In this brief response to Agran et al., I provide data on the extent to which students with the most significant cognitive disabilities (i.e., those students participating in alternate assessments on alternate achievement standards) are separated educationally from their peers without disabilities. I further discuss additional factors that may be…

In this article, the breadth and depth of play as an integrating process for children with developmental challenges are explored. The fact that play is a source of developmental growth suggests that its role in intervention with children with language and communication disorders cannot be overstated. Several contemporary play-based intervention…

Children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) form a highly heterogeneous group, including those with an unexplained delay in language development known as specific language impairment (SLI). There is growing recognition that multiple mechanisms underlie the range of profiles observed in these children. Broadly speaking, both the…

Background: Speech and language impairments are well-established in individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, knowledge about particular aspects of social communication and everyday conversational abilities is limited. Aims: To investigate self- and informant-report ratings of social communicative abilities in ALS participants…

Examined the psychiatric and clinical correlates of loss of previously acquired skills (regression) as reported by parents of youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Study sample comprised 6- to 18-year old (N = 213) children and adolescents with ASD. Parents reported regression in 77 (36%) youth. A more homogeneous subgroup with regression…

Background: The aim of this project was to examine parent perceptions of potential communicative acts (PCAs) of children with, or at risk for, autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Participants were 6 males ranging from 17 to 30 months of age. Behaviours of interest were compared using parent report taken from the Inventory of Potential…

Most research related to communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been obtained from monolingual English-speaking children from high-income countries. Based on questionnaires completed by parents, this pilot study aimed to describe the communication characteristics of six children with ASD living in Jamaica. Parents…

The professions of speech-language pathology and audiology provide valuable services for persons with communication, hearing, and feeding/swallowing disabilities. However, from a global perspective, mainstream practice discourses represent values from colonial perspectives (called Northern here). As such, they remain largely inaccessible to most…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate how speech fluency in typical and atypical speech is perceptually assessed by speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Our research questions were as follows: (a) How do SLPs rate fluency in speakers with and without neurological communication disorders? (b) Do they differentiate the speaker groups? and…

Background: Parent-reported measures of early communication have limitations for use with infants experiencing adversity. Observational measures of early non-verbal and verbal communicative behaviours and mother-child turn-taking may provide a complementary method of capturing early communication skills for these children. Aims: To explore the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of special education practitioners (i.e., speech-language pathologists, special educators, para-educators, and other related service providers) on their role as communication partners after participation in the Social Communication and Engagement Triad (Buckley et al., 2015)…

Assessment is an ongoing process that is necessary at every stage of designing, implementing, and evaluating simulation-based learning experiences (SBLEs). Designing and aligning a high-quality assessment process provides instructors and researchers with valuable data to understand if students have met the desired simulation learning objectives,…

Background: The Sally-Anne test has been extensively used to examine children's theory of mind understanding. Many task-related factors have been suggested to impact children's performance on this test. Yet little is known about the interactional aspects of such dyadic assessment situations that might contribute to the ways in which children…

Purpose: Research in communication sciences and disorders frequently involves the collection of clusters of observations, such as a series of scores for each individual receiving treatment over the course of an intervention study. However, little discipline-specific guidance is currently available on the subject of building and interpreting…

Purpose: The purpose was to examine author-level impact metrics for faculty in the communication sciences and disorder research field across a variety of databases. Method: Author-level impact metrics were collected for faculty from 257 accredited universities in the United States and Canada. Three databases (i.e., Google Scholar, ResearchGate,…