Cantonese collaborations

This week Dr Carol To is visiting us from The University of Hong Kong. Carol and I have enjoyed working together since we met in 2010. This year we published two manuscripts together

1. To, C. K. S., Cheung, P. S. P., & McLeod, S. (2013). The impact of extrinsic demographic factors on Cantonese speech acquisition. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 27(5), 323-338
2. To, C. K. -S., Cheung, P. S. -P., & McLeod, S. (2013). A population study of children's acquisition of Hong Kong Cantonese consonants, vowels, and tones. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56(1), 103-122.   

We have also submitted another manuscript and are working on other journal articles, conference presentations, and a grant application. Next month, Sarah Verdon, my PhD student, will visit Carol in Hong Kong.

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Dr Carol To, Sharynne, Sarah Verdon in Bathurst

PhD planning

Suzanne Hopf's PhD aims to address Fijian children's speech, language, and literacy acquisition. To date she has read a lot of literature, has written two journal articles, and has submitted conference presentation abstracts.While she has been Bathurst we have been crafting her PhD: the literature review, aims, and studies. It has been a really productive week.

Creating Suzanne's table of contents
from all of the topics she has written about to date

Walking around Bathurst while talking about PhD plans

The Esses

In 2 weeks' time, my home town of Bathurst will transform into a car-racing city. Mt Panorama is famous for its annual car race and Charles Sturt University is situated at the bottom of Mt Panorama, so we can hear the roar of the cars and the crowds. One of the most famous stretches of the track is called "The Esses" because of the tight S-like curves. It occurred to me that with the completion of Kate Crowe's PhD, my current cadre of PhD students are "The Esses": Sarah, Sarah, and Suzanne, with their supervisor: Sharynne. Consequently, they graciously agreed to have a photo on the track!

The Esses: Sharynne, Suzanne, Sarah, and Sarah on Mt Panorama

Faculty of Education Higher Degree by Research (HDR) Forum

This week 77 higher degree by research (HDR) students and staff from the Faculty of Education at Charles Sturt University met in Bathurst for the HDR Forum. We learned from Dr Brian Hemmings, Subdean of graduate studies, that the faculty has 100 HDR students, with 67 enrolled part time. In 2013 there will be at least 10 graduands and 6 more students have their thesis currently under review, including my PhD student, Kate Crowe.

It was great that I could spend time with all of my current PhD students in the one location. It was the first time that Suzanne Hopf had come to CSU Bathurst (from Fiji) since beginning her PhD. My other PhD students, Sarah Masso and Sarah Verdon, presented their PhD research at the forum.  

On the first day we heard from Professor Sid Bourke from the University of Newcastle who said that in a study of 803 PhD thesis examinations only 12.4% were accepted with no changes, 46.4% required minor changes, 36.3% required major changes, 3.6% were invited to revise to be re examined and 0.1% failed.

We also enjoyed listening to the finals of the 3 minute thesis competition. On the last day, professors from across the Faculty of Education discussed what they wish they knew when they did their PhD. 

Thanks to Lisa McLean and Brian Hemmings for organizing a simulating, supportive, friendly, and informative forum. 

Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) Sue Thomas and Suzanne Hopf

Sarah Masso presenting information about her PhD

The CSU HDR Forum

Kangaroos looking at us through the windows during the HDR Forum

Spending time with my PhD students: Sarah Verdon, Suzanne Hopf, Sarah Masso

ASHA 2014 convention planning committee

This morning, commencing at 2am and ending at 6am (!) I met with the team of people who are planning the 2014 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention. The majority of people were meeting at the ASHA headquarters in the US (commencing12pm their time). It was an informative meeting.

The 2013 convention will be held in November, so the planning for the 2014 convention is well underway even before the 2013 convention has been held. I learned that for the 2013 convention there were 2900+ abstract submissions, more than had ever been received before. Each abstract is reviewed by up to 5 reviewers - so there is a lot of work ahead.

The 2014 convention will be held in Orlando, FL,  November 20-22. Professor Lynn Williams is chairing the speech-language pathology arm of the convention. I am co-chairing the topic "Issues in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations" with Brian Goldstein from LaSalle University. We have a lot of work ahead as we invite our committee, plan the invited sessions, review abstracts, and prepare the program

Applying the World Report on Disability to children’s communication

The following manuscript has just been published online

McLeod, S., McAllister, L., McCormack, J., & Harrison, L. J. (2013, in press). Applying the World Report on Disability to children’s communication. Disability and Rehabilitation, doi:10.3109/09638288.2013.833305

Here is the abstract:

Purpose: The World Report on Disability is an important milestone in the recognition of people with disabilities; however, the Report acknowledges that people with communication difficulties may be underrepresented in estimates of disability. Consequently, this article applies the nine recommendations from the World Report on Disability to supporting children’s communication skills. Method: Australia is similar to most Minority World countries since it places high regard on articulate and literate communication. Recent large-scale Australian studies of children with speech, language and communication needs were reviewed to determine prevalence, impact and associated environmental and personal factors. Studies of met and unmet need were reviewed and discussed in relation to legislation and policies. Results: Recent years have seen improvements in the collection of and access to disability data about children’s communication, including the involvement of children in research about the impact of communication difficulties on their lives. The prevalence of speech and language impairment in children is high and is associated with poorer educational and social outcomes at school-age. Significant unmet need for services was noted, and there were differences in health, education and disability policies regarding access to services. Conclusions: Updated legislation, policies and practices are needed to more effectively support access to services to support children’s communication across health, education and disability sectors.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• There is a high prevalence of speech and language impairment in Australian children.
• Childhood speech and language impairment (and associated communication disability) can impact educational, social, behavioural and occupational outcomes throughout life.
• Many Australian children do not have sufficient access to targeted services (including speech-language pathology) to ameliorate the impact of their communication disability.
• Formulation of a national strategy to support children children’s communication is required.

Keywords: Communication, disability, ICF, ICF-CY, language, speech, World Health Organization, World Report on Disability

Figure 1. Drawings created by 4- to 5-year-old children with speech impairment in response to being asked to draw themselves talking to someone. These examples are of drawings that accentuated the listener’s ears, and many of these examples also demonstrate the listener or speaker leaning towards the other, possibly to facilitate understanding of the spoken message. Copyright 2012 by S. McLeod, L. McAllister, J. McCormack and L. J. Harrison. Reprinted with permission.

Congratulations Kate #3

Typically I do not include non-work related posts in this blog, but to show that my students have work-life balance, and to keep the "Congratulations Kate" blog postings going, I need to announce that last night Kate was named the Macquarie Ice Skating Club Champion (Ladies Silver) for 2013. She will compete in the national championships soon, and next year plans to compete in Germany. Congratulations Kate!

June - August 2013 Summary

AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL FUTURE FELLOWSHIP UPDATE

‘Speaking my language: International speech acquisition in Australia’ 

Written by Kim Woodland, Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education for the RIPPLE Update

During June, Sharynne volunteered for two weeks at Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University in Vietnam, lecturing in the speech sound disorders class, and delivering a professional development lecture to graduate and student speech therapists. She also took the opportunity to improve her grasp of the complex Vietnamese language and assisted Dr Ly Kha Nguyen, a phonetics and linguistics lecturer at the University, to analyse data of typical Vietnamese speech acquisition in over 1,000 children in Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding areas.

In late June, Sharynne attended the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, where she co-presented a range of papers with her students and colleagues. She delivered the prestigious Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture, and received the Elizabeth Usher Award for 2013 which was presented at the conference.

Sharynne travelled to Vancouver, Canada, in August, to present lessons learned from her Future Fellowship in an invited presentation: Children’s speech development in many languages: Strategies for telling the world what we have learned. She presented to the Knowledge Mobilization for an International Crosslinguistic Study of Children’s Speech Development Meeting at the University of British Columbia. The Meeting brought together 60 people from around the world who have been involved in an international study of children’s speech development.

Next stop was Anadolu University in Turkey, to meet with researchers, deliver an invited presentation, and work with speech-language pathologists to review the Turkish version of the International Speech Screen.

Researchers from the Sound Start research project team headed to the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit in the UK in late August to share information about the project, analyse data, plan future data collection, and meet with colleagues.

The team then travelled to Turin, Italy, to attend the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) World Congress. Sharynne chaired four sessions and co-presented several papers. During the Congress, the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology’s (of which Sharynne is Editor) scientific forum on the World Report on Disability was profiled. Sharynne was elected a member of the IALP Board for the next three years.
For more information, please visit Sharynne’s blog: Speaking my languages.

Presenting the Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture, June 2013

Congratulations Kate #2

Kate Crowe has just learned that she has been awarded an American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Student Travel Award to attend the 2013 convention in Chicago in November. The award letter stated: 

This award is given to the highest-rated ASHA Convention papers—with a student as first author— in each of the 26 topic categories. The purpose of the SRTA is to highlight the research activities of students and encourage careers in science and research.

The award includes free conference registration and a small stipend to cover some of the travel costs. Congratulations Kate! This conference attracts over 12,000 delegates and there were 2900+ abstracts submitted in 2013.

Congratulations Kate #1

On Monday 2nd September Kate Crowe presented an invited keynote address at the Australian and New Zealand Leaders in Deaf Education (ANZLDE) Summit held at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in Sydney. The presentation was based in her PhD research into multilingual and multimodal children with hearing loss.

Working on Jamaican data in Italy

After the IALP conference in Turino, Karla Washington (from University of Cincinnati) and I headed to Firenze to work on data analysis protocols for data we collected in Jamaica during January. We prepared conference abstracts and began writing two journal articles. It was a productive 3 days.

Sharynne and Karla working on the terrace in Florence

International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics Board Membership

At the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) convention in Turin, I was elected as a member of the IALP Board for the next three years. I have just concluded two terms (six years) as a member of the IALP Education in Speech and Language Pathology Committee.

At the closing ceremony I also learned that the 2013 IALP convention had over 980 attendees from 39 countries. There were 252 papers, 271 posters, 56 seminars, and 13 symposia presented.

Sound Start meeting in Turin, Italy

During the IALP conference, the Sound Start team met to finalise the intervention protocols. Six of the seven team members were present in Turin, and Elise Baker Skyped with us for 2.5 hours from Australia (until 11:30pm her time!). It was an extremely productive meeting, where theoretical and practical issues were discussed. We are looking forward to the final stage of testing the participants (next week), then beginning the intervention phase (in one month's time).

Sound Start in Italy: Sharynne, Kate, Yvonne, (Elise), Sarah, Sue, Jane

Yvonne and Sarah discuss implementation of the Phoneme Factory software

More images from IALP

Mara Belau (IALP past president), Sharynne, Sarah Masso, Yvonne Wren, Kate Crowe,
Helen Grech (IALP president), Lilly Cheng (IALP president elect)

IALP keynote addresses were in English and translated into Italian

IALP excursion to Reggia Di Venaria Reale (Sarah V, Sarah M, Kate, Karla)

Sharynne with Dominique Weston (University of Sydney) at conference dinner

IJSLP issue on World Report on Disability promoted at IALP

 During the IALP congress, the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology's scientific forum on the World Report on Disability (WRD) was profiled (see here for more details about the issue). The authors of the lead article (Karen Wylie, Lindy McAllister, Bronwyn Davidson, and Julie Marshall) presented two seminars based on the issue, there was a special IALP report on the WRD, and issues of IJSLP were given out for free (hard copy or electronically) to the IALP participants as well.

Lead authors on the WRD scientific forum:
Julie Marshall (UK), Bronwyn Davidson (Australia), Lindy McAllister (Australia), Karen Wylie (Ghana)

Authors on the IJSLP WRD scientific forum from Australia, UK, South Africa, USA, and Ghana

Sharynne McLeod (Editor of IJSLP) with Caroline Purslow (informa) at IALP in Turin, Italy

Celebration dinner

CSU VC Research Supervison Award celebration dinner

On 28th August the Charles Sturt University Vice Chancellor presented awards to winners of the VC's award scheme. I was unable to be in Bathurst for the award ceremony, but was able to celebrate the VC's Research Supervision award in Italy at the IALP conference with five of the eight students and ex-students who nominated me: Dr Jane McCormack, Sarah Masso, Dr Karla Washington, Sarah Verdon and Kate Crowe. The students who were unable to join the celebration were Suzanne Hopf, Hannah Wilkin and Nicole Limbrick. It was a lovely occasion - and an honour to be nominated by such a wonderfully talented team.

International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics World Congress in Italy

This week I am attending the 29^th World Congress of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, in Turin, Italy. There are over 900 delegates attending from around the world. 

Australian and US delegates at IALP

I am chairing four sessions and presenting the following papers:

1. McLeod, S. Educating SLPs: Building researchers in Australia. Invited presentation in seminar titled Educating SLPs: Different experiences in building researchers.
2. Crowe K. & McLeod, S. A systematic review of the outcomes of children with hearing loss who use languages other than English
3. Verdon, S. & McLeod, S. Supporting multilingual children with speech sound disorders: People, practicalities, and policy.

The following papers will be presented in a 2 hour seminar titled Multilingual children’s speech, language, and hearing

1. McLeod, S., Verdon, S., Bowen, C., International Expert Panel on Mutlilingual Children’s Speech Multilingual children with speech sound disorders: Creation of a position paper by an international expert panel.
2. Crowe, K., McLeod, S., McKinnon, D. H., Fordham, L., & Ching, T. Y. C. Multilingual children with hearing loss: Factors influencing parents' choice regarding speech, sign, or multilingualism.
3. Washington, K. N., McLeod, S., Samms-Vaughan, M. & Devonish, H. Considerations during speech and language assessment for bidialectal children in Jamaica.
4. Verdon, S. & McLeod, S. Patterns of language acquisition, usage, and loss in young multilingual children.
5. McLeod, S. Quantifying multilingual children's speech across 30 languages: Intelligibility in Context Scale. 



Sam Harding (UK), Carol Westby (US), Sarah Masso (Australia), & Sue Roulstone (UK)

Team building

Over the weekend, between our work in Bristol, UK and our conference in Turin, Italy, members of the Sound Start team spent time together in Paris.

Sarah Masso, Jane McCormack, Sharynne McLeod, Kate Crowe
(photographer Cathy Easton)

A productive week in Bristol, UK

The Sound Start team have had an extremely productive week visiting the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit (SLTRU). We started the week sharing information about our research projects with the staff and students at SLTRU. The rest of the week we analyzed data, planned future data protocols, and had meetings with Paul White (University of the West of England statistician), Duncan Witham (busythings software developer), and Liz Dymond (North Bristol Trust innovations manager). Professor Sue Roulstone provided tutorials on randomized controlled trials and the history of Phoneme Factory Sound Sorter. In the evenings we continued our discussions as we explored Bristol and went on the Gromit trail in support of the Bristol Children's Hospital.

Staff and students at the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit
with their Australian visitors

L to R: Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Masso, Jane McCormack,
Kate Crowe, Paul White (UWE), Sue Roulstone (UWE)

Five of the seven members of the Sound Start Team in Bristol
(will we ever manage a photo with all of us?)

The SLTRU is on the grounds of Frenchay Hospital -
a famous name for many speech pathologists

This Gromit was decorated to celebrate the Bristol (Brizzle) accent

New speech research with Turkish children

Today I discussed a collaborative research project with Professor Seyhun Topbaş and Özge Sultan Teker to study Turkish children's speech. We proposed two inter-related projects. One to consider Turkish children's perspectives of their speech by asking them to draw themselves talking s well as using other child-friendly techniques. The second to validate the use of two tools to screen Turkish children's speech. I look forward to working together on these projects.

Sharynne, Özge, and Seyhun