"Making Assessment Work: Ten Practitioner Beliefs" was developed by the National Practitioner Advisory Group on Using Data to Inspire SEL Practice (NPAG), a group of social and emotional learning (SEL) practice leaders convened to provide insights on SEL. Educators, program leaders, and policymakers recognize the value of holistically…

Data on disfluencies in the speech of non-stuttering adults are relevant to several aspects of the assessment and treatment of adults who stutter. Currently, very few sources provide relevant data. In the existing literature on normally fluent speakers, there is no consistency in sample length or topic or in which types of disfluency are counted.…

This study applied four direct magnitude estimation (DME) standards to the evaluation of speech from four individuals with dysarthria and three neurologically normal speakers. It found a fixed set of sentence-level utterances was scaled differently depending on the specific standard used. Results are discussed in terms of possible standardization…

Modern test construction strategies in the areas of personality and psychopathology differ in the use of disguise within test stimulus material. Previous research on the validity of using disguised test item content has favored the rational strategy of test construction which views disguise as a liability under normal test-taking circumstances.…

In this study, 30 judges identified disfluency types they perceived in audiovisually recorded speech stimuli, first individually and then with a partner. Although intrapair and interpair agreement was higher in the partner than the individual condition, agreement for occurrences still averaged below 50 percent. Findings suggest caution in use of…

Positron emission tomography imaging was used to evaluate the brain's response to auditory stimulation, including speech, in deaf adults (five with cochlear implants and one with an auditory brainstem implant). Functional speech processing was associated with activation in areas classically associated with speech processing. (Contains five…

This article provides an introduction to the use of event-related potential (ERP) approaches to study language processes. First, a brief history of the emergence of this technology is presented, followed by definitions, a theoretical overview, and a practical guide to conducting ERP studies. Examples of language studies that use this technique are…

Gains made by a woman with Broca's aphasia as documented by traditional measures were paralleled by changes in conversation, including increased verbal output and efficiency, and changes in conversation-repair patterns. The progress documented with conversational discourse analysis was not observable from other test measures. (Author/DB)

In this study, self-reports of 34 individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) were compared with proxy ratings from family and providers. Correlations between the ratings of individuals with DD and the proxy raters were low, as were the correlations between family members and providers. In all scales except "cognition," the individual with DD…

This investigation compared five parameters of phonatory function in an examination of the use of acoustic measures in differential diagnosis in 39 subjects in 3 neuropathological groups (Parkinson, Huntington, cerebellar ataxia) and a normal control group. Results indicated higher variability in perturbation in all the neuropathological groups.…

Sensitivity to reinforcement contingencies was examined in six individuals with mental retardation using a concurrent operants procedure in the context of a computer game. Results included individual differences in sensitivity and differential sensitivity to rate and magnitude variation. Results suggest that comprehensive assessments of potential…

The effects of (1) format and color, and (2) severity of issue (freeze damage to citrus industry) on response rate of mail questionnaires is presented. Questionnaires were formatted in two different ways: a one page, legal size printed on both sides, and one sheet 11- by 17-inch size center-folded with items on three pages. Two colors were used:…

This study describes the development of the Active Treatment Client Rights checklist (ATCR), which was designed to facilitate the assessment, monitoring, and implementation of readily observable client active treatment services for adults with developmental disabilities. The ATCR was found to be highly reliable, valid, and useful in enhancing…

Vowels produced by four deaf women were analyzed spectrographically to study acoustic correlates of vocal tract deformation. Formant structure evaluated on isovowel lines disclosed consistent neutralization of vowels, which is attributed to observed restricted horizontal movements of the tongue within the oral and pharyngeal cavities. (Author/JDD)

Frequency difference limens (DLFs) for pure tones were obtained over a wide range of frequencies and levels from 7 normal-hearing subjects and 16 ears of 12 listeners with sensorineural hearing losses. Results indicated that it is reasonable to use data from normal listeners' DLFs to evaluate DLFs from hearing-impaired listeners. (Author/JDD)