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On September 9, 2011, Nancy Castijella, Senior Product presented: Preschool Language Scales-5. You may watch the recording here:
**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**
On September 7, 2011, Dr. Kathleen Williams presented: Using Oral Language to Help Adolescent Readers and Writers. You may watch the recording here:
**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**
On Monday August 8, 2011, Sarah James presented: Build a Foundation for Treatment in the First Weeks of School. The first weeks of school can be stressful and chaotic – instead of begging for “times that might work,” this session provides clinicians with strategies that help you build a solid foundation of quality support services with your teams that impact the whole school year.
You may watch the recording here:
**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**
Talking takes time to develop. Some children are slower at learning to make speech sounds, while other children speak clearly at a young age. Your child may use one sound instead of another, leave out sounds, add extra sounds, or say the sound differently than you might expect as they are learning to talk. The following list shows the age when most children can say different speech sounds:
By age 2 – p, b, m, d, h, n
By age 3 – f, g, k, t, w
By age 4 – kw (as in queen)
By age 5 – ch, j, l, s, sh, y, bl
By age 6 – r, v, br, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, kl, kr, pl, st, tr
By age 7 – z, sl, sp, sw, th
By age 8 – th – middle of words (as in bathtub)
Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation, Second Edition (GFTA-2). Copyright © 2000 NCS Pearson, Inc. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.
“GFTA” is a trademark, in the US and/or other countries, of Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s).
The buzz isn’t new; telepractice has been around the field of speech-language pathology for more than a few years. Some of us are working in a telepractice context full-time, others “dabble,” and still others know people who use telepractice but haven’t tried it themselves. ASHA’s new Special Interest Group (SIG) on Telepractice, however, may be signaling an important shift in the way that this service delivery model is coming into more mainstream practice.
As a member of ASHA’s SIG 1, I received a recent listserv email on telepractice wondering how publishers see their role in this service delivery model. In addition to consistent calls and contacts over the last few years, we see questions and issues that prompt our thoughtful response. We do see the use of our tools, assessments in particular, in a telepractice context as something we can and should address. The demand has grown tremendously over the last years and we want to respond in good order.
The simple fact is that equating studies need to be done on each test under particular conditions to determine whether or not scores change significantly in a different delivery context. We don’t have published tools (yet) that include the telepractice context in standardization so it’s an empirical question to answer—that is, do examinees perform similarly or differently when the assessment is delivered through telepractice? In addition, a number of different physical scenarios may be considered “telepractice” (this is not an exhaustive list):
There are many variables to consider. Of course, some tests lend themselves to telepractice better than others, so it’s really dependent on the tool and the format. A “one-size-fits-all” approach isn’t a wise option, but key strategies may be universal and maintain all the appropriate best practices we know so well about assessment in general.
Certainly, we also monitor and consider ASHA’s guidelines (as well as the draft APA Standards document that is now out for review). Our input would be to participate as appropriate in the conversations and practically extend established guidelines into individual test contexts.
What are your thoughts on the use of assessments in telepractice? Chime in below!
You can watch the recording of “Preschool Language Scales-5: Assessing Language From 0-7″ below.
You can download the slides here.
**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**
On Thursday, March 17, 2011, Dr. Ronald Goldman presented a complementary webinar: Goldman-Fristoe 2: Research, Administration, and Interpretation. He also answered questions from listeners at the end of the event. Do you have comments or questions? Ask away in the comments below!
When are test norms “outdated?” Ah, the age-old question. There is really no “number” or length of time that determines when norms are “out of date.” The fact is that one day makes any data set (whether in test norms or a journal article) one day older. The Standards for educational and psychological testing, which is the guiding document for most test publishers, uses the word “periodically” in the section on test revisions (I’ll do a quick excerpt here to save everyone’s time):
“Tests and their supporting documents…are reviewed periodically to determine whether revisions are needed. Revisions or amendments are necessary when new research data, significant changes in the domain, or new conditions of test use and interpretation would either improve the validity of interpretations…or suggest that the test is no longer fully appropriate for its intended use” (p. 42).
The paragraph goes on to discuss the difference between outdated norms and outdated item content, which are two different things, of course. This is not a black and white issue—and just like language, the nuances are critical. Some of our content domains, like vocabulary, change more often than other more “stable” domains, like the acquisition of basic syntactic structures or phoneme acquisition (although in the latter domain, the definitions of “mastery” of a phoneme vary widely). It’s true that a general rule of thumb for test revision tends to be 8-10 years, but that’s as much a practical matter as a data-based one.
The number of factors in making a clinical decision on whether or not to use any assessment tool (whether normed or not) makes our roles as professionals all the more important. Certainly, the older the norms the more critical we should be of the validity (i.e., the use of the norms as stated in the manual) of a test instrument. Yes, some states have made a gray issue into a black and white one by setting a specific number of “years old” that any norms set can be. But the “story” of any test is so much richer than just a number…and while one use of an assessment tool may be inappropriate in a given context, there may be other valid uses that still exist for a particular instrument.
As a final aside, ASHA echoes and supports the use of the Standards as a guiding document for test use in our profession:
Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education. (2004). Washington, DC: Joint Committee on Testing Practices.
Perhaps a gift to your colleague(s) for the holidays? It’s not “warm and fuzzy,” but sitting next to your APA Style Guide, it’s not a bad idea.
(Note: The author of this blog post has no affiliation with the publishing of the Standards nor receives any benefit from the promotion of the book!)
On November 1, 2010, J. Scott Yaruss, PhD, CCC-SLP, BRS-FD, ASHA Fellow, presented the webinar “Development, Validation, and Use of the OASES for Children, Teens, and Adults Who Stutter.” You can view the recording and/or download the slides below.
Development, Validation, and Use of the OASES for Children, Teens, and Adults Who Stutter
