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Kathryn P. BournazosThe Effectiveness of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Use on the Articulation of an Adult Non-Native Speaker of Standard American English
The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of phonetic spelling treatment using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) on vowel articulation for a non-native speaker of English. Vowel articulation accuracy data were recorded for single words during treatment, as well as during connected speech tasks. Trends in the data revealed significant improvement in all measures, even with the varying nature of vocabulary in reading and conversational speech. The results of this study suggest that use of a phonetic symbol system, in this case IPA, helps to facilitate the learning of vowel production in a non-native speaker of English. Pp. 1-8.
*Melissa BurrowAugmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) in a Mainstream Environment: Increasing Academic and Social Participation for a Child with
Severe Communication DeficitsAn AAC program attempts to compensate, temporarily or permanently, for the impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions of individuals with severe communication disorders. The overall purpose of this type of intervention should be to maximize individuals' abilities to communicate and actively participate in events occurring at home and throughout their communities (ASHA, 2004). Therefore, AAC intervention for children should include treatment in the general education classroom and should focus on maximizing these individuals' abilities to communicate and actively participate within this context. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the Participation Model (Beukelmen & Mirenda, 1998) as a means of increasing social and academic participation levels in a child with severe communication deficits who is a user of AAC within the general education classroom. Pp. 9-20.
*Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech- Language-Hearing Association, November, 2006, Miami Beach, FL.
*Hannah M. EssenburgPersonalized Semantic Cueing Treatment for Naming Deficit in a Person with Conduction Aphasia
This study investigated the use of a personalized SFA cueing treatment for naming deficits in a person with conduction aphasia. The following questions were addressed: 1) Does the use of a personalized SFA cueing treatment to learn functionally relevant nouns improve naming of treated nouns for a person with conduction aphasia? 2) Does this generalize to other pictured nouns? This single-subject AB design study involved a 63-year-old male participant diagnosed with conduction aphasia. Naming treatment took place twice a week, for 30 minutes, in a small room with the clinician and one other subject. Interaction between the subjects during naming treatment took the form of encouragement after naming attempts and verbal or gestural commendation upon success. The statistical analyses give a mixed view of the effectiveness of this treatment. The Shewart chart trendline shows significant change, while the binomial test does not. The effect size indicates treatment effectiveness, but does not consider other improvements made by the participant throughout the treatment sessions such as decreasing number of cues. Confrontation naming improved for the treated nouns in this study, although it is unclear whether any generalization of the semantic feature cueing strategy took place. Pp. 21-29.
*Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech- Language-Hearing Association, November, 2006, Miami Beach, FL.
Angela L. HexumEffects of Focused Stimulation and Imitative Treatment on Grammar Development in a Language-Disordered Child
A single-subject design was used to examine the effects of focused-stimulation and imitative treatments on the acquisition of grammatical forms in a preschool child diagnosed with moderately severe language impairment. The copula "is" was targeted for treatment. It was expected that, following focused stimulation treatment, the participant would use copulas in spontaneous speech. However, after four weeks of treatment, the subject did not demonstrate significant gains in the use of the targeted form. Consequently, focused stimulation treatment was abandoned and an imitative therapy protocol was adopted. Over the remaining three weeks of treatment, generalized use of the copula still failed to emerge. These results suggest repeated presentation of stimuli may be inadequate to stimulate emergence of grammatical forms in some children. An underlying deficit in phonological storage and retrieval may account for this result, suggesting a need to tailor treatment to address this specific deficit. Pp. 30-39.
Erin LeongThe Effectiveness of Minimal Pair Therapy on Final Consonant Deletion and Consonant Cluster Reduction Errors in a Non-Native English Speaker
The correct production of past tense -ed verbs is a common difficulty for Chinese learners of English. This present ABC and AB quasi-experimental research investigation was designed to provide empirical evidence for the effects of minimal pairs therapy on the final consonant deletion and consonant cluster reduction errors of a 40 year-old non-native English speaker. Minimal pair therapy is a linguistically based treatment procedure that utilizes two identically sounding words with one distinctive feature (Saben & Ingham, 1991). Although treatment was effective in decreasing final consonant deletion errors and maintenance showed positive improvements, minimal pairs therapy did not decrease consonant cluster reduction errors in past tense -ed verbs. Pp. 40-49.
Alexandra NikulinaEffects of Direct Early Fluency Development Approach Based on Fluency-Shaping Technique On a Child With Mild Stuttering Disorder
This study investigated the effectiveness of direct early treatment of stuttering, based on fluency-shaping slowed, easy, relaxed speech technique, on fluency development at the carrier phrase level in a child with mild stuttering disorder. A 3 year old and 11 months old boy with mild stuttering disorder participated in the eight-week treatment, which included facilitating the acquisition of modeled slowed, easy, relaxed speech via the cueing hierarchy during structured play activities in the fluency supportive environment. The results of the study revealed slow and gradual decrease of the percent of stuttering events at the carrier phrase level; also, it was noted that the participant was showing the change in the type of his disfluencies, which indicated improvement towards more fluent speech. However, generalization to the spontaneous speech level did not occur suggesting that the evaluation of this treatment over a longer period of time is needed. Pp. 50-58.
John SantosThe Effects of Delayed Recall Task on Word Retrieval on Bbilingual Children with Naming Problems
Naming and word retrieval difficulties among children have been well documented. However, little research has been published to address its treatment. In this single case study experimental design, the effects of the delayed recall task was investigated in an 8 year old bilingual male elementary school student who exhibits a severe language delay with a moderate to severe auditory comprehension. The participant received the treatment to improve his word association using a multiple baseline across behavior design. The duration of response was added as a second dependent variable because the client's latency time varied for each associated response. The delayed recall task showed positive results as the subject showed improvements on both dependent variables. The results of this study indicate that the delayed recall task is effective in treating a child's naming and word finding difficulties, and it does so by increasing the child's elaborative word knowledge. Pp. 59-66.
*Steven M SchultzRemediating Echolalia in a Child with Autism
One of the most striking characteristics of children with autism is the frequency with which they repeat utterances addressed to them. This behavior is described as echolalia when it seems to occur in an automatic and apparently unthinking way. (Reed, 2005). Children with autism tend to echo when they do not understand what has been said to them or are when they lack the language skills to generate a novel response (Paul, 2001). Remediation of echolalia involves shaping the echo response into an appropriate verbal response, which can later be generalized into conversational speech. One approach to remediating echolalia in a child with autism is to use the partial models method wherein the clinician starts doing or saying something for the child, and then lets her finish the model herself. This study was designed to assess the effects of a modified Partial Model Method (Sussman, 1999) on the echolalia of an autistic child. Pp. 67-74.
*Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech- Language-Hearing Association, November, 2006, Miami Beach, FL.
Laurie VanceThe Use of Supportive Comments in Conversation with Peers by High Functioning Children with Autism
Social pragmatic deficits are one of the hallmarks of children with autism yet high functioning children with autism often have exceptional intellectual abilities that may enable them to learn important social skills. Conversation is one such social skill and the use of supportive comments is an important component of successful conversation. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether an increased use of supportive comments in conversation by a high functioning child with Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) would occur as a result of a cognitive building block approach to teaching this social skill. The child in this study, a member of a group autism therapy program, was taught 13 basic supportive comments during individual therapy once per week. Prior to treatment the subject did not use any supportive comments during conversations throughout the "check-in" portion of group therapy but by the end of treatment the subject consistently and independently used supportive comments with peers and clinicians. Pp. 75-85.
Meenakshi VellayapanEffectiveness of Gesture Recognition Treatment on Gesture Comprehension in an Individual with Wernicke's Aphasia
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a gesture recognition treatment program, based on functional gestures, on gesture comprehension in an 83 year-old female with Wernicke's Aphasia. A single subject AB treatment design was employed over a 7-week treatment period during which the participant was trained to understand functional gestures. The comprehension of gestures was measured in terms of the appropriateness of the participant's actions in response to the clinician's gestural commands. The various analyses conducted on the treatment data suggest that improvement in the participant's comprehension of gestures occurred as a result of the treatment. However, the limitations of this study warrant further research with more stringent experimental control. Pp. 86-96.
Editor's NoteVolume Thirteen of Student Research Papers in Communicative Sciences and Disorders continues the tradition of melding theory and practice into clinical research. Students in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at California State University, East Bay (formerly CSU Hayward) continue to demonstrate active learning about the clinical research process. Overarching goals of the course in which the students complete these projects are for students to begin their professional clinical responsibilities of becoming astute consumers and producers of clinical research. This endeavor dovetails with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Focused Initiative on Evidence-based Practice and the trend in speech-language pathology to demonstrate treatment efficacy and effectiveness.
Several of these student authors presented their work in poster format at the Student Research Forum in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders in December 2005 and at the Distinguished Lecture Series in Communicative Sciences and Disorders in May 2006. Three students presented their papers at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention in Miami Beach, FL in November 2006. Several other authors have submitted their work for presentation at the California Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention in 2008. All contributing authors are to be commended for their efforts and products.
The articles in Volume Thirteen continue the theme of evidence-based practice. Each author received Institutional Review Board approval for the project, designed the treatment protocol, and collected and analyzed data using current methods of single-case research design. The data emanating from these reports add evidence to our literature base and support the effectiveness of treatment techniques for individual participants. In the process of completing their studies and preparing their reports, the students learned valuable research skills and tools which can be transferred to their clinical settings, and will be among those individuals contributing to the increasing body of evidence on treatment outcome.
Volume Thirteen contains ten papers selected from 33 submissions. The topics address a broad range of communication disorders, including social communication in individuals with autism, articulation and language disorders in individuals who are bilingual, treatment for aphasia, and AAC. All of the research projects were created, implemented, analyzed and written during the Fall Quarter 2005.
The reports in Volume Thirteen are distributed on a limited basis to interested individuals and to CSD departments at sister institutions. Individual papers from this and previous volumes may be ordered through inter-library loan. Please direct requests to the Library at California State University, East Bay. Abstracts of this and previous volumes may be accessed online at http://class.csueastbay.edu/commsci/abtstres.htm.
It is my pleasure to know these talented individuals
July 2006 Janet Patterson, Editor
Ordering information:
To order any of the above papers, send a request through regular inter-library loan to California State University, East Bay Libraries, Hayward, California 94542. Include author, title, volume, call number and page numbers.
