The goal of the current study was to examine the feasibility of a telepractice intervention to improve phonological awareness skills in children with hearing loss as compared to a conventional in-person intervention. Twenty children with hearing loss participated in this study. Two groups of ten children each received a supplemental phonological awareness intervention either via telepractice or an in-person service delivery model. Within each of the two groups, five children were enrolled in preschool or kindergarten and five children were enrolled in first or second grade. The two groups of children demonstrated similar phonological awareness, non-verbal IQ, and vocabulary skills during pre-tests. After a 12-week intervention children with hearing loss showed improved phonological awareness skills as measured by a standardized post-test. No significant differences were found between the performance of the telepractice group and in-person group. Nor was a significant interaction found between the two age groups (PreK/K vs. 1st /2nd grade) and the two types of service delivery models (in-person vs. telepractice). The results suggest that a telepractice service delivery model is feasible for young children with hearing loss, and that telepractice may be as effective as in-person intervention in improving phonological awareness skills.
Individuals with little or no functional speech as a result of autism spectrum disorders frequently rely on aided and unaided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) symbols and signs to augment or replace natural speech. This has led investigators to identify the variables that are responsible for the acquisition and communicative use of graphic symbols and manual signs. The overall aim of this article is to evaluate the role of symbol, referent, and instructional variables on the acquisition of AAC symbols by individuals with autism and severe speech and language impairments.
This multiple baseline study investigated to what extent individuals with autism would learn to operate a speech generating device (SGD) to request a preferred object by observing a video model. The intervention consisted of each participant viewing a 10- to15-s video model that demonstrated the requesting of a preferred object using a SGD. Baseline, intervention and generalisation were all implemented within a public school, special education classroom. After viewing the video model, two participants displayed the ability to request preferred items using the SGD without prompting or cues. However, the participants did not generalise requesting using the SGD to a second preferred object. The study provides preliminary evidence that video modelling can be used to teach individuals with autism and severe cognitive disabilities requesting skills using an SGD.
Although providing visual feedback with ultrasound is becoming more and more popular among speech-language pathologists, it is still not widely used, perhaps because many speech-language pathologists are unfamiliar with its application to treatment of speech sound disorders. This report introduces basic information on ultrasound for new users and summarizes existing studies conducted with ultrasound to provide clinical evidence for speech treatment. This report also presents a clinical case using ultrasound and discusses a treatment protocol for establishing postvocalic /r/ to illustrate an example of how ultrasound was used in a clinical setting.
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