with test and cultural bias to negatively affect the diagnosis of Aboriginal children. Assessments were administered by a remote-site speech-language pathologist (SLP), while an on-site SLP served as an assistant. Responses were scored simultaneously by both SLPs and the results and their degree of correspondence were compared. Percentage agreement ranged from 96-100% for language tests and from 66-100% for the articulation measure. Results suggest that videoconferencing can be an effective complement to service provision when procedures are organized so as to minimize bias in test administration and in the interpretation of test performance.

The impact of newborn hearing screening on communication development.

OBJECTIVE: Universal newborn hearing screening has become standard practice in many countries. The primary goal of this study was to assess the impact of early identification of permanent childhood hearing loss on oral communication development. SETTING: Participants were recruited from three clinical programmes in two cities in the province of Ontario, Canada. The study sample was born during two consecutive periods of newborn hearing screening. The first period, prior to 2002, was targeted on high-risk infants only, and the second, from 2002, included both high- and standard-risk infants (universal newborn hearing screening - UNHS). All children were enrolled in rehabilitation programmes focused on oral language development. METHODS: In this multicentre observational study, 65 children under the age of five years with onset of hearing loss before six months of age, 26 identified through systematic newborn screening (14 through targeted screening and 12 through UNHS) and 39 without screening, were assessed with an extensive battery of child- and parent-administered speech and language measures. The degree of hearing loss ranged from mild to profound with 22 children in the mild, moderate and moderately severe categories and 43 in the severe and profound categories. Data are reported for the three-year study period. RESULTS: The screened group of children was identified at a median age of 6.6 (interquartile range, 3.0-8.2) months and children referred from sources other than newborn screening were diagnosed at a median age of 16.5 (interquartile range, 10.2-29.0) months. Assessment of oral communication development showed no significant difference between the screened and unscreened groups. The communication outcomes for children identified before 12 months of age did not differ from those of later identified children. CONCLUSIONS: Systematic screening of newborn hearing results in earlier identification and intervention for children with permanent hearing loss. Superior language outcome following newborn screening was not demonstrable in the setting of this study.

Adaptation of the HINT (hearing in noise test) for adult Canadian Francophone populations.

The HINT provides an efficient and reliable method of assessing speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise by using an adaptive strategy to measure speech reception thresholds for sentences, thus avoiding ceiling and floor effects that plague traditional measures performed at fixed presentation levels A strong need for such a test within the Canadian Francophone population, led us to develop a French version of the HINT. Here we describe the development of this test. The Canadian French version is composed of 240-recorded sentences, equated for intelligibility, and cast into 12 phonemically balanced 20-sentence lists. Average headphone SRTs, measured with 36 adult Canadian Francophone native speakers with normal hearing, were 16.4 dBA in quiet, -3.0 dBA SNR in a 65 dBA noise front condition and -11.4 dBA SNR in a 65 dBA noise side condition. Reliability was established by means of within-subjects standard deviation of repeated SRT measurements over different lists and yielded values of 2.2 and 1.1 dB for the quiet and noise conditions, respectively.

The Benefits of Sound Field Amplification in Classrooms of Inuit Students of Nunavik: A Pilot Project.

PURPOSE: This pilot study investigated the potential benefits of sound field amplification for Inuit first and second language learners in a remote community of Nunavik, Northern Québec. Hearing screening results showed that 26% of students attending the local school had hearing loss due to otitis media. The study used speech intelligibility and attending behavior measures, as well as interviews, to examine the appropriateness of sound field amplification in the multilingual and multilevel instructional contexts found in the classrooms of Nunavik. METHOD: Sound field amplification systems were installed in three representative classrooms for a period of 3 months. Speech intelligibility of Inuttitut syllables was compared in amplified versus non-amplified conditions for 10 students with hearing loss and 10 age-matched normal hearing peers. Observations of four categories of attending behaviors for a separate set of seven students were carried out prior to the installation of the systems and with the systems in place. Teacher and student comments were collected during the study and after the study was completed. RESULTS: Results showed significant improvements in speech intelligibility scores for students with hearing impairment and normal hearing in the amplified condition. Total scores for on-task behavior improved for six of the seven students observed; all students demonstrated improvement in at least one category of attending behavior. Teacher and student comments identified numerous advantages of the amplification systems. IMPLICATIONS: Results point to the potential benefits of sound field amplification for multicultural populations that are similarly challenged by high rates of hearing loss, as well as for second language learners.