Patricia A. Prelock

Brief Report: Preliminary Evaluation of the Theory of Mind Inventory and its Relationship to Measures of Social Skills

This study presents updated information on a parent-report measure of Theory of Mind (ToM), formerly called the Perception of Children’s Theory of Mind Measure (Hutchins et al., J Autism Dev Disord 38:143–155, 2008), renamed the Theory of Mind Inventory (ToMI), for use with parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examines the responses of parents of adolescents with ASDs and explores the relationship of parental responses on the ToMI to measures of autistic symptoms and social skills. Descriptive statistics were compared to previous samples; correlations and regressions were conducted to examine the ToMI’s criterion-related validity with social skills and ASD symptoms. Results support use of the ToMI with adolescent samples and its relationship to social impairments in ASDs.

Supporting Theory of Mind Development: Considerations and Recommendations for Professionals Providing Services to Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Theory of mind (ToM) difficulties represent a core deficit underlying the social, behavioral, and communicative impairments characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This article provides a developmental perspective on ToM that can serve as a framework for understanding and addressing ToM deficits characteristic of individuals with ASD to assist in education planning. Popular methods for assessing ToM are reviewed and the use of social stories and comic strip conversations to facilitate ToM understanding is described in a case vignette, which provides preliminary evidence for the feasibility of this type of intervention for encouraging ToM development in children with ASD. Professionals who provide services to individuals with ASD are encouraged to incorporate assessment and intervention procedures that acknowledge the importance of ToM in their program plan and to consider the connections between ToM and communicative and behavioral functioning.

Family-Centered Intervention and Satisfaction with AAC Device Training.

The purpose of this article is to describe a family-centered collaborative approach for developing and implementing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device training for one family. Family-centered training emphasized collaboration with the primary investigator and focused on needs assessment, the identification of priority communicative contexts, AAC device implementation, and communication partner training. Responses to a questionnaire to assess satisfaction at posttraining revealed high degrees of satisfaction for most dimensions (e.g., expertise and sensitivity of the trainer, relevance and appropriateness of the training). Other dimensions (e.g., familys comfort when using the AAC device), by comparison, were associated with less satisfaction, which provides important information to guide further intervention efforts. Clinical implications, directions for future research, and the importance of a family-centered approach to practice are discussed.

Collaborative Partnerships in a Language in the Classroom Program

This exchange describes the key components for establishing collaborative partnerships in the delivery of services to children with communication disorders: establishing a transdisciplinary approac...

Prosodic Analysis of Child Speech.

Child prosody is important clinically, but descriptive procedures are lacking. Here, a broad descriptive framework is presented. The approach is based on systemic phonology, although other current models are mentioned. Information on English prosody and speaker usage is presented. Speech samples are

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice: Implementation Science

PURPOSE This article introduces implementation science, which focuses on research methods that promote the systematic application of research findings to practice. METHOD The narrative defines implementation science and highlights the importance of moving research along the pipeline from basic science to practice as one way to facilitate evidence-based service delivery. This review identifies challenges in developing and testing interventions in order to achieve widespread adoption in practice settings. A framework for conceptualizing implementation research is provided, including an example to illustrate the application of principles in speech-language pathology. Last, the authors reflect on the status of implementation research in the discipline of communication sciences and disorders. CONCLUSIONS The extant literature highlights the value of implementation science for reducing the gap between research and practice in our discipline. While having unique principles guiding implementation research, many of the challenges and questions are similar to those facing any investigators who are attempting to design valid and reliable studies. This article is intended to invigorate interest in the uniqueness of implementation science among those pursuing both basic and applied research. In this way, it should help ensure the disciplines knowledge base is realized in practice and policy that affects the lives of individuals with communication disorders.

Evidence-Based Treatments in Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This chapter considers treatments that aim to enhance the ability of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to communicate and use language. Since disorders of communication constitute one of the core symptom areas in ASD and represent an aspect of function in which all children on this spectrum experience significant disability, virtually every child on the autism spectrum will require some form of communicative intervention. Moreover, communication is vital for learning and establishing connections with others, so that deficits in communication skill not only characterize the syndrome, but set limits on opportunities for play, socialization, academic achievement, and integration. Thus, interventions aimed at improving communication in ASD are crucial to success both in school programs and functional, real-world adaptation.

Test-Retest Reliability of a Theory of Mind Task Battery for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders:

This study examined for the first time the test-retest reliability of theory-of-mind tasks when administered to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A total of 16 questions within 9 tasks targeting a range of content and complexity were administered at 2 times to 17 children with ASD. In all, 13 questions demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability and high internal consistency. Items that did not achieve reliability violated a pragmatic convention, were ambiguous, or were associated with a response bias. No effect of verbal ability or diagnosis was found on consistency of performance. There was no effect of interval (i.e., short vs. long) on change in score although modest increases in performance occurred generally across administrations. Implications for research and practice are considered.

A Model for Family-Centered Interdisciplinary Practice in the Community

The Vermont Interdisciplinary Leadership Education for Health Professionals (VT-ILEHP) Program has developed a family-centered, interdisciplinary, community-based assessment and consultation process to serve children with special needs and their families. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and audi

The influence of processing mode on the sentence productions of language-disordered and normal children

This study examined the effects of linguistic complexity on childrens language encoding performances. There were four groups with 15 subjects each: (a) language-disordered; (b) chronologically-age-matched with normal language abilities; (c) language-age-matched; (d) language-age-matched with articulatory errors. The experimental tasks were sentence repetition and elicitation. Phonological complexity (syllable length of words) was a common factor and syntactic complexity was varied for sentence repetition. For both tasks, errors simplified phonological and syntactic structures. Older normals performed with the fewest errors. The language-disordered children performed like the younger normals on the creative sentence production task, but made many more errors on the sentence repetition task. There was no difference in performance between the language-age-matched groups, for those with and without articulatory errors. The uniform effects of phonological complexity on productions across tasks and groups adds...