Michelle Pascoe

Background and Aims: Healthcare professionals require knowledge of typical speech, language, and literacy development to identify children at risk of speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) and make timely referrals to speech‐language pathology services. This study investigated Iranian healthcare professionals' knowledge of speech‐language and literacy development. Methods: A survey questionnaire, the Knowledge of Speech‐Language and Literacy Development Questionnaire (KSLLDQ), was developed to measure participants' knowledge of speech‐language and literacy development. The KSLLDQ comprised 29 scored items, of which 16 assess knowledge of speech‐language development and 13 assess literacy development knowledge. Higher scores indicate greater levels of knowledge. A convenience sample of 164 Iranian healthcare professionals took part, representing rehabilitation sciences, medicine, nursing, dentistry, and public health. KSLLDQ scores were compared across academic majors and gender, and regression analyses were conducted to examine whether demographic characteristics (major, experience, gender, and education level) predicted knowledge scores. Results: Approximately 50% of the participants demonstrated a high level of knowledge, while almost half demonstrated moderate knowledge and only a small proportion demonstrated low knowledge. No statistical difference was observed among different groups of academic majors in total score of the KSLLDQ ( H (4) = 4.20, p = 0.37). There was no significant difference between females and males for total score of the KSLLDQ ( U = 1764.50, z = −0.13, p = 0.894). Only years of work experience significantly predicted the total KSLLDQ score with more experienced professionals scoring higher on the scale ( B = 0.10, SE = 0.05, β = 0.19, t = 2.10, p = 0.037). Conclusion: While approximately half the participants demonstrated good knowledge of speech‐language and literacy development, knowledge gaps were found for a substantial proportion of our sample. Ways to support Iranian healthcare professionals to address these gaps are discussed, given the importance of early referrals and identification of children with SLCN.

Studies of early lexical development have examined children’s vocabulary composition with the aim of quantifying early preference in the acquisition of nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and closed-class/function words. Their findings show that a noun bias is common, suggesting it could be a universal aspect of early language development. However, only a small percentage of the world’s languages have been investigated. This paper examines whether children acquiring Xitsonga, a Bantu language spoken in Southern Africa, exhibit a noun bias in their early acquisition of lexical items. Data were collected from caregivers of 95 monolingual Xitsonga-speaking children aged 16 to 32 months in Limpopo Province, South Africa, using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) adapted for Xitsonga. Xitsonga-speaking children’s vocabularies showed a positive noun bias in relation to predicates and function words, similar to findings for most languages. However, separating predicates into verbs and adjectives showed that while there is still an early noun bias, children begin to favour verbs when their vocabularies exceed 400 words. The proportion of nouns and verbs aligns with findings for other Bantu languages, suggesting that languages that share typological similarities may have similar trajectories in early acquisition of lexical categories.

Communication partners are instrumental in the successful use and implementation of augmentative and alternative communication systems (AAC), especially in schools, but stakeholder views from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are not well represented in the literature. Focus group interviews with seven professionals and three caregivers from South Africa were conducted to understand their perceptions and experiences of AAC use and implementation. The results highlighted additional issues which practitioners in LMICs need to consider when implementing AAC in under-resourced schools for learners with special education needs. Although some challenges overlap with those experienced in high-income countries, such as support and training, high staff turnover and burnout, large caseloads and language and codeswitching differences, these challenges present differently in low-income contexts, requiring alternative solutions. High-income countries do not often need to consider the risk a high-tech AAC device places on the child and their family due to the risk of crime in low-income contexts, the device affordability, the device features and the range of accents available when introducing an AAC system. This exploratory study suggests that LMICs, like South Africa, could make great strides towards providing appropriate AAC technology for all if i) strategic partnerships between governmental and non-governmental groups were put in place, ii) appropriate communication, training and support systems were established, and iii) evidence-based core-language AAC systems were created.

Background: South African children from low-income households are at higher risk of cognitive-linguistic difficulties because of multiple risk factors. Early language stimulation minimises the effects of risk factors and prepares children for literacy and learning. Understanding caregivers’ perceptions of language stimulation is important because perceptions shape practices, which determine child language outcomes. Objectives: This study explored the existing perceptions of language stimulation among 15 isiZulu-speaking caregivers from KwaDabeka township. Method: A qualitative, descriptive research design was adopted and the caregivers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The NVivo software programme supported the inductive, thematic analysis of the data. Results: Although the caregivers held positive perceptions of language stimulation, their perceptions of benefit focussed on meeting children’s basic physiological needs with less reference to the long-term benefits for literacy, employment and social integration. Providing language models, watching television, singing songs, and reading books were perceived to be examples of language-stimulating activities and techniques. The caregivers expressed a need to improve their knowledge of language stimulation and queried how they could be supported to achieve this outcome. Conclusion: This group of caregivers needed support to increase their awareness of the long-term benefits of language stimulation and their knowledge and use of evidence-based activities, stimuli and facilitation techniques. Contribution: Caregivers’ existing perceptions could serve as a barrier to the effective language stimulation of children from low-income households in South Africa.

(1) Background: Speech synthesis has customarily focused on adult speech, but with the rapid development of speech-synthesis technology, it is now possible to create child voices with a limited amount of child-speech data. This scoping review summarises the evidence base related to developing synthesised speech for children. (2) Method: The included studies were those that were (1) published between 2006 and 2021 and (2) included child participants or voices of children aged between 2–16 years old. (3) Results: 58 studies were identified. They were discussed based on the languages used, the speech-synthesis systems and/or methods used, the speech data used, the intelligibility of the speech and the ages of the voices. Based on the reviewed studies, relative to adult-speech synthesis, developing child-speech synthesis is notably more challenging. Child speech often presents with acoustic variability and articulatory errors. To account for this, researchers have most often attempted to adapt adult-speech models, using a variety of different adaptation techniques. (4) Conclusions: Adapting adult speech has proven successful in child-speech synthesis. It appears that the resulting quality can be improved by training a large amount of pre-selected speech data, aided by a neural-network classifier, to better match the children’s speech. We encourage future research surrounding individualised synthetic speech for children with CCN, with special attention to children who make use of low-resource languages.

Information and communication technology (ICT)-based reading interventions have potential to help children with reading difficulties, especially those in resource-constrained environments who otherwise might not have access to support. This pilot study aimed to describe the impact of an online, partner-supported reading intervention designed for South African children with reading difficulties. Objectives were to qualitatively describe participants’ experience of the intervention, and quantitatively evaluate changes in reading accuracy, rate, comprehension and receptive vocabulary after intervention. Two studies were conducted: (1) A retrospective analysis using data from intervention in mainstream Cape Town schools with peers as reading partners; (2) A prospective study in a Cape Town school with special needs educational provision where speech-language therapists served as reading partners. Both studies used matched participant, pre/post intervention designs. A total of 40 children in grades 3 to 6 participated. In each study the intervention group (n = 20) received intervention 3 times per week (30 minutes per session) for 10 weeks, while the control group (n = 20) continued with regular school activities. Participants enjoyed the ICT-based intervention, valued the role of the reading partners, believed they had made literacy gains, and reported positive attitudinal and behavioural changes related to reading. Retrospective analysis revealed no statistically significant differences between intervention and control groups. The prospective study found a statistically significant difference between the intervention and control groups’ gains on one measure of reading rate, but no significant difference in reading accuracy, vocabulary or reading comprehension gains. The study provides a preliminary description of one ICT-based reading intervention. Although an intervention effect could not be demonstrated, the changes noted in reading rate together with qualitative findings suggest a need for further research.