Purpose: A common goal of peer-mediated interventions is to train peers to successfully initiate and maintain social and linguistic interactions with a target child in the classroom. Ample evidence indicates that peer-mediated interventions improve social and linguistic outcomes for students in the primary and later grades with developmental…

Purpose: This tutorial is designed for speech-language pathologists who supervise speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) and/ or paraeducators. SLP-As and paraeducators often support young children with disabilities within early childhood settings, but do not always have access to professional development to learn and/or enhance their skill…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to measure auditory comprehension performance in school-aged children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and with normal hearing (NH) in quiet and in the presence of child-produced two-talker babble (TTB). Method: Listeners were school-aged children (7-12 years) with permanent UHL (n = 25) or NH (n = 14).…

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the feasibility of a telepractice communication partner intervention for children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and their parents. Method: Five children (aged 3;4-12;9 [years;months]) with severe expressive communication impairments who use AAC and their parents enrolled in a…

Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of an automated, small-group intervention designed to teach preschoolers challenging vocabulary words. Previous studies have provided evidence of efficacy. In this study, we evaluated the effects of the program after doubling the number of words taught from 2 to 4 words per book. Method: Seventeen…

Purpose: To incorporate evidence-based practice into clinical settings, there is a need for efficient, effective ways to share information from research to speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and to students preparing to become SLPs. The purpose of this study was to implement and evaluate a method for teaching undergraduate student clinicians to…

Purpose: Reading involves the ability to decode and draw meaning from printed text. Reading skill profiles vary widely among learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One fairly common pattern is relative strength in decoding combined with weak comprehension skills--indicators of this profile emerge as early as the preschool years. In order…

Purpose: Interactive storybook reading (ISR) improves the picture labeling vocabulary of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Vocabulary knowledge consistently predicts the later reading achievement of children who are DHH. In this study, ISR was modified to include teaching word meanings along with the vocabulary picture label.…

Purpose: The goal was to determine whether interactive book reading outcomes for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were affected by manipulation of dose (i.e., the number of exposures to the target word during a book reading session) and dose frequency (i.e., the number of repeated book reading sessions) and whether pretreatment…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of oral reading expressiveness on the comprehension of storybooks by 4- and 5-year-old prekindergarten children. The possible impact of prosody on listening comprehension was explored. Method: Ninety-two prekindergarten children (M age = 57.26 months, SD = 3.89 months) listened to an…

Purpose: This study had 4 primary purposes: (a) to describe the oral narrative performance of typically developing African American prekindergarten children with commonly used macro- and microstructure measures; (b) to examine the concurrent and (c) predictive relations between narrative performance, spoken dialect use, vocabulary, and story…

Purpose: The current study investigated the effects of coaching as part of an emergent literacy professional development program to increase early childhood educators' use of verbal references to print and phonological awareness during interactions with children. Method: Thirty-one educators and 4 children from each of their classrooms (N = 121)…

Purpose: This study examined the impact of teacher use of a print referencing style during classroom-based storybook reading sessions conducted over an academic year. Impacts on preschoolers' early literacy development were examined, focusing specifically on the domain of print knowledge. Method: This randomized, controlled trial examined the…

Purpose: This study examined the extent to which using non-evocative, explicit referencing of print concepts during shared storybook reading in the context of language therapy facilitated print concept knowledge in children with language impairment. Method: Five children, ages 4 to 5 years, were provided scripted input on 20 print concepts during…

Twenty narrative teaching strategies, used by speech-language pathologists in oral and written language instruction with students who have language learning disabilities, are described and categorized by narrative presentation stage. Language focus, grade/age level, and teaching context are suggested for each strategy. (Author/JDD)