Effects of Expiratory Muscle Strength Training on Oropharyngeal Swallow Physiology in Persons with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA): A Preliminary Study.

Despite the high estimated prevalence of dysphagia in OSA, there is a paucity of evidence supporting behavioral interventions for treatment. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of expiratory muscle strength training (EMST) on validated, standardized metrics of swallow and airway clearance capacity functions in moderate-to-severe OSA. 10 participants with OSA (mean age = 65.

Can gesture input support toddlers' fast mapping?

Forty-eight toddlers participated in a word-learning task to assess gesture input on mapping nonce words to unfamiliar objects. Receptive fast mapping and expressive naming for target object-word pairs were tested in three conditions - with a point, with a shape gesture, and in a no-gesture, word-only condition. No statistically significant effect of gesture for receptive fast-mapping was found but age was a factor.

An Interprofessional Education Initiative for Allied Health Students Preparing to Serve Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

The need for effective services for persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is driving efforts to better prepare teams of allied health professionals. To address this need, an interprofessional graduate course was piloted with students from three allied health professions: physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology. The course aims were to address knowledge and competency in the field of ASD and to promote interprofessional abilities during entry-level preparation.

Children with SLI exhibit delays resolving ambiguous reference.

Fast mapping weaknesses in children with specific language impairment (SLI) may be explained by differences in disambiguation, mapping an unknown word to an unnamed object. The impact of language ability and linguistic stimulus on disambiguation was investigated. Sixteen children with SLI (8 preschool, 8 school-age) and sixteen typically developing age-matched children selected referents given familiar and unfamiliar object pairs in three ambiguous conditions: phonologically distinct word (PD), phonologically similar word (PS), no word (NW).

Auditory middle latency responses in chronic smokers compared to nonsmokers: differential effects of stimulus and age.

Purpose: Effects of clicks and tonebursts on early and late auditory middle latency response (AMLR) components were evaluated in young and older cigarette smokers and nonsmokers.

Method: Participants ( n = 49) were categorized by smoking and age into 4 groups: (a) older smokers, (b) older nonsmokers, (c) young smokers, and (d) young nonsmokers. Monaural, 2-channel AMLRs were acquired from Fz and Cz electrodes with 3 stimuli (clicks, 500 Hz, and 3000 Hz).

Effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation following acquired brain injury: a meta-analytic re-examination of Cicerone et al.'s (2000, 2005) systematic reviews.

The present study provides a meta-analysis of cognitive rehabilitation literature (K = 115, N = 2,014) that was originally reviewed by K. D. Cicerone et al.

Communication and academic challenges in early adolescence for children who have been adopted from the former Soviet Union.

Purpose: This was a Time II survey of outcomes for children, now ages 9 to 13 years, who were almost 4 years old on average when they were adopted from the former Soviet Union.

Method: As part of a larger study (see T. McGuinness, R.

Sensitivity to verb phrase grammaticality by children with specific language impairment.

8 preschoolers with specific language impairment (age range=44-58 mo.) and 8 language-matched, typically developing toddlers (22-29 mo.) participated in a verb comprehension task to investigate sensitivity to auxiliary is in four contexts --grammatical (Who is pushing?), omitted (Who pushing?), ungrammatical (Who in pushing?), and nonsense (Who id pushing?).

Present tense be use in young children with specific language impairment: less is more.

A well-known characteristic of children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a significant deficit in grammatical morphology production compared with younger, language-matched, typically developing children. This is true for present tense be (am, is, are), as well as other inflectional morphemes. However, grammatical morpheme learning by children with SLI may vary depending on developmental stage.