Establishing Cueing Skills When Treating Bilingual Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose: This study sought to train cueing skills in first-year graduate students when working with bilingual children with speech sound disorders to ensure fidelity of intervention of a larger research investigation. Method: Before explicitly training cueing skills, three students were randomly assigned bilingual clients that had been previously diagnosed with a speech sound disorder and asked to administer trial therapy. During the instructional phase, we gave students a cueing protocol, a scoring template, and feedback. We assessed performance according to challenge-point criteria and adherence to our cueing protocol. Results: Performance varied per student, but overall scores were higher during the instructional phases than during the baseline phase for all students. Performance was also higher when the students participated in individual conferencing versus group conferencing. Conclusion: Although the data are limited, the results suggest that a cueing protocol is supportive in establishing cueing skills in first-year graduate students administering speech sound intervention

Establishing Diagnostic Skills in Novice Bilingual Clinicians: A Scaffolded Approach

This study sought to scaffold administration performance of a standardized bilingual screener to sufficient levels of accuracy for data collection using principles of Cognitive Load Theory by managing task complexity when training pre-service clinicians. Before training administration skills, two students were given copies of the manual for the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener (BESOS) and asked to administer the protocol independently. During the intervention phase, students were scaffolded through administration tasks of increasing complexity and given explicit instruction, which included tailored goals, modeling and feedback. Performance for four skills was assessed using a fidelity rubric and analyzed using visual analysis. Performance varied per skill but overall scores were higher during the intervention phases than during the baseline phase for both students. In addition, accuracy of performance maintained across client participants showing patterns of generalization. Although the data are limited, scaffolding training skills for pre-service clinicians appears supportive in training administration skills for bilingual tasks. The level of support may vary per skill and per language. Future research may seek to investigate other clinical skills and tasks

Understanding Disorder Within Variation: Production of English Grammatical Forms by English Language Learners

PurposeThis study examines English performance on a set of 11 grammatical forms in Spanish-English bilingual, school-age children in order to understand how item difficulty of grammatical constructions helps correctly classify language impairment (LI) from expected variability in second language acquisition when taking into account linguistic experience and exposure.MethodThree hundred seventy-eight children's scores on the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment-Middle Extension (Peña, Bedore, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, & Goldstein, 2008) morphosyntax cloze task were analyzed by bilingual experience groups (high Spanish experience, balanced English-Spanish experience, high English experience, ability (typically developing [TD] vs. LI), and grammatical form. Classification accuracy was calculated for the forms that best differentiated TD and LI groups.ResultsChildren with LI scored lower than TD children across all bilingual experience groups. There were differences by grammatical form across bilingual experience and ability groups. Children from high English experience and balanced English-Spanish experience groups could be accurately classified on the basis of all the English grammatical forms tested except for prepositions. For bilinguals with high Spanish experience, it was possible to rule out LI on the basis of grammatical production but not rule in LI.ConclusionsIt is possible to accurately identify LI in English language learners once they use English 40% of the time or more. However, for children with high Spanish experience, more information about development and patterns of impairment is needed to positively identify LI

Understanding Disorder Within Variation: Production of English Grammatical Forms by English Language Learners

PurposeThis study examines English performance on a set of 11 grammatical forms in Spanish-English bilingual, school-age children in order to understand how item difficulty of grammatical constructions helps correctly classify language impairment (LI) from expected variability in second language acquisition when taking into account linguistic experience and exposure.MethodThree hundred seventy-eight children's scores on the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment-Middle Extension (Peña, Bedore, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, & Goldstein, 2008) morphosyntax cloze task were analyzed by bilingual experience groups (high Spanish experience, balanced English-Spanish experience, high English experience, ability (typically developing [TD] vs. LI), and grammatical form. Classification accuracy was calculated for the forms that best differentiated TD and LI groups.ResultsChildren with LI scored lower than TD children across all bilingual experience groups. There were differences by grammatical form across bilingual experience and ability groups. Children from high English experience and balanced English-Spanish experience groups could be accurately classified on the basis of all the English grammatical forms tested except for prepositions. For bilinguals with high Spanish experience, it was possible to rule out LI on the basis of grammatical production but not rule in LI.ConclusionsIt is possible to accurately identify LI in English language learners once they use English 40% of the time or more. However, for children with high Spanish experience, more information about development and patterns of impairment is needed to positively identify LI