Just published - Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech

How exciting - this paper has just been published.

McCormack, J., Cronin, A., McLeod, S., Ireland, M., Wang, C., & Tiong, C. (2025). Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech: Place, people, activity, and emotion. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590251375340

Exiting for two reasons - summarises our Once Upon a Time research grant + first paper to be accepted for our Child Language Teaching and Therapy special issue! 

Here are the drawings that have been included as figures in our paper. These depict the participants' insights into undertaking DTTC intervention.

 

Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): Place, people, activity, and emotion

The following paper just has been accepted for publication

McCormack, J., Cronin, A., McLeod, S., Ireland, M., Wang, C., & Tiong, C. (2025, accepted July). Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): Place, people, activity, and emotion. Child Language Teaching and Therapy.

It is one of the outcomes from our work on our grant funded by Once Upon a Time to consider perspectives of children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) who were undertaking DTTC intervention.  

Here is the abstract:

Sourcing and including the views of children in speech and language therapy aligns with Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This research explored the perspectives of 30 children (3;9 – 8;7 years) with childhood apraxia of speech regarding their experiences of Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing intervention. Children lived in the United States or Australia and had engaged in one of three intervention studies exploring: delivery by their parent or speech and language therapist (SLT); delivery in high or low dose; and delivery in massed or distributed format. Children shared their perspectives of intervention through drawing a picture of themselves during intervention, describing their drawings, and identifying emojis responding to questions about intervention. Five focal points were identified in the drawings: Place (73.33%: environment, intervention materials, and transitions), People (73.33%: body parts and facial expressions, relationships and connection, and sense of self), Activity (20.00%: words, talking, and listening), Emotion (53.33%: positive and negative), and Not Talking (6.67%). Many participants felt happy about “speech practice” ( J  62.50%) and who did speech practice with them ( J  62.50%) but were divided in how they felt about the number of times ( J  33.3%) and the length of time ( J  29.17%) of speech practice. Children’s perspectives can be considered when designing and delivering intervention.

Here are two of the insightful drawings by the children involved in the project showing their involvement in intervention. These drawings will be included in the publication. Each drawing shows the child on the left and their speech-language pathologist on the right. Note the environment (table in figure 1 and door, table, chair, stickers in figure 2).

 

OUAT - publication preparation

Our Once Upon a Time grant data collection is finished - and today we met to continue working on the data analysis, publications and presentations from this important work.

Sharynne, Jane McCormack, Anna Cronin

ECV2024 presentations by our team

Here are the presentations from our team at ECV2024 this week

1. Children draw talking: Interdisciplinary insights into drawings from 200 children from 24 countries - Sharynne McLeod, Carolyn Gregoric, Jessamy Davies, Lysa Dealtry, Laura Delli-Pizzi, Belinda Downey, Sheena Elwick, Suzanne C. Hopf, Nicola Ivory, Holly McAlister, Elizabeth Murray, Azizur Rahman, Shukla Sikder, Van H. Tran, Cherie Zischke
2. Building The Treehouse: A physical and virtual children’s research environment co-designed with children, colleagues, community - Sharynne McLeod
3. Indigenous children’s speech, language and communication: Identifying and co-creating resources and services - Sharynne McLeod, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sarah Bartlett, Ebony Hay, Carolyn Gregoric
4. Using an implementation science framework to co-design and test the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) - Kate Margetson and. Sharynne McLeod
5. Voices and visions: Engaging children with childhood apraxia of speech in intervention research- Marie Ireland, Anna Cronin, Jane McCormack, Sharynne McLeod, Cen Wang, Caroline Tiong
6. Adaptation of the Early Childhood Voices Drawing Protocol for collecting children’s experiences of play - Carolyn Gregoric, Shukla Sikder, Suzanne C. Hopf, and Sharynne McLeod
7. “Absolutely cuddled out” – Building personal resources to build retention - Belinda Downey, Will Letts, Leanne Gibbs, and Sharynne McLeod
8. Caregiver implemented intervention for early communication development: A review of evidence for Hanen® programs - Sarah Bartlett and Sharynne McLeod
9. Children on Australian university campuses: A rapid review of internal policies, guidelines, and procedures - Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne McLeod, Suzanne C. Hopf, and Claudio Dionigi
10. Multilingual children’s speech development - Sharynne McLeod and Helen L. Blake
11. Children’s speech development: English (Australian) - Sharynne McLeod and Helen L. Blake
12. Children’s speech development: English (Fiji) - Holly McAlister, Suzanne C. Hopf, Paul A. Geraghty, Sharynne McLeod
13. Children’s speech development: English + Vietnamese - Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Van H. Tran, Sarah Verdon, Ben Phạm 
14. Children's speech development: Cantonese - Carol Kit Sum To, Pamela Cheung, Sharynne McLeod
    
15. Children’s speech development: Vietnamese - Ben Phạm, Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Van H. Tran, Sarah Verdon - https://multilingual-childrens-speech-development.csu.domains/ecv2024-570/

DTTC research - preparing for conference presentations

This morning our research team met as we finalise the analysis and prepare to present the data at:

• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention (Seattle, WA, USA)
• Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2024) (online)

Dr Anna Cronin, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Marie Ireland, A/Prof Jane McCormack

Writing retreat at ACU

 I have spent three very productive days at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) in Brisbane analysing data and writing with Dr Anna Cronin, A/Prof Jane McCormack and Caroline Tiong. During the week we also worked online with Dr Marie Ireland (in USA) and Dr Audrey Wang (in NSW). We are coming to the end of our grant with the Once Upon at Time Foundation and it has been wonderful to listen to the children's insights about their speech therapy - including what they liked and the few things that they did not enjoy. We have been writing a journal article and conference presentations during the week.

Sharynne, Caroline, Audrey, Anna and Jane

Sharynne, Marie, Jane and Anna

Jane, Sharynne and Anna at ACU in Brisbane

One child with large ears listening to his speech therapist at the table

A child practicing the words "zoo, today, pow" at speech therapy
with a roll of stickers for good work and the speech therapist sitting on a cushion.

Meeting with Audrey re Once Upon A Time research grant

 Today Dr Audrey Wang and I met to discuss the data from our Once Upon A Time research grant considering the experiences of children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) undertaking intensive intervention using an approach called Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing (DTTC). As a psychologist, Audrey has knowledge about children's subjective, psychological and emotional experiences, cognitive and emotional development, and children’s ability to reflect on internal experiences.

Once Upon a Time - Children's perspectives of DTTC intervention - Data are arriving

Our Once Upon a Time - Children's perspectives of DTTC intervention research team met today and had the first look at some of the submitted data. What a great milestone!

A/Prof Jane McCormack, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Marie Ireland, Dr Anna Cronin

New research staff for 2024

 2024 is an exciting year with new research projects and the opportunity to work with new research staff and students including:

1. Dr Helen Blake, Senior Research Fellow, DVC-R
   
2. Dr Carolyn Gregoric- ECIR and RHRI
3. Kate Margetson - RHRI
4. Emily-Jane Woodhead - RHRI
5. Marie Ireland - OUAT
   
6. Audrey Wang - OUAT
7. Holly McAlister - PhD student 
8. Sarah Bartlett - PhD student RHRI
9. Cathie Matthews - Masters' student ECIR

What a superb team!

• ECIR = Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme
• RHRI = Rural Health Research Institute - Rural speech pathology grant
• OUAT = Once Upon a Time - Children's perspectives of DTTC intervention grant 
  

Dr Helen Blake

Holly McAlister - HDR student

Cathie Matthews - HDR student

A/Prof Sarah Verdon and Kate Margetson - HDR student

Dr Carolyn Gregoric

Sarah Bartlett - HDR student

Emily-Jane Woodhead

Data collection has begun for our DTTC Once Upon a Time Foundation Grant

Today Dr Anna Cronin met with Marie Ireland (research assistant) and myself to document the commencement of our DTTC Once Upon a Time Foundation grant. One huge achievement is that the box containing packs of 10 markers have made it to Marie in the US for the children to use for their drawings (we have had a lot of angst organising this!). Marie has made a video with a child who has agreed to be on advisory committee. Anna will go to the US to meet with the rest of the team next week. I can't wait to see the children's drawings and feedback on their speech interventions.

Once Upon A Time Foundation meeting in Fort Worth, TX

Today I attended a meeting at the Once Upon A Time Foundation Fort Worth, TX to discuss our grant to consider children's perspectives of speech intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). It was a very collegial meeting to ensure high quality research is undertaken as part of their large-scale CAS intervention research agenda.

Once Upon A Time grant and meeting

Next week I head to Fort Worth, TX, USA for a meeting with the Once Upon A Time Foundation to discuss our grant to consider children's perspectives of speech intervention. Today I had a meeting with Dr Anna Cronin and A/Prof Jane McCormack from ACU who are leading the grant. It's an exciting project.

Child Perspectives of DTTC Study

I was excited to receive an email this morning to indicate that we have been funded to undertake a study with the Once Upon a Time Foundation in the US to undertake a study titled "Child Perspectives of DTTC Study". The grant will be led by Dr Anna Cronin and A/Prof Jane McCormack from ACU with in partnership with myself and CSU. This is an exciting study.