Culturally and linguistically diverse children's retention of spoken narratives encoded in quiet and in babble noise.

Multi-talker noise impedes children's speech processing and may affect children listening to their second language more than children listening to their first language. Evidence suggests that multi-talker noise also may impede children's memory retention and learning. A total of 80 culturally and linguistically diverse children aged 7 to 9 years listened to narratives in two listening conditions: quiet and multi-talker noise (signal-to-noise ratio +6 dB).

The Effect of Background Noise, Bilingualism, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Functioning on Primary School Children's Narrative Listening Comprehension.

Purpose: This study focuses on 7- to 9-year-old children attending primary school in Swedish areas of low socioeconomic status, where most children's school language is their second language. The aim was to better understand what factors influence these children's narrative listening comprehension both in an ideal listening condition (in quiet) and for the primary school classroom, a typical listening condition (with multitalker babble noise).

Method: A total of 86 typically developing 7- to 9-year-olds performed a narrative listening comprehension test (Lyssna, Förstå och Minnas [LFM]; English translation: Listen, Comprehend, and Remember) in two listening conditions: quiet and multitalker babble noise.

'It depends on who I'm with': How young people with developmental language disorder describe their experiences of language and communication in school.

Background: The risks of developmental language disorder (DLD) for both educational progress and socio-emotional development are well documented, but little is known about how children and young people with DLD experience and describe their language and communication. The need to complement experimental and quantitative studies with qualitative perspectives of the lived experience of individuals with DLD for speech and language therapists (SLT) practice has recently been foregrounded.

Aims: To understand further the experiences of young people with DLD focusing on language and communication in a school context, and thereby contribute to the improvement of the communicative situation in school for this group.

A randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of teacher continued professional development on student language outcomes.

Background: Continued professional development (CPD) is required for updated skills and knowledge. This study evaluates the efficacy of a CPD programme for mainstream school teachers.

Aims: In an 11-week intervention programme, speech-language therapists (SLTs) presented the participating teachers with whole-class teaching techniques aimed at creating a language and communication-supporting classroom environment.

Teachers' descriptions of classroom communication after an SLP-led in-service training.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to explore teachers' experience and understanding of classroom communication after participating in a speech-language pathologist (SLP) led in-service training on classroom communication.

Method: This qualitative study used a focus group approach to explore how teachers describe their classroom communication. Twenty primary-school teachers participated.

Word definition skills in elementary school children - The contribution of bilingualism, cognitive factors, and social factors.

Vocabulary relates to overall language proficiency and is important for academic success. Word definition (WD) tasks can be used to assess vocabulary depth and definition skills. We investigate monolingual and bilingual children's performances on a WD task, and how bilingualism, level of parental education, school characteristics (proportion of students with Swedish as second language and proportion of parents with tertiary education), CELF-4 Core Language Score, and non-verbal IQ contribute to their performance.

Development of an Auditory Passage Comprehension Task for Swedish Primary School Children of Cultural and Linguistic Diversity.

Purpose This study reports on the development of an auditory passage comprehension task for Swedish primary school children of cultural and linguistic diversity. It also reports on their performance on the task in quiet and in noise. Method Eighty-eight children aged 7-9 years and showing normal hearing participated.

Best ear hearing level, time factors and language outcome in Swedish children with mild and moderate hearing loss with hearing aids.

Aim: The risk for language disorder is high in children with all levels of hearing loss (HL). Early identification and intervention should be as important for children with mild HL as for those with more severe HL. Despite new-born hearing screening, a recent survey of speech language therapist services in southern Sweden indicates that children with mild and moderate HL are severely neglected when it comes to language assessment and language intervention.

Listening effort and fatigue in native and non-native primary school children.

Background noise makes listening effortful and may lead to fatigue. This may compromise classroom learning, especially for children with a non-native background. In the current study, we used pupillometry to investigate listening effort and fatigue during listening comprehension under typical (0 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) and favorable (+10 dB SNR) listening conditions in 63 Swedish primary school children (7-9 years of age) performing a narrative speech-picture verification task.

Predictors of narrative text quality in students with hearing loss.

Aim: Students with hearing loss (HL) often fall behind hearing peers in complex language tasks such as narrative writing. This study explored the effects of school grade, gender, cognitive and linguistic predisposition and audiological factors on narrative text quality in this target group.

Method: Eleven students with HL in Grades 5-6 and 7-8 (age 12-15) who took part in a writing intervention wrote four narrative texts over six months.

Auditory event-related potentials and mismatch negativity in children with hearing loss using hearing aids or cochlear implants - A three-year follow-up study.

Objectives: The primary aim was to examine how event-related potentials (ERPs) and mismatch negativity (MMN) change and develop over time among children with hearing loss (HL) using hearing aids (HAs) or cochlear implants (CIs). Children with normal hearing (NH) were tested as a reference group.

Methods: This three-year follow-up study included 13 children with sensorineural HL (SNHL); 7 children using bilateral HAs and 6 children using CIs; and 10 children with NH as a reference group.

Description and prediction of reading decoding skills in Swedish children with Developmental Language Disorder.

Aim: Research is lacking in terms of reading decoding skills among clinical samples of Swedish-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Method: The present cross-sectional study included a sample of 61 children (8-12 years) with DLD attending school language units, years 1 to 5. Our purpose was to study reading decoding skills and predictors for decoding, such as a phonological processing skill (nonword repetition), working memory, and a family history of literacy problems.

Computer-assisted reading intervention for children with hearing impairment using cochlear implants: Effects on auditory event-related potentials and mismatch negativity.

Objectives: The primary aim was to find out whether a computer-assisted reading intervention program with a phonic approach can affect event-related (ERPs) and mismatch negativity (MMN) in hearing impaired (HI) children using cochlear implants (CIs).

Methods: This study involved a test group of 15 HI children with CIs and a control group of 14 normal hearing (NH) children. The children were 4 years and 10 months to 8 years and 1 month old.

Perceived listening effort in children with hearing loss: listening to a dysphonic voice in quiet and in noise.

Aim: The present study investigates the effect of signal degradation on perceived listening effort in children with hearing loss listening in a simulated class-room context. It also examines the associations between perceived listening effort, passage comprehension performance and executive functioning.

Methods: Twenty-four children (aged 06:03-13:00 years) with hearing impairment using cochlear implant (CI) and/or hearing aids (HA) participated.

A Pilot Study on the Relationship between Primary-School Teachers' Well-Being and the Acoustics of their Classrooms.

Although teachers' well-being and vocal health are affected by noise, research on classroom sound environment from the teachers' perspective is scarce. This study investigated the relationship between teachers' well-being and classroom acoustics. The possible influence of teachers' age, experience, teaching grade and class size on the relationship was also investigated.

Effects of intervention on self-efficacy and text quality in elementary school students' narrative writing.

Aim: Self-efficacy for writing is an important motivational factor and considered to predict writing performance. Self-efficacy for narrative writing has been sparsely studied, and few studies focus on the effects of writing intervention on self-efficacy. Additionally, there is a lack of validated measures of self-efficacy for elementary school students.

Brain Measures of Toddlers' Shape Recognition Predict Language and Cognitive Skills at 6-7 Years.

While a number of studies have found that an improvement in object shape recognition is associated with language growth in infants and toddlers, no published studies have investigated the longitudinal relation between early shape recognition, and language abilities in later childhood. An electrophysiological measure of semantic processing (the N400) was used to assess shape recognition and general object recognition in a naming context in 20-month-olds. The measures of shape recognition strongly predicted language and cognitive abilities at 6-7 years even after controlling for toddler vocabulary size.

The Contribution of Bilingualism, Parental Education, and School Characteristics to Performance on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals: Fourth Edition, Swedish.

Assessment of bilingual children in only one language fails to acknowledge their distributed linguistic competence and has been shown to overidentify language disorder in bilingual populations. However, other factors, sometimes associated with bilingualism, may also contribute to low results in language assessments. Our aim was to examine the impact of these factors on language abilities.

Children's development of semantic verbal fluency during summer vacation versus during formal schooling.

Children's results on school-related achievements tests, such as aspects of math, reading and writing, have been shown to decline following a lengthy summer vacation. Few studies have investigated whether this also applies to vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate how lexical organization and retrieval, assessed by a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task, develops during a lengthy summer vacation versus formal schooling.

Implementation and evaluation of a teacher intervention program on classroom communication.

Media frequently report on overall work-place challenges in Swedish schools, including teachers' working conditions, their well-being, and students' declining results. Language is the key to success in every school subject. Therefore, optimal language learning environments are important.

Passage comprehension performance in children with cochlear implants and/or hearing aids: the effects of voice quality and multi-talker babble noise in relation to executive function.

Speech signal degradation such as a voice disorder presented in quiet or in combination with multi-talker babble noise could affect listening comprehension in children with hearing impairment. This study aims to investigate the effects of voice quality and multi-talker babble noise on passage comprehension in children with using cochlear implants (CIs) and/or hearing aids (HAs). It also aims to examine what role executive functioning has for passage comprehension in listening conditions with degraded signals (voice quality and multi-talker babble noise) in children using CI/HA.

Latent Semantic Analysis Discriminates Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) from Children with Typical Language Development.

Computer based analyses offer a possibility for objective methods to assess semantic-linguistic quality of narratives at the text level. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether a semantic language impairment index (SELIMI) based on latent semantic analysis (LSA) can discriminate between children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with typical language development. Spoken narratives from 54 children with DLD and 54 age matched controls with typical language development were summarized in a semantic representation generated using LSA.

Computer-assisted reading intervention for children with sensorineural hearing loss using hearing aids: Effects on auditory event-related potentials and mismatch negativity.

Objectives: The primary aim was to investigate whether computer-assisted reading intervention somehow can affect event-related potentials (ERP) and mismatch negativity (MMN) in hearing impaired (HI) children with hearing aids (HAs) and normal hearing (NH) children.

Methods: The study included 15 HI children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) using bilateral HAs and 14 NH children as a reference group; all children between the ages of 5 and 8. A multi-feature MMN-paradigm, Optimum-1, with a standard stimulus alternating with 5 different deviants was used.

The influence of voice quality and multi-talker babble noise on sentence processing and recall performance in school children using cochlear implant and/or hearing aids.

Purpose: This study examines the influence of voice quality and multi-talker babble noise on processing and storage performance in a working memory task performed by children using cochlear implants (CI) and/or hearing aids (HA).

Methods: Twenty-three children with a hearing impairment using CI and/or HA participated. Age range was between 6 and 13 years.