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This study engaged speech-language pathologists who were familiar with an existing participation-focused paper-based outcome measure called the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-34) to understand their current experiences using the tool and identify their recommendations for how a digital solution could improve their ability to use its data clinically. SLPs were actively involved in the early stages of the digital FOCUS-34 development to ensure its clinical utility and support its future implementation in clinical practice. Twenty-three speech-language pathologists participated in virtual focus groups that were run in groups of four or five. Focus groups lasted 60 minutes, were facilitated by a researcher familiar with the FOCUS-34, and were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Data were coded inductively and analyzed using thematic analysis. Four main themes were identified: (1) speech-language pathologists view the FOCUS-34 as having potential and some benefits in its current format, (2) FOCUS-34 data are difficult to collect and use because of the currently available formats and supports, (3) speech-language pathologists believe a digital solution could improve service efficiencies, the clinical utility of FOCUS-34 data, and the delivery of family centered services, and (4) suggested features for supporting clinical implementation of a digital FOCUS-34. Engaging clinicians early in the development process was important for ensuring a digital FOCUS-34 would be clinically meaningful and useful, which is expected to facilitate implementation and improve the collection, interpretation, and use of participation-focused data in practice.

Guidelines created by the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing ([JCIH], 2019) were designed to aid in the early identification of infant hearing loss. Despite these guidelines, a quarter of children who fail their initial screening are lost to the follow-up process and many more do not receive care in line with the 1-3-6 guidelines (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2018; JCIH, 2019). To acquire more information about the experiences of families and identify specific barriers to timely diagnosis and intervention, interviews were conducted with 13 parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing whose children were enrolled in a larger longitudinal study. These interviews revealed common themes regarding delayed identification, frustrations about timely intervention, and confusion when choosing communication modalities. Common themes amongst families who felt well-supported were also identified.

The current study investigated whether adult listeners could learn to better understand adolescent dysarthric speech through a targeted familiarization training. A total of 42 adult listeners initially completed an intelligibility pretest with speech produced by an adolescent speaker with spastic dysarthria. Listeners then completed a perceptual familiarization phase that varied based on their assigned condition. Those in the dysarthria familiarization condition were exposed to the adolescent dysarthric speech with an orthographic transcript. Those in the control condition were exposed to neurotypical adolescent speech with an orthographic transcript. Participants then completed an intelligibility posttest, again with the adolescent dysarthric speech. Results revealed that listeners were statistically equal at pretest, and while all listeners showed intelligibility increases from pretest to posttest, listeners who received dysarthria familiarization achieved higher posttest intelligibility scores than those in the control condition. These results demonstrate that adults can indeed learn to better understand adolescent dysarthric speech through perceptual familiarization. This finding supports the possibility of a listener-based approach as an effective intervention for adolescents with dysarthria.

Evidence-based practice refers to an integration between one’s clinical expertise developed through professional development and previous experience, the most current and valid scientific evidence and the unique needs of a particular clinical setting. Recently, there has been a growing expectation of speech-language pathologists to engage in the evidence-based practice process despite awareness that real-world implementation is a complex task. Implementation strategies may be helpful in moving complicated research findings into clinical practice, but there is little research examining the practical use of these strategies. The current dissertation examines how four different implementation strategies, explored through two case studies, can be used to bolster clinical practice and aid in the evidence-based practice uptake process in the field of speech language pathology. In chapter 2, collaborative relationships between speech-language pathologists and educators, in the implementation of an evidence-based language and literacy program for early-years students in an educational setting, were qualitatively examined. By investigating the complexities of this collaborative effort, barriers and facilitators to interprofessional collaboration were identified and explored. In chapter 3, the same language and literacy program allowed for the quantitative examination of changes in professional knowledge and confidence, and subsequent student language and literacy performance outcomes, following its implementation. This program involved investigating two approaches to moving evidence into practice: professional development sessions aimed at providing current evidence-based language and literacy education strategies and in-the-field coaching opportunities between speech-language pathologists and educators. In chapter 4, clinician readiness for real-world implementation of the evidence-based diagnostic label of developmental language disorder was investigated across practice settings. By examining current knowledge and practice, important future steps for adoption of this evidence-based practice could be acknowledged. Chapter 5 summarized the findings from these three empirical chapters, discussed the implications of this work, acknowledged the limitations of the current work and outlined considerations for future research regarding the use of implementation strategies in improving evidence-based practice in this field. Overall, this research will help to illuminate several ways in which implementation strategies can be used to improve current practice and contribute to the successful uptake of EBP in the clinical world of speech-language pathology.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate parent goals, questions, and challenges that emerged during coaching phone calls in an eHealth program designed to provide education and support for hearing aid management. Method: Coaching phone calls were audio-recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed for emergent themes within the categories of goals, questions, and challenges. Results: Emergent themes revealed that parent goals were focused on self-efficacy, routines, device care, and child development. Emergent themes for questions revealed that parents asked questions related to the device care, audiology appointments, confirmation of learning, and child development. For challenges, emergent themes revealed parents' own struggles (e.g., with emotions), issues related to working with their audiologist, child factors, and anticipated challenges. Conclusions: The eHealth intervention allowed parents to raise questions and discuss their challenges in a supportive environment. Supportive accountability helped participants identify and address barriers to hearing aid management based on their priorities and current challenges. Providing supplemental learning support, in addition to routine audiology visits, can help parents develop more effective hearing aid management routines.

Background Many professional services were pressed to adopt telepractice in response to the global coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. The need to adopt a new service delivery approach quickly created different implementation challenges. This study explored the lived experiences of frontline clinicians who successfully transitioned their in-person speech-language therapy services to telepractice through an implementation science lens. Methods The study was conducted in partnership with one publicly funded program in Ontario, Canada that offers services to preschoolers with speech, language and communication disorders. Sixteen frontline speech-language pathologists and assistants at this organization shared their lived experience transitioning to telepractice during the pandemic during videoconference interviews. A narrative inquiry approach was used to analyze interview transcripts to identify the processes (or steps) this program took to implement telepractice and to understand the facilitators and barriers to telepractice implementation during the pandemic. Results The following six stages were identified from clinicians’ narratives: abrupt lockdown; weeks of uncertainty; telepractice emerged as an option; preparation for telepractice; telepractice trials; and finally, full implementation of telepractice. The stages of events offered significant insights into how government public health measures influenced clinicians’ decisions and their processes of adopting telepractice. In terms of barriers, clinicians reported a lack of knowledge, skills and experience with telepractice and a lack of technological support. The organization’s learning climate and team approach to transitioning services were identified as the main facilitator of implementation. Conclusions Findings suggest a need for better coordination of public health measures and professional services, which would have eased clinicians’ stress and facilitated an earlier transition to telepractice. Fostering an organization’s learning climate may improve organization’s resilience in response to emergency situations.

Racism and ableism have doubly affected Black families of children with developmental disabilities in their interactions with disability systems of supports and services (e.g., early intervention, mental health, education, medical systems). On average, Black autistic children are diagnosed three years later and are up to three times more likely to be misdiagnosed than their non-Hispanic White peers. Qualitative research provides evidence that systemic oppression, often attributed to intersectionality, can cause circumstances where Black disabled youth are doubly marginalized by policy and practice that perpetuates inequality. School discipline policies that criminalize Black students and inadequate medical assessments that improperly support Black children with developmental and mental health disabilities are examples of systemic oppressions. However, there is evidence to support that attitudes and biases that providers hold about Black children, and their families hold a part in the blame as well. This paper will explore the efforts of two University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDDs) to address disparities in access to diagnostic and higher quality services for Black neurodiverse children in Northern California and Wisconsin. This paper will: (1) Describe programs and projects within each center that support advocacy and peer networking for Black families; (2) Provide first-person accounts from family members that document the UCEDDs’ impact on their respective advocacy journeys; (3) Delineate how each UCEDD partnered with Black families and community stakeholders to develop and plan programs that meet the unique interests and needs of the groups of Black families of autistic children within the cultural contexts of the communities in which they live; (4) Discuss the processes that each UCEDD underwent to evaluate the efficacy of their programs to ensure that they were uplifting principles of cultural and linguistic competence such as community and family engagement; and (5) Offer recommendations to improve current practice and create culturally competent and family-centered supports and services for disability systems and providers across the DD Network and beyond.

A range of deficits can cause children difficulty understanding speech in challenging listening environments, like noisy classrooms. Children with listening difficulties are at risk of having poor long-term academic outcomes and social skills (Barry et al., 2015), especially when clinicians cannot detect or remediate their specific deficits. Deficits in auditory, speech, language, or cognition abilities may present in similar manners on the individual child. Currently, it is difficult to determine the cause of these difficulties. A systematic approach to differentiate between these causes has been devised (Dillon & Cameron, 2021). The proposed approach is a tri-level test battery, a combination of top-level speech perception ability, mid-level phoneme identification ability, and low-level acoustic resolution ability (Dillon & Cameron, 2021). In conjunction with cognitive test scores, the combined approach will allow for differentiation of the cause of the observed listening deficit. A richer understanding of the underlying reasons for listening difficulties is central to developing customized efficacious interventions to avoid and alleviate long-term consequences.

The present study was designed to explore the general cognitive mechanisms in WM that are often found to be impaired in children with DLD. A continuous auditory N-back task was used to probe cognitive abilities such as sustained attention, storage, updating, and inhibition in monolingual TD children and children with DLD. FNIRS was used to examine the hemodynamic response patterns in the left DLPFC and IPL as children performed 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back tasks. The 0-back task was used in our analysis as a control for sustained attention. The research questions were: 1) Are there differences in N-back response accuracy and response time between children in the DLD and TD groups? 2) Are there changes in oxygenated hemoglobin (O2hb) concentration values in left DLPFC and IPL as a function of group (TD, DLD) or task (1-back, 2-back)? 3) Do O2hb values in the left DLPFC or IPL predict accuracy and response time in children with and without DLD?

It has become largely well known that musical practice can lead to alterations to neural anatomy and functionality, which are associated with superior performance in a variety of cognitive domains, including language processing (Gaser & Schlaug, 2003; Patel, 2011); as well as more profound neural plasticity in musicians (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012). The Right Ear Advantage (REA) phenomenon refers to the notion that when presented with competing stimuli in both ears, listeners are more likely to report the input from the right ear than the left (Hugdahl et al., 2008). This is suggested to result from the superior strength of auditory signal representation in the hemisphere contralateral to the ear of input, combined with the lateralisation of language processing in the left hemisphere (Kimura, 1967). The present study seeks to understand how the advanced cognitive ability of musicians, as well as the profound neural plasticity, may impact the REA in various cognitive tasks. Two groups will be tested for this study: a group of musicians (N=20) and a group of non-musicians (N=20). Musicians will be characterised based on having at least 6 years worth of formal training and must be currently engaging in musical practice (Zang et al., 2018). A total of three tasks will be used: one visual stroop task, one auditory stroop task and one speech in noise (SiN) task. The study proposes several hypotheses: 1. There will be evidence of a larger REA in musicians vs non-musicians in the auditory stroop task. This will be shown by reduced stroop interference in the right ear in musicians due to bilateral activation of hemispheres given the enhanced neural plasticity (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012; Krzyżak, 2021). 2. There will be evidence of a smaller REA in musicians vs non-musicians in the auditory stroop task. This will be shown by increased stroop interference in musicians in the right ear due to the increased specialisation of language processing in the left hemisphere (Patel, 2011; Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). 3. There will be a larger REA in the SiN task in musicians vs non-musicians due to increased specialisation of left hemisphere in speech processing in musicians in comparison to non-musicians (Parbery-Clark et al., 2009; Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). 4. There will be a reduced REA in the SiN task in musicians vs non-musicians due to bilateral activation of hemispheres during speech processing (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012). 5. There will be a predictive relationship between participant REA in the auditory Stroop task and participant REA in the SiN task.

This study examined the relationship between maternal and child ACEs in children with hearing loss ages 3-12. One hundred twenty-four mother-child dyads completed assessments of mother and child ACEs. Adverse cChildhood eExperiences (ACEs) were measured using the Center for Youth Wellness Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CYW ACE-Q; Burke Harris & Renschler, 2015). Both maternal and child participants in this study reported higher levels of ACE exposure than previously reported in studies of the general population. Maternal and child ACEs were significantly correlated. White/Caucasian mothers experienced significantly fewer ACEs than mothers of other races/ethnicities. Children living in adoptive, foster, or guardianship placements experienced significantly more ACEs than children living with their biological mothers. The results of this study suggest that maternal and child ACEs are significantly correlated in children with hearing loss and their mothers, as has been found in literature on hearing mother-child dyads.

Introduction: Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is the most common infectious condition present at birth and the leading non-genetic cause of sensorineural hearing loss in children. Despite CMV being common and preventable, knowledge of CMV remains low among individuals in the United States (Doutre et al., 2016). Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is also common among infants in the United States, but unlike cCMV, several studies have researched which educational methods have been most effective for improving parents’ knowledge of safe sleep practices. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether educational methods shown to be most effective for improving parents’ knowledge of SIDS could also be used to improve parents’ knowledge of cCMV. Methods: Forty-five participants completed an online study consisting of a pre-education survey on cCMV, written and verbal education on cCMV, and a post-education survey. Methods were based off a SIDS education study conducted by Dufer et al. (2017). Results: Results of this study revealed that the provision of verbal and written education resulted in a significant increase in South Dakota parents’ knowledge of cCMV (p

The soundscape of a natural environment can often contain multiple complex sounds, which are perceived binaurally, i.e., by both ears. Under such conditions, the perception of one sound can be affected by another sound. This study was conducted to find the neural basis of such a perceptual phenomenon. The rat is used as an animal model. Action potentials were recorded from individual neurons within the rat inferior colliculus in response to acoustic stimulation. The inferior colliculus is an auditory midbrain structure which receives converging inputs from many other structures along the auditory pathway. It plays a significant role in the integration of neural signals elicited by stimulation of both ears. Temporal and spatial characteristics of sounds affect responses of neurons in the IC to the sounds. It has been found that a priming tone can suppress the response to a testing tone when the two sounds occur closer together both temporally and spatially. This research was conducted to further investigate how responses of neurons to two sounds were dependent on the temporal and spatial relationship between the sounds. Further analysis was performed on a set of neurophysiological data collected by former graduate student, Sarah Tran by removing interfering signals. It was then determined how the responses to a pair of priming-testing sounds were dependent on the temporal and spatial relationships between the sounds. The programming language R was used for analysis. Reanalysis indicated that the response of IC neurons to a testing tone can be suppressed by a priming tone, and that this suppression is reduced when the priming and testing tones are separated temporally and spatially. This effect is especially large in neurons that have transient firing patterns. These results may help understand neural mechanisms responsible for the psychophysical phenomena of masking and spatial release from masking. Results can help to understand spatial hearing and hearing in a natural acoustic environment in general.

This Scoping review aims to identify any hypopharyngeal or laryngeal changes which are known to have an impact on swallowing function. We are looking to map the heterogeneity of the language used to describe these structures, looking to identify which have been found to have a direct, proven impact on swallowing function and to determine if any other information had been published which systematically rated severity in relation to hypopharyngeal/ laryngeal changes.

This study investigated the distribution of ten facilitative language techniques (FLTs) in the linguistic input of hearing, signing mothers to their children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). Four hearing mothers and their DHH children under the age of three participated in six, ten-minute caregiver-child interaction sessions via Zoom. The recorded sessions were coded for mother FLTs and child utterances. Results indicated that the mothers tended to use more initiative than responsive types of FLTs, consistent with findings of previous studies that examined the input of mothers who were using spoken-only language with their children who are DHH. Additionally, the mothers tended to use combined signed and spoken input more frequently than signed language alone. These findings point to the need for focused intervention to increase hearing, signing caregivers’ use of responsive and linguistically stimulating FLTs. Findings also suggest that hearing caregivers may need more ongoing support to learn to use American Sign Language (ASL) effectively with their children.

Aminoglycosides and Loop diuretics are the ototoxic drugs commonly recommended for neonates during NICU stay in case of critical conditions like neonatal sepsis and respiratory distress syndrome. While screening the NICU infants, many times ototoxic drug exposure/ administration duration are not documented as a risk factor and are thereby missed to be monitored. Many times, information on the drugs, dosage levels, duration of exposure, dosage interval, and peak and trough concentration levels in neonates becomes a challenge to extract from the medical records and are underreported as a risk factor by audiologists and screening professionals. Also, there is a lack of clarity and inconsistencies on the guidelines or protocol reported on this risk factor. Hence, there is a need for the scoping review to map the relationship between the drug dosage, interval, dosing, serum concentration, and, the occurrence of hearing loss to determine the safe administration level of ototoxic drugs.

This is an exploratory study to identify published studies regarding children and/or caregivers receiving listening and spoken language interventions. The purpose of this scoping review is to examine the sociodemographic variables within peer-reviewed research studies investigating children (who use hearing technology) and/or their caregivers receiving listening and spoken language intervention. Specifically, the review question is: Which sociodemographic variables are reported for children fit with technology or implanted between 0 to 5 years of age and/or their caregivers participating in listening and spoken language intervention outcome studies?

A scoping review examining the methodological quality of randomized controlled trials in pediatric speech-language pathology over the last 15 years.

This study will examine the efficacy of Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers Treatment (VAULT) in a version where target words are selected according to their phonological properties. Specifically, researchers will analyze the phonological characteristics of words already in specific toddlers' lexicons, then the toddlers will receive VAULT in one of two conditions. In Condition 1, new words will have more familiar sounds; in Condition 2, new words will have less familiar sounds.

This scoping review aims to explore methods documented in the literature for AAC assessment with children with limited motor and speech function. It will fill gaps in the existing literature by creating a clinical reference guide that documents assessment methods that are suitable for an AAC assessment with children who have limited motor and speech function. Outputs from the scoping review will support clinicians in conducting evidence-informed assessments of children with significantly CCN and limited motor function who require AAC. The assessment-related portion Participation Model for AAC will be utilized to structure the clinical reference guide. Attention will also be given to gaps in the final clinical reference, where no identified tools fit within a particular component of the Participation Model.

The objective of this review is to explore the existing research evidence on the effectiveness of lipreading as a communication strategy to enhance speech recognition in individuals with hearing impairments.

Cognitive communication impairments resulting from acquired brain injury (ABI) impact a person’s ability to return to and maintain work. This review aims to understand how to assess cognitive-communication skills for vocational rehabilitation.

This project examines whether misophonia and autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) are due to the same underlying mechanism (i.e., enhanced sensory sensitivity); whether the two phenomenon may be explained by individual differences in musicality and sensitivity to sensory processing; and whether the two phenomenon are more likely to be experienced by autistic individuals compared to non-autistic individuals.

Auditory order perception has been tested in limited ways mainly using the Frequency Pattern Test (FPT) (Musiek, 1994b) and the Duration Pattern Test (DPT) (Musiek, 1994b) in both children and adults (Lopes et al., 2010, Chowsilpa et al., 2021). Auditory order perception tests have been studied in a variety of clinical populations including auditory processing disorders, reading disorders, autism, hearing loss, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Studies have reported that children and adults diagnosed with auditory processing disorders (APD), other than based on order perception ability, and reading disorders (RD) have exhibited poorer performance than their age-matched peers on these tests of auditory order percept (Walker et al., 2006, Koravand & Jutras, 2013). However, the cause of deficits in order perception in children is largely unknown.Analysis of data obtained from our recently performed adult study on order perception indicated that frequency and duration subtests provided good correlations with each other, with the memory test and align with the literature’s wide use of FPT and DPT as standardized tests of order perception in school-aged children. The data norms obtained from this study from 6 to 12-year-old typically developing children and the clinical data from children with listening difficulties and reading disorders will help in determining the type of underlying deficit that results in poor performance on order perception tests in the clinical population. This in turn will have major implications for designing specific management strategies for individuals. Aims and Objectives • To obtain norms for new order perception tests in school-aged children between 6 to 11 years. • To determine the frequency with which each type of specific deficit is associated with poor performance on order perception tests in children with listening difficulties and reading disorders.

Sound Scouts Pty Ltd has created an automated audiometer that runs on iPads with consumer-grade headphones, and which is intended to allow adults or children down to 4 years of age to measure their own pure tone thresholds, giving a result in dB HL.

Systematic scoping review of combined interventions for pre-schoolers with phonological Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) and expressive language difficulties within a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) profile

Systematic review with narrative synthesis exploring the experiences of adolescents with cerebral palsy and complex communication needs and their guardians in conversations about sexuality.

Purpose: To develop a conceptual framework of the factors likely to influence clinicians' use of a new participation-focused outcome measurement protocol in a large paediatric speech-language pathology program.Method: A convenience sample of 27 end users (clinicians, managers) were recruited from Ontario, Canada's Preschool Speech and Language Program. Participants engaged in one virtual concept mapping session in groups of five to six during which they learned about the new protocol, and generated statements in response to a prompt asking them to identify factors that would influence their use of the protocol. Following all sessions, participants asynchronously sorted and rated all statements, and data were analysed using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses.Result: Six themes were identified: (1) response from families; (2) use of resources; (3) feasibility and clinical utility; (4) relevance and value-added for clinicians; (5) streamlining policies and guidelines; and (6) delivery, administration, and modification of tool. Response from families, feasibility and clinical utility, and use of resources received the highest importance ratings.Conclusion: Concept mapping methodology was used to engage clinicians and managers to identify the barriers to a new implementation protocol for outcome measurement. Results will support future research and implementation efforts.

Purpose: The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a comprehensive framework to conceptualise clinical services. This study explored how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) conceptualised therapy goals for preschoolers with language difficulties and disorders within the ICF framework.Method: An online survey was distributed to SLPs practising in a publicly funded Preschool Speech and Language program in Ontario, Canada. SLPs rated their familiarity with the ICF framework, and then reported all therapy goals for one child with language difficulty/disorder on their caseload. For each reported goal, SLPs indicated the ICF component(s) they felt the goal addressed. Researchers then independently categorised SLPs' reported goals into the ICF components.Result: Ninety-three SLPs completed the survey, and 81% reported they were at least "somewhat" familiar with the ICF framework. On average, SLPs reported three therapy goals per child, and felt the Activities and Participation components were most frequently targeted (73% and 72% of all reported goals, respectively). Researchers categorised SLPs' reported goals differently, and identified 57% of goals addressing the Activities component, and 21% the Participation component.Conclusion: There is a need to better understand how SLPs and researchers conceptualise the ICF framework, particularly the Participation component.

Background & Aims Speech-language pathology services are frequently accessed by families of children who have suspected or diagnosed autism. This is expected given that social communication differences are a core feature of autism. This review looked broadly at the state of research in the field of speech-language pathology and preschool autism interventions in order to identify the types of studies that could be used to inform the practices of speech-language pathologists (SLPs), and to identify gaps in the field so they can be addressed in future research. Specifically, we examined the extent of research conducted on interventions delivered (at least in part) by SLPs to preschool children with suspected or diagnosed autism, identified the range of skill development areas targeted within the studies, and explored the characteristics of the interventions (i.e., theoretical models underlying the programs, service delivery models, treatment dosage). Methods A scoping review of articles published between 1980 and 2019 was conducted using the five phases outlined by the Arksey and O’Malley framework: (a) articulating the research question; (b) identifying relevant studies; (c) selecting studies; (d) charting the data; and (e) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. Main Contribution/Results A total of 114 studies met inclusion criteria with most published since 2010 and conducted within North America. Case study or single-subject study designs were the most frequently used. Interventions delivered solely by SLPs and by multiprofessional teams that included SLPs were relatively equally represented. Across the included studies, nine skill development areas were targeted, but interventions targeting social communication, language, and augmentative communication skills made up the vast majority of studies. There was relatively even distribution of interventions informed by child-centered, clinician-directed, and hybrid models. Explicit information detailing intervention characteristics (e.g., treatment dosage, professional training of clinicians delivering the intervention) was poorly reported in many studies. For those studies providing details, there was a great deal of variability in the nature of interventions (e.g., service delivery models, SLPs’ role, dosage). Conclusions This review revealed that research in the area of autism interventions delivered, at least in part, by SLPs has markedly increased over the past 10 years. Still, there remains a need for more research, and greater transparency detailing the nature of the interventions being investigated. The research conducted to date captures the versatility of the SLP's role within preschool autism intervention. Improved reporting and studies with strong methodological rigor focused on capturing the complex and individualized nature of interventions are needed, as are intervention studies aligned with real-world community practice. Implications This review provides a comprehensive examination of the status of research on preschool interventions delivered to children with suspected or diagnosed autism within the field of speech-language pathology. Several directions for future research are provided, as are suggestions for improving the clinical applicability of results to further the development of effective, evidence-informed policy and practice in speech-language pathology.

In this project we are testing the degree to which face masks affect ease of spoken communication. Participants will view videos of a talker saying sentences either unmasked, or wearing one of several masks, in the presence of background noise. They will type out as much of each sentence as possible, and also provide ratings about the difficulty of each condition. Participants will also complete a lipreading task with visual only recording of a talker saying target words that participants will type what they believe was said.

This scoping review aims to identify and describe the research exploring the direct experiences of adolescents who stutter, to explore similarities and differences in methods used, and to identify gaps in the existing literature.

Study aimed at assessing common complaints about speech used in television and broadcasting. The study builds on existing work to quantify speech comprehension and listening effort in older listeners with “normal hearing”, or with hearing loss who wear their own hearing aids. It explores factors known to impair the comprehensibility of TV speech, including speech clarity, accents, background noise and music.

Autistic people can have differences in auditory processing. This project will investigate the effect of differences in voice pitch (fundamental frequency) on a person’s ability to pick a specific voice from a group of voices, and the effect of audio frequency on a person’s ability to tolerate loud sounds. This study will compare autistic and allistic (non-autistic) people, to identify any differences in responses. This research stems from earlier focus group research with autistic participants, suggesting that high pitches are less tolerable, and interfere more with perception, for autistic people.

Otitis Media with Effusion (OME) leads to periods of mild to moderate conductive hearing loss. This study uses eye tracking to investigate the effects of simulated OME on word learning in a visual world paradigm. The ability to recognise familiar labels (word recognition), as well as select referents and retain novel labels (word learning) will be assessed in preschoolers (age range: 36-47 months, n ≥ 60) with and without simulated conductive hearing loss (HL) . Children's proportion of looks to the target will be analyzed as the dependent measure in a mixed-effects linear regression model.