Spelling Facilitates Reading: A Tutorial on the Spell-to-Read Approach.

Purpose: According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), prevention, identification, assessment, and intervention of children who are learning to read and write are within the scope of practice for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Furthermore, for SLPs who work in the school setting, it is not uncommon to have struggling readers and poor spellers on their caseloads. Importantly, for students who have difficulty in spelling, their spelling errors are among the early indicators of dyslexia and can provide a means for identifying readers who may benefit from early intervention.

Rethinking Literacy Intervention: Addressing a Practice Gap With Best Practices From Multisensory Structured Language Approaches.

Purpose: Dyslexia is increasingly being defined, assessed, diagnosed, and treated in the educational system. The purpose of this clinical focus article is to elucidate ways in which speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can rethink how to implement literacy interventions to incorporate best practices from multisensory structured language (MSL) approaches and how they can be influential participants in the conversations of how to define and implement services for students who have written language disorders, including dyslexia, in the school setting.

Method: This clinical focus article provides an operational definition of dyslexia, discusses the various roles and responsibilities of SLPs with respect to dyslexia, and describes the well-established evidence-based practices of MSL approaches as a means of rethinking literacy intervention.

Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language.

We report on the emergence of functional flexibility in vocalizations of human infants. This vastly underappreciated capability becomes apparent when prelinguistic vocalizations express a full range of emotional content--positive, neutral, and negative. The data show that at least three types of infant vocalizations (squeals, vowel-like sounds, and growls) occur with this full range of expression by 3-4 mo of age.

Identification of prelinguistic phonological categories.

Purpose: The prelinguistic infant's babbling repertoire of syllables--the phonological categories that form the basis for early word learning--is noticed by caregivers who interact with infants around them. Prior research on babbling has not explored the caregiver's role in recognition of early vocal categories as foundations for word learning. In the present work, the authors begin to address this gap.

Developing a weighted measure of speech sound accuracy.

Purpose: To develop a system for numerically quantifying a speaker's phonetic accuracy through transcription-based measures. With a focus on normal and disordered speech in children, the authors describe a system for differentially weighting speech sound errors on the basis of various levels of phonetic accuracy using a Weighted Speech Sound Accuracy (WSSA) score. The authors then evaluate the reliability and validity of this measure.

Predicting phonetic transcription agreement: insights from research in infant vocalizations.

The purpose of this study is to provide new perspectives on correlates of phonetic transcription agreement. Our research focuses on phonetic transcription and coding of infant vocalizations. The findings are presumed to be broadly applicable to other difficult cases of transcription, such as found in severe disorders of speech, which similarly result in low reliability for a variety of reasons.

A weighted reliability measure for phonetic transcription.

Purpose: The purpose of the present work is to describe and illustrate the utility of a new tool for assessment of transcription agreement. Traditional measures have not characterized overall transcription agreement with sufficient resolution, specifically because they have often treated all phonetic differences between segments in transcriptions as equivalent, thus constituting an unweighted approach to agreement assessment. The measure the authors have developed calculates a weighted transcription agreement value based on principles derived from widely accepted tenets of phonological theory.