Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Assessing Oral Language When Screening Multilingual Children For Learning Disabilities In Reading, J. Marc Goodrich, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Jessica Chan, C. Jamie Davis

Faculty Publications

Multilingual children represent a rapidly growing population of students in U.S. schools. However, identification of language and learning disabilities for students from different linguistic backgrounds is complex, leading to frequent misidentification of multilingual learners for special education. This article provides guidance on how special education teachers, speech-language pathologists, and other practitioners (e.g., school psychologists) can utilize each other’s expertise to accurately assess language and literacy skills of multilingual learners. Five key lessons learned from research on identification of language disorders are presented, along with discussion of why these are important when screening multilingual children for learning disabilities in reading. Specifically, …

The Development Of A Measure Of Orthographic Processing In The Arabic Language: A Psychometric Evaluation, Sana Tibi, Lisa Fitton, Autumn L. Mcilraith

Faculty Publications

Although Arabic is an official language in 27 countries, standardized measures to assess Arabic literacy are scarce. The purpose of this research was to examine the item functioning of an assessment of Arabic orthographic knowledge. Sixty novel items were piloted with 201 third grade Arabic-speaking students. Participants were asked to identify the correctly spelled word from a pair of two words. Although the assessment was designed to be unidimensional, competing models were tested to determine whether item performance was attributable to multidimensionality. No multidimensional structure fit the data significantly better than the unidimensional model. The 60 original items were evaluated …

Implementing Evidence-Based Assessment Practices For The Monitoring Of Spoken Language Outcomes In Children Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing In A Large Community Program, Barbara Jane Cunningham, Janis Oram Cardy, Olivia Daub University Of Western Ontario

PRECISe Preschool Speech and Language Publications

The purpose of this quality improvement pilot was to evaluate the effectiveness of an online learning module for (a) changing speech-language pathologists’ perceptions about outcome monitoring and assessment protocols for children who are deaf or hard of hearing and (b) supporting speech-language pathologists’ understanding of evidence-based protocols to be implemented in their community-based program. Using principles of integrated knowledge translation and the Ottawa Model of Research Use, an online learning module was designed to support the implementation of evidence-based assessment protocols for these children in a large publicly funded program in Ontario, Canada. A pre–post study was then conducted with …

Aphasia In Multilingual Patients, Mira Goral, Zahra Hejazi

Publications and Research

Purpose of Review

We summarize recent published work concerning assessment and treatment of aphasia in bilingual and multilingual people and review current related models of treatment outcomes. As well, we discuss studies that address the recently debated topic of cognitive processes in bilingual individuals with aphasia, with a focus on the effects of bilingualism on aphasia recovery and its potential protective effects.

Recent Findings

Providing assessment and treatment tools that best serve multilingual individuals with aphasia and unpacking the variables and mechanisms that underlie response to treatment have emerged as goals of several recent studies. Additionally, while findings are still …