Susan Rvachew - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Susan Rvachew
3rd International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1994)
A substantial proportion of children who have normal oral and motor function, nevertheless demons... more A substantial proportion of children who have normal oral and motor function, nevertheless demonstrate difficulty producing one or more sounds in their native language. Assessment and treatment of such children has traditionally focussed on speech production to the ...
Content of the Manual Each child who is enrolled in this study is expected to progress through a ... more Content of the Manual Each child who is enrolled in this study is expected to progress through a standard series of events. These events are represented by individual chapters in this manual. Three additional chapters contain information that pertains to the study as a whole. The table below describes the content of each chapter in the procedure manual. Chapter Content WELCOME Navigation instructions and summary of contents. CHAPTER ONE Overview of project including contact information. CHAPTER TWO General procedures to ensure consistent identification of forms and protection of participant confidentiality. CHAPTER THREE Procedures for informing families about the study and identifying potential candidates for inclusion in the study. CHAPTER FOUR Intake interview procedures. CHAPTER FIVE Intake assessment procedures. CHAPTER SIX Procedures for the selection of treatment goals. CHAPTER SEVEN Output-oriented individual intervention procedures. CHAPTER EIGHT Input-oriented individual intervention procedures. CHAPTER NINE Phonological awareness group intervention procedures. CHAPTER TEN Articulation practice home program procedures. CHAPTER ELEVEN Dialogic reading home program procedures. CHAPTER TWELVE Pretreatment and post-treatment probe procedures and forms to document outcomes of the interventions.
Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children, 2012
Approximately 70% of immigrants to Canada do not speak either official language, thus school boar... more Approximately 70% of immigrants to Canada do not speak either official language, thus school boards with large immigrant populations experience increasingly multilingual classrooms with, for example, over 40% of students in Toronto speaking a language other than English at home and over 34% of students in Montreal having a mother tongue other than French (Canadian Council on Learning, 2009). This heterogeneity in students' linguistic experience creates diverse challenges to achievement for students in these schools. ...
Canadian Acoustics, 1993
The authors recruited 6-month old infants with no prior history of hearing impairment or otitis m... more The authors recruited 6-month old infants with no prior history of hearing impairment or otitis media (`OME-free' group) and 6-month old infants who have had one or more ear infections at or before 6 months of age (`OME' group) through physicians, audiologists, and community health nurses. Each infant in the study has a normal prenatal, perinatal, health, and developmental history and comes from an English-only speaking family with no history of speech, language, or learning disability. At each of the ages 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 months the infant receives a complete standard audiology assessment including otoscopy, assessment of warble-tone and bone conduction thresholds for frequencies between 250 and 6000 Hz using visual reinforcement audiometry, and tympanometry. Following the audiology assessment the infant's vocalizations are recorded for approximately 30 minutes. Phonetic and acoustic analyses are being used to determine a phonetic complexity score and canonical babbl...
Purpose: To demonstrate the use of the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) as a means to identify phon... more Purpose: To demonstrate the use of the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) as a means to identify phonological versus motor planning difficulties in children with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Method: Ten children (aged 4.1 – 9.6 years) with suspected CAS were recruited. An extensive assessment battery was administered including measures of speech accuracy, oral motor skills, speech perception and phonological awareness abilities, consistency of word production, and syllable repetition. The SRT yields a memory score (that suggests a phonological planning deficit) and a transcoding score (based on addition errors that suggest a motor planning deficit). Results: Despite overlapping characteristics, especially in the domains of phonological processing, testing revealed three groups: (1) children with deficits in phonological planning, (i.e., low memory scores on the SRT and high word inconsistency); (2) children with deficits in motor planning, (i.e., low transcoding scores o...
Literacy is crucial for success, both professionally and personally. Oral language skills are clo... more Literacy is crucial for success, both professionally and personally. Oral language skills are closely related to literacy development in children. when a child has weak oral language skills, they will have difficulty achieving reading and writing competencies within the expected time frame. in this paper, we present results from a longitudinal and cross-sectional study of the relationship between oral language skills in pre-literate children, and one aspect of their literacy skills in early elementary school—specifically, spelling. the study was conducted with French-speaking children and French-language learners from Quebec, a population that has been understudied in this area. we developed a predictive tool that will allow teachers and other professionals to assess oral language skills in young children and to predict those children at risk for literacy difficulties. Specifically, we screened children’s speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology p...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2021
Purpose The purpose of this article is to provide trial-by-trial practice performance data in rel... more Purpose The purpose of this article is to provide trial-by-trial practice performance data in relation to learning (outcome probe data) as collected from 18 treatment sessions provided to children with severe speech sound disorders. The data illustrate the practice–learning paradox: Specific, perfect practice performance is not required for speech production learning. Method We detailed how nine student speech-language pathologists (SSLPs) implemented and modified the motor learning practice conditions to reach a proposed challenge point during speech practice. Eleven participants diagnosed with a severe speech sound disorder received high-intensity speech therapy 3 times per week for 6 weeks. SSLPs implemented treatment procedures with the goal of achieving at least 100 practice trials while manipulating practice parameters to maintain practice at the challenge point. Specifically, child performance was monitored for accuracy in five-trial increments, and practice parameters were c...
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2019
Abstract Purpose: Digital technologies may offer new solutions to old problems or bring additiona... more Abstract Purpose: Digital technologies may offer new solutions to old problems or bring additional complications. In this paper, we address a longstanding and widespread issue, specifically, slower acquisition of literacy skills by boys compared to girls. Electronic books might serve to close this gender gap because it is believed that boys are generally less motivated to read but that boys are especially engaged by technology. However, interactive features in electronic books could further challenge boys’ weak self-regulation skills, thus impeding their literacy achievement. Gender differences in literacy learning and the learning environment were examined in two studies conducted in French-language kindergartens. Method: Study 1 involved 56 girls and 36 boys, where the relationship between oral language precursors at school entry and literacy outcomes at the end of second grade was assessed. Study 2 included 43 girls and 44 boys, where interactions between children and an adult during shared reading exchanges with electronic books were coded to reveal gender-related differences in the learning environment. Result: In Study 1, the oral language and emergent literacy screener in first grade significantly predicted second grade spelling, with a significant gender gap in orthographic skills favouring girls in grade two despite similar oral language skills in grade one. In Study 2, adult readers were observed to re-direct boys’ attention or regulate their behaviour more often during shared reading (when compared to girls). Conclusion: These findings suggest that self-regulation may mediate early reading precursors and different literacy outcomes by gender. Strategies to alleviate stress and improve the learning environment during literacy activities are suggested. Overall, it is clear that technology is neither beneficial nor harmful by itself; rather, synchronised interactions between adult, child and technological features are crucial. Furthermore, the broader social context in which teaching and learning interactions are embedded plays a role.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2019
Purpose The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that children with inconsistent speech e... more Purpose The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that children with inconsistent speech errors would respond differentially to 1 of 3 specific interventions depending on their primary underlying impairment: Children with deficient motor planning were expected to respond best to an auditory–motor integration (AMI) intervention, and children with deficient phonological planning were expected to respond best to a phonological memory and planning (PMP) intervention. Method Twelve participants were diagnosed with a motor planning ( n = 7) or phonological planning ( n = 5) deficit based on a comprehensive assessment, which included the Syllable Repetition Task as an important source of diagnostic evidence. An N-of-1 randomized controlled trial was used. Each child experienced all 3 interventions: AMI, PMP, and control (CTL); however, these interventions were randomly allocated to sessions within weeks (3 sessions per week × 6 weeks for 18 sessions). The AMI intervention procedures...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2018
Babbling is made up of meaningless speechlike syllables called canonical syllables. Canonical syl... more Babbling is made up of meaningless speechlike syllables called canonical syllables. Canonical syllables are characterized by the coordination of consonantal and vocalic elements in syllables that have speechlike timing, phonation, and resonance characteristics. Infants begin to babble on average at approximately seven months of age. Babbling continues in parallel with less mature noncanonical vocalizations that make up the majority of utterances through the first year. Babbling also continues in parallel with the emergence of meaningful speech during the second year. Regardless of the language that the infant is learning, most canonical syllables have a CV shape with the consonant being a labial or alveolar stop or nasal and the vowel most likely to be central or low- to mid-front in place (e.g., [bʌ], [da], [mæ]). Approximately 15% of canonical utterances consist of multisyllable strings; in other words, most babbled utterances contain only a single CV syllable. The onset of the ca...
Journal of Phonetics, 2018
This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic... more This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10-to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 À F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant's vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20) and French-learning infants (N = 23) as previously described in Rvachew, Mattock, Polka, and Menard (2006). It was found that Arabic infants appeared to achieve a larger vowel space at a younger age compared to the English and French infants, which we attribute to the benefit of a less crowded vowel space in Arabic input compared to English and French input. Expansion of the vowel space toward the diffuse and grave corners was common to all three language groups, but the developmental trajectories for the mean F1 and mean F2 varied with language input. These findings suggest that the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, which include the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment.
Paediatrics & Child Health, 2006
The present paper describes research on the skills and processes associated with word and text re... more The present paper describes research on the skills and processes associated with word and text reading acquisition in preschool children and during the first years of school. The aim is to provide an overview that gives a sense of the important milestones in language and literacy acquisition. A comparison of children's performances against these milestones may thus guide effective intervention for health professionals, parents and other professionals. Also summarized and explored are the role of speech perception and production, grammatical and syntactic skills, and metacognitive skills, including phonological awareness.
Journal of child language, Jan 17, 2016
This study examined the psycholinguistic profiles of Quebec French-speaking children with develop... more This study examined the psycholinguistic profiles of Quebec French-speaking children with developmental phonological disorders (DPD). The purpose was to determine whether the endophenotypes that have been identified in English-speaking children with DPD are similarly associated with speech impairment in French-speaking children. Seventy-two children with DPD and ten children with normally developing speech, aged four to six years, received a comprehensive assessment battery that included measures at the phenotype level (i.e. measures of overt speech production skills) and endophenotype level (i.e. measures of potential underlying core deficits such as phonological processing or oral motor impairments). The majority of the children with DPD presented with a psycholinguistic profile indicative of difficulties with phonological processing. Phonological processing skills also explained unique variance in speech production accuracy, indicating that French-speaking children with DPD, who ...
Language and Literacy, 2016
In this study, teachers of kindergarten and Grade 1 French-speaking students indicated the likeli... more In this study, teachers of kindergarten and Grade 1 French-speaking students indicated the likelihood their students would develop later writing difficulties. Results showed that language measures, language background, the education levels of parents, and home literacy practices predicted whether children would be identified as at-risk. Moreover children’s oral language skills accounted for even more of the variance in teacher ratings than other variables. Spelling performance assessed 1-year later from a subset of children indicated that the teacher predictions were accurate. Thus, teachers appear to be an effective source for predicting children’s future literacy performance.
Canadian Acoustics, Sep 1, 1991
Canadian Acoustics, Sep 1, 1993
3rd International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1994)
A substantial proportion of children who have normal oral and motor function, nevertheless demons... more A substantial proportion of children who have normal oral and motor function, nevertheless demonstrate difficulty producing one or more sounds in their native language. Assessment and treatment of such children has traditionally focussed on speech production to the ...
Content of the Manual Each child who is enrolled in this study is expected to progress through a ... more Content of the Manual Each child who is enrolled in this study is expected to progress through a standard series of events. These events are represented by individual chapters in this manual. Three additional chapters contain information that pertains to the study as a whole. The table below describes the content of each chapter in the procedure manual. Chapter Content WELCOME Navigation instructions and summary of contents. CHAPTER ONE Overview of project including contact information. CHAPTER TWO General procedures to ensure consistent identification of forms and protection of participant confidentiality. CHAPTER THREE Procedures for informing families about the study and identifying potential candidates for inclusion in the study. CHAPTER FOUR Intake interview procedures. CHAPTER FIVE Intake assessment procedures. CHAPTER SIX Procedures for the selection of treatment goals. CHAPTER SEVEN Output-oriented individual intervention procedures. CHAPTER EIGHT Input-oriented individual intervention procedures. CHAPTER NINE Phonological awareness group intervention procedures. CHAPTER TEN Articulation practice home program procedures. CHAPTER ELEVEN Dialogic reading home program procedures. CHAPTER TWELVE Pretreatment and post-treatment probe procedures and forms to document outcomes of the interventions.
Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children, 2012
Approximately 70% of immigrants to Canada do not speak either official language, thus school boar... more Approximately 70% of immigrants to Canada do not speak either official language, thus school boards with large immigrant populations experience increasingly multilingual classrooms with, for example, over 40% of students in Toronto speaking a language other than English at home and over 34% of students in Montreal having a mother tongue other than French (Canadian Council on Learning, 2009). This heterogeneity in students' linguistic experience creates diverse challenges to achievement for students in these schools. ...
Canadian Acoustics, 1993
The authors recruited 6-month old infants with no prior history of hearing impairment or otitis m... more The authors recruited 6-month old infants with no prior history of hearing impairment or otitis media (`OME-free' group) and 6-month old infants who have had one or more ear infections at or before 6 months of age (`OME' group) through physicians, audiologists, and community health nurses. Each infant in the study has a normal prenatal, perinatal, health, and developmental history and comes from an English-only speaking family with no history of speech, language, or learning disability. At each of the ages 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 months the infant receives a complete standard audiology assessment including otoscopy, assessment of warble-tone and bone conduction thresholds for frequencies between 250 and 6000 Hz using visual reinforcement audiometry, and tympanometry. Following the audiology assessment the infant's vocalizations are recorded for approximately 30 minutes. Phonetic and acoustic analyses are being used to determine a phonetic complexity score and canonical babbl...
Purpose: To demonstrate the use of the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) as a means to identify phon... more Purpose: To demonstrate the use of the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) as a means to identify phonological versus motor planning difficulties in children with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Method: Ten children (aged 4.1 – 9.6 years) with suspected CAS were recruited. An extensive assessment battery was administered including measures of speech accuracy, oral motor skills, speech perception and phonological awareness abilities, consistency of word production, and syllable repetition. The SRT yields a memory score (that suggests a phonological planning deficit) and a transcoding score (based on addition errors that suggest a motor planning deficit). Results: Despite overlapping characteristics, especially in the domains of phonological processing, testing revealed three groups: (1) children with deficits in phonological planning, (i.e., low memory scores on the SRT and high word inconsistency); (2) children with deficits in motor planning, (i.e., low transcoding scores o...
Literacy is crucial for success, both professionally and personally. Oral language skills are clo... more Literacy is crucial for success, both professionally and personally. Oral language skills are closely related to literacy development in children. when a child has weak oral language skills, they will have difficulty achieving reading and writing competencies within the expected time frame. in this paper, we present results from a longitudinal and cross-sectional study of the relationship between oral language skills in pre-literate children, and one aspect of their literacy skills in early elementary school—specifically, spelling. the study was conducted with French-speaking children and French-language learners from Quebec, a population that has been understudied in this area. we developed a predictive tool that will allow teachers and other professionals to assess oral language skills in young children and to predict those children at risk for literacy difficulties. Specifically, we screened children’s speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology p...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2021
Purpose The purpose of this article is to provide trial-by-trial practice performance data in rel... more Purpose The purpose of this article is to provide trial-by-trial practice performance data in relation to learning (outcome probe data) as collected from 18 treatment sessions provided to children with severe speech sound disorders. The data illustrate the practice–learning paradox: Specific, perfect practice performance is not required for speech production learning. Method We detailed how nine student speech-language pathologists (SSLPs) implemented and modified the motor learning practice conditions to reach a proposed challenge point during speech practice. Eleven participants diagnosed with a severe speech sound disorder received high-intensity speech therapy 3 times per week for 6 weeks. SSLPs implemented treatment procedures with the goal of achieving at least 100 practice trials while manipulating practice parameters to maintain practice at the challenge point. Specifically, child performance was monitored for accuracy in five-trial increments, and practice parameters were c...
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2019
Abstract Purpose: Digital technologies may offer new solutions to old problems or bring additiona... more Abstract Purpose: Digital technologies may offer new solutions to old problems or bring additional complications. In this paper, we address a longstanding and widespread issue, specifically, slower acquisition of literacy skills by boys compared to girls. Electronic books might serve to close this gender gap because it is believed that boys are generally less motivated to read but that boys are especially engaged by technology. However, interactive features in electronic books could further challenge boys’ weak self-regulation skills, thus impeding their literacy achievement. Gender differences in literacy learning and the learning environment were examined in two studies conducted in French-language kindergartens. Method: Study 1 involved 56 girls and 36 boys, where the relationship between oral language precursors at school entry and literacy outcomes at the end of second grade was assessed. Study 2 included 43 girls and 44 boys, where interactions between children and an adult during shared reading exchanges with electronic books were coded to reveal gender-related differences in the learning environment. Result: In Study 1, the oral language and emergent literacy screener in first grade significantly predicted second grade spelling, with a significant gender gap in orthographic skills favouring girls in grade two despite similar oral language skills in grade one. In Study 2, adult readers were observed to re-direct boys’ attention or regulate their behaviour more often during shared reading (when compared to girls). Conclusion: These findings suggest that self-regulation may mediate early reading precursors and different literacy outcomes by gender. Strategies to alleviate stress and improve the learning environment during literacy activities are suggested. Overall, it is clear that technology is neither beneficial nor harmful by itself; rather, synchronised interactions between adult, child and technological features are crucial. Furthermore, the broader social context in which teaching and learning interactions are embedded plays a role.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2019
Purpose The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that children with inconsistent speech e... more Purpose The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that children with inconsistent speech errors would respond differentially to 1 of 3 specific interventions depending on their primary underlying impairment: Children with deficient motor planning were expected to respond best to an auditory–motor integration (AMI) intervention, and children with deficient phonological planning were expected to respond best to a phonological memory and planning (PMP) intervention. Method Twelve participants were diagnosed with a motor planning ( n = 7) or phonological planning ( n = 5) deficit based on a comprehensive assessment, which included the Syllable Repetition Task as an important source of diagnostic evidence. An N-of-1 randomized controlled trial was used. Each child experienced all 3 interventions: AMI, PMP, and control (CTL); however, these interventions were randomly allocated to sessions within weeks (3 sessions per week × 6 weeks for 18 sessions). The AMI intervention procedures...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2018
Babbling is made up of meaningless speechlike syllables called canonical syllables. Canonical syl... more Babbling is made up of meaningless speechlike syllables called canonical syllables. Canonical syllables are characterized by the coordination of consonantal and vocalic elements in syllables that have speechlike timing, phonation, and resonance characteristics. Infants begin to babble on average at approximately seven months of age. Babbling continues in parallel with less mature noncanonical vocalizations that make up the majority of utterances through the first year. Babbling also continues in parallel with the emergence of meaningful speech during the second year. Regardless of the language that the infant is learning, most canonical syllables have a CV shape with the consonant being a labial or alveolar stop or nasal and the vowel most likely to be central or low- to mid-front in place (e.g., [bʌ], [da], [mæ]). Approximately 15% of canonical utterances consist of multisyllable strings; in other words, most babbled utterances contain only a single CV syllable. The onset of the ca...
Journal of Phonetics, 2018
This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic... more This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10-to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 À F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant's vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20) and French-learning infants (N = 23) as previously described in Rvachew, Mattock, Polka, and Menard (2006). It was found that Arabic infants appeared to achieve a larger vowel space at a younger age compared to the English and French infants, which we attribute to the benefit of a less crowded vowel space in Arabic input compared to English and French input. Expansion of the vowel space toward the diffuse and grave corners was common to all three language groups, but the developmental trajectories for the mean F1 and mean F2 varied with language input. These findings suggest that the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, which include the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment.
Paediatrics & Child Health, 2006
The present paper describes research on the skills and processes associated with word and text re... more The present paper describes research on the skills and processes associated with word and text reading acquisition in preschool children and during the first years of school. The aim is to provide an overview that gives a sense of the important milestones in language and literacy acquisition. A comparison of children's performances against these milestones may thus guide effective intervention for health professionals, parents and other professionals. Also summarized and explored are the role of speech perception and production, grammatical and syntactic skills, and metacognitive skills, including phonological awareness.
Journal of child language, Jan 17, 2016
This study examined the psycholinguistic profiles of Quebec French-speaking children with develop... more This study examined the psycholinguistic profiles of Quebec French-speaking children with developmental phonological disorders (DPD). The purpose was to determine whether the endophenotypes that have been identified in English-speaking children with DPD are similarly associated with speech impairment in French-speaking children. Seventy-two children with DPD and ten children with normally developing speech, aged four to six years, received a comprehensive assessment battery that included measures at the phenotype level (i.e. measures of overt speech production skills) and endophenotype level (i.e. measures of potential underlying core deficits such as phonological processing or oral motor impairments). The majority of the children with DPD presented with a psycholinguistic profile indicative of difficulties with phonological processing. Phonological processing skills also explained unique variance in speech production accuracy, indicating that French-speaking children with DPD, who ...
Language and Literacy, 2016
In this study, teachers of kindergarten and Grade 1 French-speaking students indicated the likeli... more In this study, teachers of kindergarten and Grade 1 French-speaking students indicated the likelihood their students would develop later writing difficulties. Results showed that language measures, language background, the education levels of parents, and home literacy practices predicted whether children would be identified as at-risk. Moreover children’s oral language skills accounted for even more of the variance in teacher ratings than other variables. Spelling performance assessed 1-year later from a subset of children indicated that the teacher predictions were accurate. Thus, teachers appear to be an effective source for predicting children’s future literacy performance.
Canadian Acoustics, Sep 1, 1991
Canadian Acoustics, Sep 1, 1993