SLPs' perceptions of language learning myths about children who are DHH.

This article reports on speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') knowledge related to myths about spoken language learning of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). The broader study was designed as a step toward narrowing the research-practice gap and providing effective, evidence-based language services to children. In the broader study, SLPs (n = 106) reported their agreement/disagreement with myth statements and true statements (n = 52) about 7 clinical topics related to speech and language development.

Conceptions and Misconceptions: What Do School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists Think About Dyslexia?

Purpose: The purpose of this exploratory study was to evaluate speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') conceptions and misconceptions about dyslexia.

Method: Participants were 86 school-based SLPs. They completed an online survey on which they rated their agreement and disagreement with true and false statements related to the scientific evidence about the nature of dyslexia and interventions for dyslexia, as well as common misconceptions about dyslexia.

Neutralizing and protective murine monoclonal antibodies to the hemagglutinin of influenza H5 clades 2.3.2.1 and 2.3.4.4.

Background: Highly pathogenic avian H5 influenza viruses have spread and diversified genetically and antigenically into multiple clades and subclades. Most isolates of currently circulating H5 viruses are in clade 2.3.

Using Motor Tempi to Understand Rhythm and Grammatical Skills in Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Language Development.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show relative weaknesses on rhythm tasks beyond their characteristic linguistic impairments. The current study compares preferred tempo and the width of an entrainment region for 5- to 7-year-old typically developing (TD) children and children with DLD and considers the associations with rhythm aptitude and expressive grammar skills in the two populations. Preferred tempo was measured with a spontaneous motor tempo task (tapping tempo at a comfortable speed), and the width (range) of an entrainment region was measured by the difference between the upper (slow) and lower (fast) limits of tapping a rhythm normalized by an individual's spontaneous motor tempo.

Speech-Language Pathologists' Endorsement of Speech, Language, and Literacy Myths Reveals Persistent Research-Practice Gap.

Purpose: We explore the extent to which speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are operating under assumptions about speech, language, and literacy that are not supported by evidence or are contradicted by evidence.

Method: SLPs ( = 106) marked the degree to which they endorsed or rejected four true and 11 myth (i.e.

A pilot study assessing listening comprehension and reading comprehension in children with down syndrome: Construct validity from a multi-method perspective.

Obtaining valid assessments of language and literacy skills in children with Down syndrome (DS) presents a challenge as there is a paucity of information about the psychometrics of measures that are commonly used to measure listening and reading comprehension in this population. Evaluating the construct validity of measures that employ different methods is essential to ascertain the optimal method of assessment in individuals with DS and with typical developmental histories (TD). This pilot study aimed to evaluate the construct validity of four parallel measures of listening and reading comprehension.

Reading and Listening Comprehension in Individuals With Down Syndrome and Word Reading-Matched Typically Developing Children.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the reading comprehension and listening comprehension performance of English-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) compared with word reading-matched typically developing (TD) children.

Method: Participants included 19 individuals with DS ( = 17;2 [years;months], range: 11;1-22;9) and 19 word reading-matched TD children ( = 7;2, range: 6;6-8;1). Participants completed three norm-referenced measures of reading comprehension and three norm-referenced measures of listening comprehension.

Cell survival after DNA damage in the comet assay.

The comet assay is widely used in basic research, genotoxicity testing, and human biomonitoring. However, interpretation of the comet assay data might benefit from a better understanding of the future fate of a cell with DNA damage. DNA damage is in principle repairable, or if extensive, can lead to cell death.

Tense Marking in the Kindergarten Population: Testing the Bimodal Distribution Hypothesis.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore whether evidence for a bimodal distribution of tense marking, previously documented in clinically referred samples, exists in a population-based sample of kindergarten children from a rural county in Tennessee. Method A measure of tense marking, the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI) Screening Test, was individually administered to consented kindergarten students ( = 153) across three elementary schools in a single school district. The consented children constituted 73% of kindergartners in the district.

When Will He Talk? An Evidence-Based Tutorial for Measuring Progress Toward Use of Spoken Words in Preverbal Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Purpose Professionals face substantial challenges determining whether and when children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are not yet using spoken words will use spoken language as their primary means of communication. This tutorial provides speech-language pathologists with practical guidance on how to measure expressive language predictors for progress monitoring and making intervention decisions for children with ASD who are preverbal. Method This tutorial is a repackaging effort that seeks to make the research accessible to clinicians wishing to implement evidence-based practice.

Individualized Narrative Intervention for School-Age Children With Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose This study extends the research on narrative intervention by evaluating the effect of a standard treatment protocol, (Petersen & Spencer, 2012), on personal narrative generations of school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Four second-grade, 8- to 9-year-old boys with SLI participated in this multiple baseline across behaviors, single-case design study that was repeated across participants. Each one-on-one intervention session involved eight steps across two intervention segments: story retell and personal story generation.

Toward Understanding the Lexical-Morphological Networks of Children With Specific Language Impairment: Analysis of Responses on a Morphological Production Task.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize the lexical-morphological networks of children with specific language impairment (SLI) compared to children with typical language by analyzing responses on a morphological derived form production task. Method School-age children with SLI ( = 32) and peers with typical language ( = 40) completed an oral cloze derived form production task (Carlisle, 2000). On this task, children were expected to complete verbally presented sentences with a derived form of a provided morphological stem.

A Multiyear Population-Based Study of Kindergarten Language Screening Failure Rates Using the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate, over 2 separate school years, the school-district-wide failure rate of kindergartners on a screener of grammatical tense marking-the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI) Screening Test (Rice & Wexler, 2001)-composed of past tense (PT) and third-person singular (3S) probes.

Method: In the fall of 2 consecutive school years, consented and eligible kindergartners (n = 148 in Year 1, n = 126 in Year 2) in a rural southern school district were administered the TEGI Screening Test. Children who failed the screening test or either of the individual probes (PT or 3S) were administered the Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence.

The Potential of Past Tense Marking in Oral Reading as a Clinical Marker of Specific Language Impairment in School-Age Children.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold. The first aim was to explore differences in profiles of past tense marking in oral reading of school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI). The second aim was to explore the potential of past tense marking in oral reading as a clinical marker of SLI in school-age children.

Word-learning performance of children with and without cochlear implants given synchronous and asynchronous cues.

This study sought to evaluate the effects of synchronous and asynchronous auditory-visual cues on the word-learning performance of children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing matched for chronological age. Children with cochlear implants (n = 9) who had worn the implant for less than one year and children matched for chronological age (n = 9) participated in rapid word-learning trials. Children with cochlear implants did not learn words in either the synchronous or asynchronous condition (U = 49.

Perspectives on the rhythm-grammar link and its implications for typical and atypical language development.

This paper reviews the mounting evidence for shared cognitive mechanisms and neural resources for rhythm and grammar. Evidence for a role of rhythm skills in language development and language comprehension is reviewed here in three lines of research: (1) behavioral and brain data from adults and children, showing that prosody and other aspects of timing of sentences influence online morpho-syntactic processing; (2) comorbidity of impaired rhythm with grammatical deficits in children with language impairment; and (3) our recent work showing a strong positive association between rhythm perception skills and expressive grammatical skills in young school-age children with typical development. Our preliminary follow-up study presented here revealed that musical rhythm perception predicted variance in 6-year-old children's production of complex syntax, as well as online reorganization of grammatical information (transformation); these data provide an additional perspective on the hierarchical relations potentially shared by rhythm and grammar.

Synchrony of maternal auditory and visual cues about unknown words to children with and without cochlear implants.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare types of maternal auditory-visual input about word referents available to children with cochlear implants, children with normal hearing matched for age, and children with normal hearing matched for vocabulary size. Although other works have considered the acoustic qualities of maternal input provided to children with cochlear implants, this study is the first to consider auditory-visual maternal input provided to children with cochlear implants.

Design: Participants included 30 mother-child dyads from three groups: children who wore cochlear implants (n = 10 dyads), children matched for chronological age (n = 10 dyads), and children matched for expressive vocabulary size (n = 10 dyads).

Effects of a word-learning training on children with cochlear implants.

Preschool children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants demonstrate vocabulary delays when compared to their peers without hearing loss. These delays may be a result of deficient word-learning abilities; children with cochlear implants perform more poorly on rapid word-learning tasks than children with normal hearing. This study explored the malleability of rapid word learning of preschoolers with cochlear implants by evaluating the effects of a word-learning training on rapid word learning.

The influence of two cognitive-linguistic variables on incidental word learning in 5-year-olds.

The relation between incidental word learning and two cognitive-linguistic variables--phonological memory and phonological awareness--is not fully understood. Thirty-five typically developing, 5-year-old, preschool children participated in a study examining the association between phonological memory, phonological awareness, and incidental word learning. Children were exposed to target words in a read-aloud story that accompanied a wordless picture book.

Mother-child communication and maternal depressive symptoms in families of children with cancer: integrating macro and micro levels of analysis.

Objectives: This study examines associations between maternal depressive symptoms and macro- and micro-level aspects of mothers' communication about their children's cancer.

Methods: Mothers reported depressive symptoms after diagnosis or relapse (child mean age = 10.4 years; 53% male).

An examination of fast mapping skills in preschool children from families with low socioeconomic status.

Researchers consistently report that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families have, on average, smaller vocabularies as assessed by measures of existing vocabulary knowledge than children from higher SES families. Yet, few studies have examined the word-learning process of children from low SES families. The present study was an examination of fast mapping by preschoolers from low SES families.