Together, these results indicate a reliable association between child maltreatment and poor language skills.

Children's narrative accounts of their experiences are central to the prosecution of perpetrators of alleged maltreatment. In this paper we describe the narrative language skills of children who were placed in out-of-home-care (OOHC) following substantiated maltreatment. It was hypothesized that (i) children with such histories would display narrative language skills that fall significantly below published age-expected norms, (ii) narrative language skills and core language skills would be positively correlated, and (iii) narrative language skills would be associated with measures of socioeconomic disadvantage. Method Eighty-three children (40 males and 43 females) aged 5;3 to 12;10 (M=7;9, SD=2;3) from English-speaking home backgrounds were included. They were assessed using the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004) which yields three scores, and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-4.) Core Language Score (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003). A measure of nonverbal intelligence (Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998) was also employed as a covariate. Results Forty-two percent (42%) of children scored in the below-average range on the Narrative Language Index Ability Index (a global score encompassing both comprehension and oral narration). The same proportion (42%) scored at or above age-expected levels on the narrative comprehension subtest, while only 19% scored at or above age-expected levels on the oral narration subtest. There was a signficiant correlation between CELF-4 Core Language Scores and the Narrative Language Index Ability Index. The education of the female carer was shown to have a statically significant positive relationship with overall NARRATIVE PERFORMANCE IN MALTREATED CHILDREN 3 narrative language scores, however household income and index of socioeconomic disadvantage were not significantly associated with narrative language scores. Conclusions Children who are victims of substantiated maltreatment should be considered high-risk for compromised ability to provide a narrative account of their experiences. The heterogeneity and often alarmingly poor oral narrative language skills of these children highlights the importance of police/human services training on best-practice forensic interviewing. Policy and practice implications for early intervention to support the language development needs of at-risk children are also discussed.

The current study explored the effectiveness of three interview protocols on the number and specificity of details provided by minimally verbal adults about a staged repeated event. Eighty adults (with expressive sentence length of around 5 words, matched on measures of expressive language and intellectual functioning) participated in three live events and were pseudo-randomly assigned to receive one of three interviews. The narrative-first protocol exhausted recall with open-ended questions before focused questions were asked, the intermixed protocol paired openended questions immediately followed by related focused questions, and the visual cues protocol mimicked the narrative-first protocol but with the use of cue cards. Overall, participants reported more correct information about the last occurrence in the intermixed and visual than narrativefirst interview. The narrative-first interview elicited fewer internal intrusions (experienced details attributed to the wrong occurrence) compared to the visual, but not the intermixed interview.Expressive language and intellectual function were positively associated with the reporting of event-related details. Providing information about repeated events was challenging for minimally verbal adults; reporting of generic event details was more frequent than occurrence-specific details, one-third of participants answered a question about event frequency incorrectly (by saying they participated once), and the remaining participants provided few details about the other occurrences when directed to do so. Findings were consistent with the broader repeated event literature on children and adult witnesses recalling repeated events. This research provides guidance for investigative interviewers on how best to obtain accurate event-related information from minimally verbal adults about their experiences.

This study examined the relationship between reading, spelling, and the presence of otitis media (OM) and co-occurring hearing loss (HL) in metropolitan Indigenous Australian children, and compared their reading and spelling outcomes with those of their non-Indigenous peers. OM and HL may hinder language development and phonological awareness skills, but there is little empirical evidence to link OM/HL and literacy in this population. Eighty-six Indigenous and non-Indigenous children attending pre-primary, year one and year two at primary schools in the Perth metropolitan area participated in the study. The ear health of the participants was screened by Telethon Speech and Hearing Centre EarBus in 2011/2012. Participants' reading and spelling skills were tested with culturally modified sub-tests of the Queensland University Inventory of Literacy. Of the 46 Indigenous children, 18 presented with at least one episode of OM and one episode of HL. Results indicated that Indigenous participants had significantly poorer non-word and real word reading and spelling skills than their non-Indigenous peers. There was no significant difference between the groups of Indigenous participants with OM and HL and those with normal ear health on either measure. This research provides evidence to suggest that Indigenous children have ongoing literacy development difficulties and discusses the possibility of OM as one of many impacting factors.

Everyday discourse is a common context for the difficulties experienced by people with acquired neurogenic communication disorders. While evidence is present for effective manualized interventions that directly improve the discourse skills in aphasia, this remains limited for people with cognitive–communication disorders. This proof of concept study used an in-depth case series approach to trial the NARNIA discourse intervention used successfully in aphasia to explore transferability of the protocol and effectiveness in people with cognitive–communication impairments. Four female participants with mild to moderate cognitive–communication difficulties (mean age: 52.8 years)—two following traumatic brain injury and two following vascular episodes—were recruited. Modifications were made to the protocol to accommodate the participant group. Cognitive-linguistic abilities, self-perceptions of communicative behavior and psychosocial recovery, and repeated discourse measures were assessed pre-, immediately post, and at 4 weeks following intervention, to measure treatment effectiveness. Significant gains were observed in quantity of output, informativeness, and efficiency of information across both everyday and narrative discourse genres for all participants. However, in contrast to previous studies, minimal change was observed in discourse macrostructure elements. Significant improvements were also observed in memory or working memory for two participants. This study provides preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of using an adapted protocol with people with cognitive–communication disorders, highlighting how adaptations may address the cognitive needs of this diverse clinical group.

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The authors are grateful to the children and parents who participated, and to Belinda Guadagno for assistance with data collection and analysis for the pilot study. Parts of the paper were

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