Browsing by master's degree program "Logopedian maisteriohjelma"

Aims. This study examines the expressions of 4–5 year old bilingual (Russian-Finnish) children with and without developmental language disorder and the aim is to examine, how the morphosyntactic repertoires of these children differ from each other, what type of morphosyntactic changes are observable in these expressions and is it possible to track traces that illustrate the effect of crosslinguistic transfer of Russian language on the morphosyntax of Finnish language. Examining the language development of bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder is important, because more information about the linguistic features that indicate developmental language disorder is needed. This study is one of the first studies in Finland that examines the morphosyntax in the Finnish-language expressions of bilingual children, whose first language is a minority language. This study is part of the PAULA-project, which examines the effects of a small group intervention targeted to children with refugee and foreign backgrounds. Methods. The material of this study consists of video footage from the PAULA-project’s language assessment situations. The children’s skills were assessed with the Finnish Test of Phonology, the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (test of receptive speech) and The Cat Story 3 picture sequencing narrative task and in three short play situations. The expressions of four typically developing bilingual 4–5-year-old children and three 4-year-olds with developmental language disorder were transcribed from the video footage. The language samples were analyzed with the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn). Verb and noun inflection were also examined with qualitative methods. Results and conclusions. The morphosyntactic repertoires of case markers in the typically developing children’s nominal phrases turned out to be more extensive than the repertoire of the children with developmental language disorder. Use of adverbials in verb phrases indicated that the typically developing children were able to produce more complex phrases than children with developmental language disorder. In this study, the morphosyntactic features that seem to indicate developmental language disorder in the Finnish-language expressions were inappropriate use of case markers or the complete lack of case markers in noun phrases, frequent errors in subject-verb agreement, and ungrammatical word formation. Effects of crosslinguistic transfer were identified in the use of negatition, past tense and code-switching.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Tavoitteet. Kuulovammaisilla on usein vaikeuksia puheen prosodian kuten äänenkorkeuksien havaitsemisessa. Nämä vaikeudet haittaavat muun muassa puheen ja kielen kehitystä sekä puheen emootioiden havaitsemista. Musiikillisen toiminnan on havaittu tutkimusnäytön perusteella edistävän kuulovammaisten lasten puheen prosodisten piirteiden havaitsemista ja kielellistä kehitystä. Tutkimuksia musiikkitoiminnan vaikutuksista kuulovammaisten lasten prosodisten piirteiden havaitsemiseen on tehty kuitenkin vasta vähän. Tämän tutkielman tarkoituksena oli selvittää, minkälaista on molemminpuolisesti (bilateraalisesti) kuulovammaisten, bilateraalisesti kuulolaitteita käyttävien lasten äänenkorkeuksien ja -kestojen havaitseminen ja parantaako musiikki-interventio niiden havaitsemista. Lisäksi tässä tutkielmassa selvitettiin, eroaako nuorempien ja vanhempien kuulovammaisten lasten sekä kuulokojeita/bimoodaalisesti kuulokojetta ja sisäkorvaistutetta käyttävien (KK/SIKK) ja molemminpuolisia sisäkorvaistutteita käyttävien (SI) kuulovammaisten lasten äänenkorkeuksien ja äänen kestojen havaitseminen sekä intervention aikainen kehitys toisistaan. Tässä tutkielmassa vertaillaan tiedettävästi ensimmäistä kertaa kuulokojeita/bimoodaalisesti kuulokojetta ja sisäkorvaistutetta käyttävien ja molemminpuolisia sisäkorvaistutteita käyttävien kuulovammaisten lasten äänenkorkeuksien ja äänen kestojen havaitsemista ja kehitystä toisiinsa. Menetelmät. Tämän tutkielman koehenkilöt koostuivat MULAPAPU-tutkimuksen tutkittavista. Viisitoista 3–7-vuotiasta kuulovammaista lasta suoritti äänenkorkeuksien sekä -kestojen havaitsemisen tehtävän, jonka avulla kerättiin äänenkorkeuksien ja -kestojen erottelukynnysarvoja. MULAPAPU-tutkimus toteutettiin vaihtovuoroisella tutkimusasetelmalla, jolloin musiikki-intervention vaikuttavuutta voitiin tarkastella vertaamalla interventionperiodin aikaista kehitystä ennen interventiota ja intervention jälkeen tapahtuneeseen kehitykseen. Tulokset ja pohdinta. Tilastollisesti merkitseviä tuloksia intervention vaikuttavuudesta ei saatu, vaikka tulokset äänenkorkeuksien ja äänen kestojen havaitsemistehtävässä paranivat ryhmätasolla intervention aikana. Yksilötasolla useampi SI-lapsista edistyi äänenkorkeuksien havaitsemistehtävässä musiikki-intervention aikana verrattuna KK/SIKK-lapsiin ja puolet molempien kuulolaiteryhmien tutkittavista kehittyi äänen kestojen havaitsemisessa. Myös vähintään puolet nuoremmista ja vanhemmista tutkittavista edistyi intervention aikana. Äänenkorkeuksien ja äänen kestojen havaitsemisen harjaannuttamisesta musiikkitoiminnan avulla on mahdollisesti hyötyä kielellisten taitojen edistämisessä, millä on myönteinen vaikutus kuulovammaisten lasten elämänlaatuun.

Aims. The aim of my study was to find out how much children, ages one to three, use functionally different kinds of pointing gestures, and whether their usage has a connection to children’s productive language development. I also surveyed in what kind of situations children use pointing gestures, and what kind of features are associated with their usage. Earlier studies have shown that the use of pointing gestures is at its largest at the age of 1,5 years, and that both the initiative pointing features and the declarative pointing features have a connection to the language acquisition of a child. The increase in number of pointing gestures precedes the growth of the productive vocabulary. It has been estimated that the combinations of pointing gesture and single word production in children predicts the skill to combine individual words into longer expressions. children begin to use combinations of pointing gestures and words about four months before they begin to combine individual words into longer expressions. It’s been noticed in earlier studies that different type of pointing gestures has different type of features, for example there is usually sound or word production with declarative pointing but imperative pointing often occur without word production. Methods. The source material of this longitudinal study consisted of a video material of five (n=5) children. For every child’s part, a 30-minute long video of a spontaneous playing or eating situation was analyzed at five different age points (1;0, 1;6, 2;0, 2;6 and 3;0). ELAN-software was used to mark the variables that were observed. The results were analyzed by statistical methods. The use of pointing gestures in different kinds of situations and the features associated with them were surveyed by the means of conversational analysis. Results and conclusions. The use of pointing gestures was at its height at the age point of 1;6, after which their use decreased. Initiatives and declarative pointings were the most commonly occurred functions. Answers and imperative pointings performed by pointing gestures appeared remotely in the entire source material, and no change in them was discovered between the age points. The amount of produced words grew bigger than the amount of pointing gestures a little before the children’s second birthday. Initiatives and declarative pointings were used by the children to draw an adult’s attention or to ask for the naming of objects. The children used imperative pointings most commonly when they wanted an object. Responsive pointings were used by the children to answer questions of adults. Initiatives, and declarative and imperative pointings were almost always related to production of language, unlike the responsive pointings. The results support former research data on the use of pointing gestures, and its connection to the development of children’s productive language acquisition. The results also support the importance of initiative and declarative pointing gestures in the development of a child's speech. The analysing of pointing gestures as a part of children’s interaction can aid to acquire a more thorough understanding of the development of a child’s speech and interactional skills during their first years.

Aim of the study. Multilingualism is globally more common than monolingualism and especially sequential multilingualism is increasing also in Finland. Reading is essential skill in our society, and it is a way to fully participate in information society. According to previous research, learning to read while also acquiring more than one language may differ from monolingual reading acquisition. The purpose of this study is to add knowledge about early reading of sequentially multilingual children and compare it to monolingual peers. This study aims to answer to the question if early reading of multilingual children differs from early reading of monolingual children at the age of 6 to 7. Additionally, the aim is to investigate the relations between early reading and linguistic factors and background factors. Methods. Participants of the study were multilingual pre-schoolers and first graders (n = 38) and monolingual pre-schoolers and first graders (n = 37). Reading tasks were letter-knowledge, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, pseudoword repetition and syllable reading. Linguistic factors were speech comprehension and verbal fluency and background factors time of exposure to Finnish language, parental education, and familial risk for reading difficulty. Mann-Whitney’s U-test was used to statistically analyse group differences. The relations between early reading and linguistic factors and background factors were investigated with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients. Results and discussion. Multilingual children performed poorer than monolingual children in letter-knowledge and phonological awareness in all the participants and pre-schoolers. In first grade multilingual children performed poorer to monolingual children only in pseudoword repetition. There were statistically significant relations between speech comprehension and letter-knowledge, and speech comprehension and phonological awareness. A relation was found also between verbal fluency and rapid automized naming. The relations were slightly different in monolingual and multilingual children. There were barely any statistically significant relations between early reading and background factors. These results are in line with the view that multilingual early reading is different than monolingual, but multilingual children perform quite well considering their language proficiency in Finnish. The gap in reading skills between monolingual and multilingual children also narrows from pre-school to first grade.

Abstract There is evidence of heavy screen time use being associated with poor lexical development in preschool (2–5 -year-old) children. On the other hand, it has been shown that from about 3 years of age onwards, children can learn from age-appropriate, language-promoting screen content. However, the previous evidence is mixed, and so far the knowledge of screen time used by Finnish children, its possible association with lexical development and parents´ attitudes towards their children´s screen time is very limited. It was the aim of this study to gain preliminary information on the quantity and quality of 2;6–3;6-year-old children´s screen time and its association with the children´s lexical development in Finnish language environment. A further aim was to gain information on Finnish parents´ attitudes towards the impact of screen time on language development and whether these attitudes were associated with either the quantity or quality of children´s screen time. This study used data from the LEINIKKI research project. The sample included 50 healthy, monolingual Finnish-speaking children aged between 2 years 6 months and 3 years 6 months. The quantity and quality of the children´s screen time and the parents´ attitudes were measured with a structured questionnaire. The children´s lexical development was assessed using the vocabulary section of the LEINIKKI parent report instrument and two subtests (receptive vocabulary and picture naming) of the WPPSI-III intelligence test. The associations between screen time and lexical development and between parents´ attitudes and screen time were studied by correlation analysis, Mann Whitney U tests, Poisson regression analysis and chi square tests. A higher amount of solitary screen time was significantly associated with poorer outcome in the WPPSI-III subtest that measures receptive vocabulary. There was also a negative trend between the amount of solitary screen time and the LEINIKKI method´s vocabulary points. However, a further analysis with Poisson regression model revealed that when background variables were added to the model, the screen time did not have a significant impact on lexical development. The quality of screen time was not associated with the lexical outcome. The parent´s positive attitude towards the screen time was associated with a higher amount of screen time but not the quality of the screen time. The attitude did not explain the variance in the quantity nor the quality of the children´s screen time.

Pikkukeskosilla (syntymä <32 rv ja/tai syntymäpaino <1500 g) on kohonnut riski kielenkehityksen haasteisiin. Heillä on ryhmätasolla havaittu viivästymää ja haasteita sekä ymmärretyssä että ilmaistussa kielessä. Varhaisten sanaston prosessointitaitojen eli kuullun puheen prosessoinnin tehokkuuden yhteyttä sanaston kokoon on tutkittu vasta vähän. Sanaston prosessointitaitojen on pikkukeskosilla havaittu olevan yhteydessä myöhempään sanaston kokoon, mutta taitoja ei ole verrattu samassa ikäpisteessä. Prosessointitaitojen yhteyttä sanaston koostumukseen ei ole tutkittu vielä lainkaan. Tämä pro gradu -työ on osa Turun yliopistollisessa keskussairaalassa toteutuvaa Auditory environment by Parents of Preterm infant; Language development and Eye movements (APPLE) –tutkimusprojektia. Tämän pro gradu –työn tavoitteena oli selvittää, millaista tietoa silmänliikkeisiin pohjaava sanaston prosessoinnin arviointimenetelmä antaa pikkukeskosten ilmaistun sanaston koon ja koostumuksen kehityksestä 18 kuukauden korjatussa iässä. Tutkittavien ryhmä koostui 20:stä pikkukeskosena (<32 rv) syntyneestä lapsesta (11 tyttöä ja 9 poikaa). Tutkimusmenetelminä 18 kuukauden iässä käytettiin silmänliikkeisiin pohjaavaa sanaston prosessoinnin arviointimenetelmää ja Varhaisen kommunikaation ja kielen kehityksen arviointimenetelmän Sanat, taivutukset ja lauseet -versiota. Tarkasteltavia muuttujia olivat sanaston prosessointitaidoista reaktioaika ja katseluaika, sekä sanaston kehityksen osalta ilmaistun sanaston koko, eri sanakategorioihin kuuluvien sanojen määrä ja sanojen osuus sanastossa. Muuttujien välisiä yhteyksiä tarkasteltiin Spearmanin järjestyskorrelaatiokerrointa käyttäen sekä lineaaristen regressiomallien avulla. Tuloksissa havaittiin useita tilastollisesti merkitseviä yhteyksiä pikkukeskosten sanaston prosessointitaitojen ja sanaston koon ja koostumuksen muuttujien välillä. Tehokkaampi sanaston prosessointi oli yhteydessä suurempaan ilmaistun sanaston kokoon (r .51). Sanaston prosessointitaidot olivat yhteydessä myös sanaston koostumukseen (r .51–.65). Tilastollisesti merkitsevistä yhteyksistä muodostetut regressiomallit osoittivat, että katseluajan muuttujat selittivät merkitsevästi ilmaistun sanaston kokoa ja koostumusta (R² .42–.57). Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset antavat uutta tietoa ilmaistun sanaston koon ja erityisesti koostumuksen kehityksen tarkasteluun suhteessa sanaston prosessointitaitoihin.

During the past decade Finland has become an increasingly multilingual country, and the need for understanding bilingual development of children has grown. The purpose of this study is to analyze conversational self-repair used by sequential bilinguals. Examining children´s self-repairs provide information of their ability to monitor conversation and the development of their language skills. The aim is to investigate how 4-to-5-year-old children who adopt Finnish as their second language use self-repair to solve problems in speaking and to create mutual understanding. The repairs that are self-initiated or other-initiated by the adults are taken into account. The focus is to investigate how the self-repair is initiated, in which part of the repair sequence the correction takes place, and what is repaired. The data of this study is taken from the PAULA research project, which aims to investigate the impact of small group activities on supporting the language learning of children who acquire Finnish as their second language. The data was recollected in 2018 in a city that is located in southern Finland. The subjects of study (N=7) were between 4;11 and 5;7 years old. They were normally developed sequential bilinguals who participated in the small group sessions that took place in their daycares. The material (1h 49 min) consisted of video recordings of two different types of tasks, a fishing game and grocery store play. The video data was transcribed and analyzed by the means of conversational analysis. The results show that children who adopt Finnish as their second language initiate repairs in many lexical (e.g. repetitions, adding and changing words) and non-lexical ways (e.g. cut-off or non-verbally). Other-initiated repair sequences was pointed out by questions (e.g. what, which, or why), giving semantic or phonological cues and making direct corrections. The results shows that the self-repair was preferred. Most of the children´s self-repairs took place in the same turn with the problem and in the third position. However, some of the repair sequencies formed much more complex patterns. The self-repair was used to correct vocabulary, semantics, and the situation. In addition, nonverbal means became central both in marking the need for repair and using it as a repair. Nonverbal repairs were used for example to replace missing vocabulary, to create common understanding of the situation, or to guide the interpretation of the words and meanings. The results encourage to monitor children’s ability to repair their speech in verbal or nonverbal manner to support the speech and language skills that they are acquiring.

Aim. Rehabilitation of oral comprehension is important but challenging; there are few effective methods for rehabilitating oral comprehension. Virtual reality may provide effective rehabilitation methods, but research data on the use of virtual reality in speech therapy rehabilitation is scarce and the data have focused on adult aphasia patients and children with autism spectrum. These studies have provided promising evidence for the use of virtual reality in speech therapy, but there is a need for more research on virtual reality so it can be used effectively in speech therapy rehabilitation. The aim of this pilot study is to find out how the developed virtual reality exercise is suitable for oral comprehension rehabilitation and what kind of user experiences typically developed children aged 4–10 have from exercise. Methods. Eight typically developed children aged 4 to 10 years were selected for this pilot study. The material consisted of linguistic-cognitive assessments, the exercise with head mounted display and the data of the exercise, interviews with children and video recordings. The data of the exercise (total result, duration of the exercise, interruptions during the exercise and the angle of the gaze) were analyzed statistically and the interview data both statistically and qualitatively. Results and conclusions. The results show that the exercise performed in virtual reality provides reliable objective information about the relationship between gaze behavior and speech comprehension, and the variables, overall result, duration, interruptions, and angle selected for the study indicate performance in the exercise. The exercise developed based on these results is fit for purpose. The subjects found the exercise and virtual reality training interesting, but the motivation of the exercise still needs to be developed. The results cannot be generalized due to the small sample size, but due to the lack of relevant research data, they provide valuable information on the use of virtual reality in children’s speech therapy rehabilitation and support the view that virtual reality can provide effective rehabilitation methods for speech comprehension in the future.

Children who are unable to express themselves with speech can use various communication aids. Often communication partners support and motivate the child to use an aid in various ways. This study increases understanding of how a speech and language therapist (SLT) can support using a speech generating device (SGD) and turn-taking in play interaction. Play interaction in which someone uses an SGD has been studied little. A typical interaction situation for a child is playing. Play is a natural and motivating context to strengthen and practice a child's communication skills. It is, therefore, relevant to know how to support aided play. When the partner can support and activate the child using the SGD to produce turns in the play interaction, the child using the SGD will get the opportunity to participate play and play can be made as flowing and successful as possible. The data of this thesis consisted of three play situations between an SLT and a school-aged child. The device that the child used for communication was tablet-based TAIKE -communication application. The data was filmed during speech therapy sessions. Conversation analysis was used as the method of the thesis. The next-turn-proof procedure was used for analysis. In addition to next-turn procedure, sequence structure was utilized in the analysis to perceive larger sequential context. In this thesis, the child produces the first and the second position turns with TAIKE as well as collaborative turn sequences with the SPL. The SPL supported the child using the SGD through various partner strategies, including time giving, modelling, sabotage, and verbal and gestural cues. The SLT regulated strategies to guide and support the use of the child's SGD if he did not act as expected by the SLT. The SLT varied strategies from motivating to direct cues and, if necessary, used more strategies sequentially or simultaneously. In this thesis, the child who practices using an SGD was noted to be more active in producing turns with the SGD when the communication partner supports him. In this thesis the natural orientation of conversationalists to alignment activities when interacting is not enough for the child using an SDG. The partner strategies used by the SPL take the play forward, strengthen the interactive roles of the conversationalists and guide to turn preference. The play interaction is an appropriate context to practice producing turns with an SGD and play can be seen as one strategy to support a child to use their device. Partner strategies used in play interaction give a child the opportunity to practice play and means to take the play forward. In their clinical work, speech therapists should consider how partner strategies can be a part of the motivational play and how play can be utilized as a strategy to support using an SGD.

Tausta ja tavoitteet. Puhevammaiset henkilöt käyttävät usein kommunikoinnin apuvälineitä arjen kommunikoinnissaan. Nykyiset kommunikoinnin apuvälineet mahdollistavat kommunikoinnin, mutta niiden avulla voi olla haastavaa osallistua arjen vuorovaikutustilanteisiin. Teknologinen kehitys on mahdollistanut uudenlaisten apuvälineteknologioiden kehittämisen. Kehitteillä on esimerkiksi puettavia kommunikoinnin apuvälineitä, niin sanottuja älyvaatteita. Uusien kommunikoinnin apuvälineiden kehittäminen on tarpeen, jotta puhevammaisilla henkilöillä on mahdollisuus kouluttautua, tehdä töitä, muodostaa sosiaalisia suhteita ja osallistua tärkeisiin aktiviteetteihin. Puhevammaisten henkilöiden kommunikointitarpeet ovat viime vuosikymmenten teknologisen kehityksen ja digitalisaation myötä laajentuneet verkkovälitteiseen vuorovaikutukseen. Tämän tutkielman tarkoituksena on lisätä ymmärrystä puhevammaisten nuorten nykyisten kommunikoinnin apuvälineiden käytettävyydestä ja viestintäteknologian käytöstä. Tutkielma avaa myös puhevammaisten nuorten näkemyksiä älyvaatteen käyttömahdollisuuksista kommunikoinnin tukena. Tutkittavat ja menetelmä. Tutkielman aineisto kerättiin järjestämällä ideointityöpaja, johon osallistui kolme puhevammaista nuorta. Ideointityöpaja toteutettiin puolistrukturoituna haastatteluna. Aineisto analysoitiin aineistolähtöisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin, jonka avulla tulokset ryhmiteltiin kolmeen teemaan: kommunikointi nuorten arjessa, nuorten suhde viestintäteknologian käyttöön ja nuorten näkemykset älyvaatteen käyttömahdollisuuksista kommunikoinnin tukena. Tulokset. Ideointityöpajaan osallistuneet puhevammaiset nuoret olivat pääosin tyytyväisiä nykyisiin kommunikoinnin apuvälineisiinsä. Nuorten kokemat rajoitteet apuvälineen käytössä vastasivat aikaisempia tutkimustuloksia aiheesta. Kommunikoinnin apuvälineen käytettävyys erilaisten viestintäsovellusten kanssa, toiminnallisissa harrastuksissa ja vaihtelevissa sääolosuhteissa vaikuttivat heidän osallistumiseensa arjessa. Ideointityöpajaan osallistuneet puhevammaiset nuoret olivat taitavia ja monipuolisia teknologian käyttäjiä. Kiinnostus teknologian mahdollisuuksia ja kehitystä kohtaan vaihteli kuitenkin osallistujien välillä, osallistujista yksi käytti viestintäteknologiaa vähäisemmissä määrin. Teknologian ja viestintäteknologian merkitys näyttäytyi nuorten arjessa erittäin tärkeänä, ja side viestintäteknologiaan arjen mahdollistajana oli voimakas. Älyvaatteen toimintaidea herätti nuorissa jonkin verran varautuneisuutta, nuoret kyseenalaistivat sen tarvetta ja yksi osallistujista ilmaisi huolta esimerkiksi tahattomien liikkeiden aiheuttamista vahinkoviesteistä. Nuoret suhtautuivat toisaalta uteliaasti älyvaatteen käyttömahdollisuuksiin erilaisissa toiminnallisissa harrastuksissa ja mahdollisuuteen ideoida ja olla mukana kehittämässä uusia kommunikoinnin apuvälineitä. Johtopäätökset. Osallistamalla teknisesti taitavia puhevammaisia henkilöitä kommunikoinnin apuvälineiden suunnitteluun on mahdollista kehittää apuvälineitä, jotka tukevat yhä paremmin puhevammaisten henkilöiden moninaisia kommunikointitarpeita. Tulevaisuudessa kommunikoinnin apuvälineiden kehitystyössä tulisi hyödyntää puhevammaisten runsasta kokemustietoa osana moniammatillista kehitystyötä, jotta uudet kehitettävät apuvälineet vastaisivat yhä paremmin puhevammaisten henkilöiden tarpeita, ja jotta apuvälineissä voitaisiin hyödyntää uusimpien teknologioiden mahdollisuuksia ja apuvälineiden hylkäämisaste pienenisi.