Identifying phonological awareness difficulties in preschool children with speech sound disorders

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication.
Masso, S., Baker, E., McLeod, S. & McCormack, J. (in press, November 2013). Identifying phonological awareness difficulties in preschool children with speech sound disorders. Speech, Language, and Hearing.
This is Sarah Masso's first publication and it has been written as part of her PhD, so it is an extra special publication. Here is the abstract:

Phonological awareness is one type of phonological processing ability and is considered to be particularly important for early literacy development. Specific phonological awareness skills include: syllable-level awareness, onset-rime awareness, and phonemic awareness. Children with speech sound disorders are at a high risk of difficulties with phonological awareness and literacy. There is a body of literature reporting both composite scores and task-specific phonological awareness scores from the assessment of children with typically-developing speech and schoolage children with speech sound disorders. In this study we completed a systematic overview of the available literature regarding the assessment of phonological awareness in preschool-age children with speech sound disorders. A systematic search of literature databases yielded 777 articles which were screened. The full text of 30 articles was read and 12 articles met all specified criteria. Ten of the 12 articles reported composite scores for the phonological awareness of participants. The studies rarely reported the profile of specific phonological awareness skills. Of the final 12 articles, eight were case-control studies (Level III) and four were case-series or cross-sectional studies without a control reference (Level IV) (Merlin, Weston & Tooher 2009). There is a need for more research reporting task-specific phonological awareness abilities in preschool-age children with speech sound disorders in order to understand the relationship between specific skills and literacy development in this population.

Validation of the Intelligibility in Context Scale as a screening tool for preschoolers in Hong Kong

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication:
Ng, K., To, C. K. S. McLeod, S., (in press, November 2013). Validation of the Intelligibility in Context Scale as a screening tool for preschoolers in Hong Kong, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.
UPDATE - PUBLISHED in APRIL 2014
Ng, K., To, C. K. S. McLeod, S., (2014). Validation of the Intelligibility in Context Scale as a screening tool forpreschoolers in Hong Kong, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 28(5), 316-328.

This publication is the first validation study of the Intelligibility in Context Scale in a language other than English. Here is the abstract:

The Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS, McLeod, Harrison, & McCormack, 2012) is a parent report questionnaire for assessing children’s speech intelligibility. The original version was developed in English and was based on Environmental Factors identified within the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY) (World Health Organization, 2007). The ICS has been translated into over 30 languages, including Traditional Chinese (ICS-TC). The aims of the current study were to examine the psychometric properties of the ICS-TC with Cantonese-speaking parent-child dyads and to identify speech measures that were more sensitive to the ICS-TC ratings. A total of 72 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers with (n = 39) and without speech sound disorders (SSD) (n = 33) were recruited. Native Cantonese-speaking parents completed the ICS-TC independently. The measure showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Correlations with speech performance on the Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test, and significant difference in ICS-TC mean scores between the two groups provided preliminary support for the validity of ICS-TC and suggested that ICS-TC can differentiate between children with and without SSD with a large effect size of d = 0.74. The optimal cutoff was estimated using Receiver Operative Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, giving a sensitivity of .70 and specificity of .59. ICS-TC mean scores showed a positive correlation with the percentage of initial consonants correct and negative correlation with frequency of atypical errors, and both were moderate in strength. Given the satisfactory psychometric properties of ICS-TC, it may be a valuable clinical tool for screening Cantonese-speaking preschool children’s intelligibility.

Celebrating the end of the academic year (in Australia)

Working with colleagues throughout the world (and mostly in the northern hemisphere), it is easy to loose site of the local academic calendar. While my northern hemisphere colleagues began their academic year in September, we concluded ours this week. Today Professor Tara Brabazon generously put on a celebratory morning tea for the staff from the School of Teacher Education, School of Human Movement and the Professional Practice Office.

Professor Tara Brabazon and A/Professor David McKinnon

Comments on the Intelligibility in Context Scale

Nick Miller recently published a very useful review of speech intelligibility measures
Miller, N. (2013). Measuring up to speech intelligibility. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 48(6), 601-612. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12061
 
Here is what he wrote about the Intelligibility in Context Scale on page 608:

However, there are already examples of attempts at combining the complementary perspectives of signal independent and signal dependent intelligibility in order to gain insights into social interactive implications of different levels of intelligibility... McLeod et al. (2012) employed a set of ‘Intelligibility in Context’ questions alongside intelligibility scores – e.g. Do you understand your child; Do strangers understand your child?, rated on a five point ‘always’ to ‘never’ scale. This provides a method to capture listener and situational variation. It also offers a way of gauging changes in functional success in relation to developments in signal dependent changes. Making such combined judgement has the advantage that it permits one to gain inroads into what counts as a clinically, communicatively, as opposed to merely statistically significant change in intelligibility, either generally, or, more realistically, in relation to given listeners, in given situations.

Celebrating Indigenous Australian children’s speech and language competence

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication:

McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Bennetts Kneebone, L. (2013, in press November). Celebrating Indigenous Australian children’s speech and language competence. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 
Here is the abstract

There is limited information world-wide about Indigenous children’s speech and language competence and their language learning environments. Indigenous Australian children participated in the child cohort of Footprints in Time: Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, a national study supported by Indigenous Australians and the Australian Government collected annually (in waves). There were 692 3- to 5-year-old children in wave 1, and two years later, 570 5- to 7-year-old children were in wave 3 (77.0% of children in wave 1 were also in wave 3). Data were obtained via parent interviews and direct assessment. The children spoke between one and eight languages including: English (wave 1: 91.2%, wave 3: 99.6%), Indigenous languages (wave 1: 24.4%, wave 3: 26.8%), creoles (wave 1: 11.5%, wave 3: 13.7%), foreign languages (non-Indigenous languages other than English) (wave 1: 2.0%, wave 3: 5.1%), and sign languages (wave 1: 0.6%, wave 3: 0.4%). Children who spoke an Indigenous language were more likely to live in moderate to extreme isolation than their English-speaking counterparts. Parental concern about speech and language skills was similar to data for non-Indigenous children with approximately one quarter of parents expressing concern (wave 1: yes=13.9%, a little=10.4%). Children’s language environments were rich, with many family members and friends telling oral stories, reading books, and listening to the children read. Almost a third of families wanted to pass on their cultural language, and many indicated that they would like their child to learn an Indigenous language at school. Overall, Indigenous Australian children have rich cultural and linguistic traditions and their speech and language competence is promoted through family, community, and educational experiences.