Arthur M. Guilford

Work-Related Cumulative Trauma Disorders and Interpreters for the Deaf

With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), increasing numbers of interpreters for the deaf are being employed in education, industry, or other settings. Professional interpreters are at risk for developing cumulative trauma disorders due to the nature of their work which involves rapid repetitive movements of the arms and hands. One hundred forty-five interpreters for the deaf responded to a survey questionnaire designed to identify their work experiences and development of physical pain/discomfort related to work. Incidence and duration of pain/discomfort is positively correlated with hours worked and time of onset. Regardless of age, training, or work experience, 119 (82%) of these respondents experienced disabling pain/discomfort during and following work. Thirty-nine (33%) of the 119 respondents indicated onset of pain or discomfort in the wrist and hand. These data suggest that interpreting for the deaf may result in debilitating pain/discomfort in hands, arms, shoulders, and back if the interpreter is not appropriately prepared to compensate for physical and attentional stresses. Implications include the need to provide periods of rest while working and to provide training for students learning to interpret for the deaf to minimize physical stress while working.

Avoiding the sequela associated with deformational plagiocephaly.

Over the last decade, infants with deformities in the craniofacial skeleton have been seen at our craniofacial center, and similar observations have been noted in infants seen for evaluation and management after birth, where there are not any evident pathological findings such as craniosynostosis or another known genetic disorder. The known condition of deformational plagiocephaly has been related to a sequela of the infants being placed on their back for sleep. The change in the position of the infants to sleep on their back was altered from the traditional position, where infants were placed in the prone position for many decades in the past in the Western world. A special study was initiated to compile meaningful data to help those in the field pursue their treatment of affected children in a systematic and comprehensive manner. Avoidance of unnecessary surgery was essential in those children unless the deformational condition persisted and was not resolvable by nonsurgical means and change in the cultural habitat.

In search of causative factors of deformational plagiocephaly.

This is a preliminary study of 37 infants with deformational plagiocephaly. In this first effort to create a profile of factors that may contribute to the onset and progress of developmental plagiocephaly, parents were interviewed concerning selected practices before and immediately after the birth of their infants. Results of the study do not reveal a clear or concise pattern of factors that may contribute to this condition. There needs to be additional research on the benefits and potential hazards of sleep position to infants as one of the factors that may contribute to deformational plagiocephaly.

Auditory processing and anxiety in stutterers

This study utilized the Synthetic Sentence Identification/Ipsilateral and Contralateral Competing Message subtests and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to examine auditory processing deficits, anxiety levels, and the interaction of these two components in 15 adult stutterers and 15 nonstutterers. Results support brainstem auditory processing deficits in stutterers and equalization of cortical functioning between groups. Group differences were not found in anxiety levels. Nonsignificant correlations between anxiety levels and auditory processing were revealed.

Aspects of Language Development in the Gifted.

The term ’giftedness’ has been defined in many ways. The intelligence quotient as determined through formal intelligence testing has been traditionally accepted as an objective and definitive measure of giftedness. Although educators and psychologists rely upon IQ scores to determine the distinction between average intelligence and giftedness, those researchers disagree about the exact score which establishes that distinction. Typically, The IQ test cut-off score reported in the literature falls somewhere between 115 and 180. Many authorities in education recognize linguistic abilities as a manifestation of giftedness characterized by

Wh-questions: responses by aphasic patients.

The syntactic relationship between wh-questions and their answers was investigated in the speech of aphasic subjects. The subjects were twenty-two aphasic patients whose mean age was 39.7 years and whose mean severity rating on the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination was 2.63. The data revealed significant differences in the frequency of correct response among types of wh-questions and a limited set of response strategies for incorrect answers. The results are discussed in terms of language theory with implications for language assessment and remediation.

A report of behavioral data on three groups of patients with craniofacial disorders.

Longitudinal follow-up data on development and school placement are presented for three groups of patients. Having had or not having had early surgical intervention and stimulation distinguishes the two groups of patients with craniosynostosis. The third group is patients with cleft lip and palate who received early intervention but did not achieve minimal criteria for communication by age 22 months. Educational placement (for patients 8 to 20 years of age) follows the pattern of distribution of students nationally for patients who had early intervention.

Cleft palate: modern technology and neuroscience merge.

This is a report of a cleft palate-craniofacial teams experience with 768 patients that have had clefting over 22 years, with a primary focus on function and prevention of communication disorders associated traditionally with cleft palate. The treatment philosophy is based on tenets of child development and the dependency of neuropsychobiological development on the childs inherent competency, and early environmental stimulation and support. The applied treatments include ensuring early and adequate hearing, psychosocial adaptation of the parent and child through training for applications of indirect therapies, and early fistula-free surgical closure of the cleft that produces minimal scarring and a mobile velum. Team members have extensive backgrounds in child development that seem to have helped the majority of families in their complex efforts of daily care and sensory stimulation, and their children have developed early the ability to adapt modified structures to normal functions. Only one of these patients has needed or received secondary palatal surgery for correction of velopalatal insufficiency. Fifty-six children who did not achieve acceptable 2 to 3-year old communication criteria were referred for speech and language evaluation and therapy. These patients were reported to exhibit oral motor deficits described as developmental verbal dyspraxia.

Maternal discourse features used with language-normal preschoolers with facial deformities.

Discourse features of 10 mothers of language-normal preschool children with repaired cleft palates were examined. Mothers had been provided training in infant stimulation. Fifty-six percent of the communication initiations within the mother-child dyads were made by the mothers. That level of responsibility for continuity of communication resembles the percentage of discourse initiation reported for mothers of language-normal children without orofacial clefts. All categories of utterance types were used by the subjects; a predominance was found among attention-getters and indirect directives. Distribution of discourse features appears to differ from that reported for mothers of both language-normal and language-impaired children who do not have orofacial clefts.