Vicki A. Reed

Realizations of consonant clusters by children with phonological impairment

Children with phonological impairment frequently have difficulty producing consonant clusters. Speech pathologists often use phonological processes to describe childrens productions of consonant clusters, a commonly used description being cluster reduction. However, this description does not adequately address childrens differing realizations of consonant clusters. The purpose of this paper is to develop and refine methods for the characterization of realizations of consonant clusters. The work of Greenlee (1974) and Chin and Dinnsen (1992) has been extended by examining the effect of syllable position, number of elements and constituents on childrens realizations of consonant clusters. Specifically, word-initial fricative clusters, stop clusters, three element fricative + stop clusters, and word-final nasal clusters and fricative + stop clusters were examined. The results for 40 phonologically impaired children between the ages of 3;6 and 5;0 years are compared with those of Chin and Dinnsen (1992). The relationships found between child and adult representations of clusters suggest the importance of considering syllable position, number of elements and the constituents of consonant clusters when analysing phonologically impaired childrens speech sounds.

Social Validity of the Treatment Outcomes of an Early Intervention Program for Stuttering

This research was designed to provide a socially valid evaluation of the posttreatment speech of children who received an operant treatment for early stuttering (The Lidcombe Program). Part A compa...

Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Relative Importance of Selected Communication Skills in Their Positive Peer Relationships

This study investigated the opinions of tenth grade adolescents with normal achievement concerning the relative importance of 14 communication skills in their positive peer relationships and explored whether or not the adolescents’ gender influenced their opinions about the importance of these skills. Results suggested that two skills were of relatively high importance, four skills were of relatively low importance, and the remaining eight skills were of intermediate or variable importance. Communication skills closely associated with characteristics of empathy and primarily addressee-focused were ranked as either relatively high or intermediate/variable in importance. Those skills related to figurative and metalinguistic language and considered primarily speaker-focused were ranked as relatively low in importance. Communication skills related to discourse management were ranked as being either relatively intermediate/variable or low in importance. No significant differences were found between the overall...

Elucidating the effects of different definitions of ‘utterance’ on selected syntactic measures of older children's language samples

Abstract Utterances comprising corpora of language samples are fundamental units underlying many syntactic measurements of older childrens language performances. This exploratory study examined the effects of the utterance definitions for T-unit, C-unit, Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS), and Tone unit on seven measures of syntax in language samples of 10 normally achieving 11-year-old males. The effect of definition was statistically significant for all of the measures, with post hoc analyses identifying the definitional sources(s) of the differences. Although inter- and intra-rater reliability was high for measurement calculation, there was considerable inter-rater variation for utterance segmentation for one of the definitions. These findings have implications for research and clinical practice.

Teamwork: A study of Australian and US student speech-language pathologists

In the discipline of speech-language pathology little is known about the explicit and implicit team skills taught within university curricula. This study surveyed 281 speech-language pathology students to determine a baseline of their perceived ability to participate in interprofessional teams. The students were enrolled in programs in Australia and the USA and were surveyed about their perceptions of their attitudes, knowledge and skills in teamwork. MANCOVA analysis for main effects of age, university program and clinical experience showed that age was not significant, negating the perception that life experiences improve perceived team skills. Clinical experience was significant in that students with more clinical experience rated themselves more highly on their team abilities. Post Hoc analysis revealed that Australian students rated themselves higher than their US counterparts on their knowledge about working on teams, but lower on attitudes to teams; all students perceived that they had the skills to work on teams. These results provide insight about teamwork training components in current speech-language pathology curricula. Implications are discussed with reference to enhancing university training programs.

What Crocodile Dundee Never Told UsSpeech-Language Pathology in Australia

Many of the same issues that confront American speech-language pathologists are present in Australia. Where differences exist, they reflect the history of the country and the profession and the pop...