Jamaican data collection continues

During March, Dr Karla Washington, Dr Nancy Creaghead, and a team of students from the University of Cincinnati went to Jamaica to continue data collection for our study of Jamaican children's speech and language acquisition. In total, we have worked with 60 children to assess their speech and language skills in Jamaican and English. We are now analyzing the data, and look forward to presenting our findings later in the year.
Here is some more information about Dr Washington's work on this project

Visit by Professors Jan Edwards and Marios Fourakis

Over the past 3 days, Professor Jan Edwards and Professor Marios Fourakis, have visited Charles Sturt University. They were visiting from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA).

Professor Edwards’ research aims to better understand the interactions between phonological and lexical development in young children.  Currently, she is examining the interactions among vocabulary growth and phonological knowledge (speech production, speech perception, and higher-level knowledge) in children who speak mainstream and non-mainstream dialects of English as well as children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants. 

Professor Fourakis has collaborated with Professor Larry Shriberg in the development of the classification system for paediatric speech sound disorders termed the Speech Disorders Classification System (SDCS). He also undertakes research into speech perception and production by people with cochlear implants.

Professor Jan Edwards, Professor Sharynne McLeod, and Professor Marios Fourakis

On Monday 25th February, Professor Edwards gave the following presentation at the School of Teacher Education Brown Bag Seminar Series in Bathurst, and was simultaneously video-conferenced to people in Dubbo, Wagga and Albury.

Title: Dialect mismatch and its implications for academic achievement

Abstract: The single most important problem in public education in the United States today is the “achievement gap”: the well-documented observation that children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families perform less well academically than children from middle-SES families. Many children from low-SES families speak a non-standard dialect of English (e.g., African American English or AAE), while the language of instruction is Mainstream American English.  Dialect mismatch is an often-ignored factor that may contribute to the achievement gap.  This talk will discuss two studies related to dialect mismatch. Study 1 examines the impact of dialect mismatch on the awareness and comprehension of MAE by 105 4- to 7-year-old AAE-speaking children from low-SES families.  Study 2 describes a pilot intervention program to ameliorate dialect mismatch. Children from two pre-kindergarten classrooms participated in this program: one classroom received a focused curriculum that highlighted differences between “home” and “school” talk, while the other classroom received a control intervention that focused on mindfulness.  Children in the experimental group, but not the control group, improved significantly on measures of MAE comprehension and phonological awareness after the intervention program. [Funded by NIH grant 02932 to Jan Edwards and a Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery grant to Mark Seidenberg]

Kangaroos (including a joey in the pouch) welcoming Jan and Marios to Bathurst

Construct validity of the FOCUS: A functional communication outcome measure for preschool children

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication within a special issue on Participation:

Washington, K. Thomas-Stonell, N., Oddson, B., McLeod, S., Warr-Leeper, G., & Robertson, B., & Rosenbaum, P. (2013, in press January). Construct validity of the FOCUS© (Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six): A functional communication outcome measure for preschool children. Child: Care, Health and Development

Here is the abstract:  

Objective To establish the construct validity of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS_©). This measure is reflective of concepts in the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health – Children and Youth framework. It was developed to capture “real-world” changes (e.g., communicative participation) in preschoolers’ communication following speech-language intervention.

 Method A pre-post design was used. Fifty-two parents of 3- to 6-year-old preschoolers attending speech-language therapy were included as participants. Speech-language therapists provided individual and/or group intervention to preschoolers. Intervention targeted: articulation/phonology, voice/resonance, expressive/receptive language, play, and use of augmentative devices. Construct validity for communicative participation was assessed using pre-intervention and post-intervention parent interviews using the FOCUS_© and the communication and socialization domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II (VABS-II). 

Results Significant associations were found between the FOCUS_©, measuring communicative participation, and the VABS-II domains for: (a) pre-intervention scores in communication, r=0.53, p<0.001; 95% CI=0.30-0.70 and socialization, r=0.67, p<0.001; 95% CI=0.48-0.80; (b) change scores over-time in communication, r=0.45, p<0.001; 95% CI =0.201-0.65 and socialization, r=0.39, p=0.002; 95% CI=0.13-0.60, and (c) scores at post-intervention for communication, r=0.53, p<0.001; 95% CI=0.30-0.70 and for socialization, r=0.37, p=0.003; 95% CI=0.11-0.50. 

Conclusions The study provided evidence on construct validity of the FOCUS_© for evaluating real-world changes in communication. We believe that the FOCUS_© is a useful measure of communicative participation.

Supporting Jamaican children's early development

Dr Karla Washington and I have had the pleasure of working with Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan while in Jamaica. Professor Samms-Vaughan is the Professor of Child Health, Child Development and Behaviour at the University of the West Indies. She is also the chairman of the board of the Early Childhood Commission. She is a strong advocate of supporting children in early childhood, and also supporting their speech and language acquisition. She has been conducting large scale longitudinal studies of Jamaican children for many years. Her second birth cohort study began in 2011 (see photo). She is also conducting important research into the identification of autism in Jamaican children. We attended a lecture at the University of the West Indies presented by Professor Samms-Vaughan and her colleagues.

Dr Karla Washington, Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan, and Sharynne