Education Commons^™

Assessing Pre-Literacy Behaviors In Infants And Toddlers: Psychometric Evaluation Of The Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (Itla-3), Barbara J. Jackson, Christine Marvin, Amy J. Encinger, Nicole Buchholz, Becky Zessin

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Assessment of emerging literacy in young children is generally limited to either skill development in children over 3 years of age or the quality and context of young children’s early literacy experiences. Although there has been promotion of their early literacy experiences, assessment of emerging pre-literacy behaviors in children younger than 3 years has yet to be organized into a single tool.

Preliminary work on the Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (ITLA) has progressed through initial steps of scale development and shown promise as a criterionbased, standardized assessment for tracking children’s pre-literacy behaviors and guiding practitioners in supporting development of those …

A Screening Protocol Incorporating Brain-Computer Interface Feature Matching Considerations For Augmentative And Alternative Communication, Kevin M. Pitt, Jonathan S. Brumberg

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: The use of standardized screening protocols may inform brain-computer interface (BCI) research procedures to help maximize BCI performance outcomes and provide foundational information for clinical translation. Therefore, in this study we developed and evaluated a new BCI screening protocol incorporating cognitive, sensory, motor and motor imagery tasks.

Methods: Following development, BCI screener outcomes were compared to the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS), and ALS Functional Rating Scale (ALS-FRS) for twelve individuals with a neuromotor disorder.

Results: Scores on the cognitive portion of the BCI screener demonstrated limited variability, indicating all participants possessed core BCI-related skills. When compared …

Program Monitoring Practices For Teachers Of The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing In Early Intervention, Anne E. Thomas, Christine Marvin

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Program monitoring is an important and necessary assessment practice within the field of early childhood deaf education. Effective program monitoring requires a focus on both the consistent implementation of intervention strategies (fidelity) and the assessment of children’s ongoing progress in response to interventions (progress monitoring). Teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing (TODs) who provide early intervention services need to conduct regular program monitoring to evaluate the merit of their efforts. However, progress monitoring is a practice often overlooked by practitioners within the field of early intervention. It is recommended that TODs monitor children’s progress “regularly,” but evidence of …

Assessing The Writing Achievement Of Young Struggling Writers: Application Of Generalizability Theory, Steve Graham, Michael Hebert, Michael Paige Sandbank, Karen R. Harris

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers’ capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second- and third-grade students (81 boys, 56 girls), who were identified as struggling writers in need of special assistance by their teacher and scored at the 25th percentile or lower on a norm-referenced story-writing test, wrote four compositions: a story, personal narrative, opinion essay, and informative text. Applying generalizability theory (G-theory), students’ scores on three writing measures (total number of words [TNW], vocabulary …

Applied Examples Of Screening Students At Risk Of Emotional And Behavioral Disabilities, Corey D. Pierce, Philip D. Nordness, Michael Epstein, Douglas Cullinan

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Early identification of student behavioral needs allows educators the opportunity to apply appropriate interventions before negative behaviors become more intensive and persistent. A variety of screening tools are available to identify which students are at risk for persistent behavior problems in school. This article provides two examples in which the Emotional and Behavioral Screener (EBS) was used to identify students at risk of emotional or behavioral problems. Example 1 demonstrates how the EBS can be used within a school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports framework to inform decision making. Example 2 demonstrates how the EBS can be used to inform …

The Impact Of Interface Design During An Initial High-Technology Aac Experience: A Collective Case Study Of People With Aphasia, Aimee R. Dietz, Kristy S.E. Weissling, Julie Griffith, Miechelle L. Mckelvey, Devan Macke

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this collective case study was to describe the communication behaviors of five people with chronic aphasia when they retold personal narratives to an unfamiliar communication partner using four variants of a visual scene display (VSD) interface. The results revealed that spoken language comprised roughly 70% of expressive modality units; variable patterns of use for other modalities emerged. Although inconsistent across participants, several people with aphasia experienced no trouble sources during the retells using VSDs with personally relevant photographs and text boxes. Overall, participants perceived the personally relevant photographs and the text as helpful during the retells. These …

A Nonword Repetition Task For Speakers With Misarticulations: The Syllable Repetition Task (Srt), Lawrence D. Shriberg, Heather L. Lohmeier, Thomas F. Campbell, Christine A. Dollaghan, Jordan R. Green, Christopher A. Moore

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose. Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. We describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT) that eliminates this confound and report findings from three validity studies.
Method. Ninety-five preschool children with Speech Delay and 63 with Typical Speech, completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT: Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) and the SRT. SRT stimuli include only four of the earliest occurring consonants and …

Transitioning From Analog To Digital Audio Recording In Childhood Speech Sound Disorders, Lawrence D. Shriberg, Jane L. Mcsweeny, Bruce E. Anderson, Thomas F. Campbell, Michael R. Chial, Jordan R. Green, Katherina K. Hauner, Christopher A. Moore, Heather L. Rusiewicz, David L. Wilson

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Few empirical findings or technical guidelines are available on the current transition from analog to digital audio recording in childhood speech sound disorders. Of particular concern in the present context was whether a transition from analog- to digital-based transcription and coding of prosody and voice features might require re-standardizing a reference database for research in childhood speech sound disorders. Two research transcribers with different levels of experience glossed, transcribed, and prosody-voice coded conversational speech samples from eight children with mild to severe speech disorders of unknown origin. The samples were recorded, stored, and played back using representative analog and digital …

The Relationship Between Phonological Awareness And Reading: Implications For The Assessment Of Phonological Awareness, Tiffany Hogan, Hugh W. Catts, Todd D. Little

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) use phonological awareness assessments in many ways. This study examines the usefulness of these assessments in kindergarten and 2nd grade.
Method: Measures of phonological awareness and letter identification were administered in kindergarten, and measures of phonological awareness, phonetic decoding (i.e., nonword reading), and word reading were administered in 2nd and 4th grades to a sample of 570 children participating in a longitudinal study of reading and language impairments.
Results: A path analysis indicated that kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and letter identification provided information to the prediction of 2nd-grade reading. In 2nd grade, measures of reading …