Visual stimuli in intervention approaches for pre-schoolers diagnosed with phonological delay

Purpose: There is a need to develop letter knowledge assessment tools to characterise the letter knowledge in Portuguese pre-schoolers and to compare it with pre-schoolers from other countries, but there are no tools for this purpose in Portugal. The aim of this paper is to describe the development and validation procedures of the Prova de Avaliac¸ao de Compet ~ ^encias de Pr e-Literacia (PACPL), which assesses letter knowledge. Method: This study includes data that has been gathered in two phases: pilot and main study. In the pilot study, an expert panel of six speech and language pathologists analysed the instrument. Children (n ¼ 216) aged 5;0–7;11 participated in the main study that reports data related to the psychometric characteristics of the PACPL. Content validity, internal consistency, reliability and contributing factors to performance were examined statistically. Results: A modified Bland–Altman method revealed good agreement amongst evaluators. The main study showed that the PACPL has a very good internal consistency and high inter-rater (96.2% of agreement and a Cohen’s k value of 0.92) and intra-rater (95.6% of agreement and a Cohen’s k value of 0.91) agreement. Construct validity of the PCAPL was also assured (Cronbach’s a of 0.982). Significant differences were found between age groups with children increasing their letter knowledge with age. In addition, they were better at identifying than at producing both letter names and letter sounds. Conclusions: The PACPL is a valid and reliable instrument to assess letter knowledge in Portuguese children.publishe

Vocal Patterns in Infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Canonical Babbling Status and Vocalization Frequency

Canonical babbling is a critical milestone for speech development and is usually well in place by 10 months. The possibility that infants with ASD show late onset of canonical babbling has so far eluded evaluation. Rate of vocalization or “volubility” has also been suggested as possibly aberrant in infants with ASD. We conducted a retrospective video study examining vocalizations of 37 infants at 9–12 and 15–18 months. Twenty-three of the 37 infants were later diagnosed with ASD and indeed produced low rates of canonical babbling and low volubility by comparison with the 14 typically developing infants. The study thus supports suggestions that very early vocal patterns may prove to be a useful component of early screening and diagnosis of ASD