Browsing by Subject "logopedia"
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(2020)Aims: Aided communication has been noted to differ both developmentally and in practise from speaking in many ways, often being significantly more compact, more incomplete and slower. It has also been noted that a speaking listener’s active role as a co-constructive assistant easily reduces the independency of the aided narrative. There is very little research especially of aided narrative skills of children and ad-olescents using a communication book. There is also need for workable evaluation methods.The aim of this case study was to describe the narrative features of a 15-year old boy using a communication book in depicting silent videos, and the things that affected the independency of his aided communication. Methods: The 18 narration tasks with three different communication partners were transcribed. The transcription was then interpreted by tasks and by partners based on the material. The success of the nar-rations was compared to the video events with a four-step assessment scale, and the diversity of the nar-rations was described by counting and classifying the used symbols and sentence structures. The defi-ciency in expression was compared with the vocabulary in the book. The efficiency of the examinee’s symbol expression was also measured. The micro- and macrostructures and the fluency of the independ-ent narration was measured using the Narrative Assessment Profile. The partners’ influence on the narra-tion was observed at a general level. Results: The examined adolescent could quite often get to a result compatible with video events and flexibly use his often insufficient communication book vocabulary. In every task, he was able to stay on topic and correctly sequence the events he expressed. The results supported previous findings about the compact, slow and incomplete expression of the aided communication that is sometimes even disrupted by a partner’s active participation. Especially the amount of extra questions in a co-constructed aided narration supposedly affected its fluency, explicitness and effectiveness as well as the number of inde-pendent utterances. Conclusions: One cannot draw direct conclusions from a single case, and also the other abilities of the examinee had an effect on the performance for their part. Over the analysing process, it was noticed that the aided communicator actively adjust their planned narration on many levels to support their partners’ understanding. Thus, the inappropriate features in speaking may turn out to be appropriate, considering the situation, and vice versa. Narration adjusted to situation and vocabulary may thus, despite its ostensi-ble conciseness, embody the aided narrator’s strategic competence, where the communication partner has a crucial supporting role.
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(2019)Aim. As the foreign-language speaking population grows in Finland, more and more children exposed to many languages are assessed by a speech therapist because their linguistic development causes a concern. Multilingualism is a growing phenomenon both internationally and in Finland. The assessment of a multilingual client poses a challenge to the speech therapist of how to assess a language that she or he is not familiar with. The aim of this study is to get information on how Finnish speech therapists assess their multilingual clients, especially their home languages. In addition, this study gathers information on how the speech therapists experienced the evaluation of a multilingual client. The purpose is to identify the types of assessment methods that Finnish speech therapists use to assess the linguistic skills of their multilingual clients and which assessment methods would be needed in their work. The profession of language analyst is presented to the speech therapists and they are also asked about their thoughts and opinions on the profession in question. Method. A survey was used as a method of this study. The survey was aimed for the speech therapists who were graduated and employed in Finland. The survey was sent to 1233 speech therapists by the e-mail list of the Finnish Association of Speech and Language therapists, and 132 speech therapists answered to it with a response rate of 10,7 %. In the questionnaire both closed and open questions were used, so the replies were analyzed in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In the quantitative analysis, the frequency and percentages of closed responses were calculated using the Microsoft Excel program. The qualitative analysis was carried out by gathering information from the open questions under different themes. Results and conclusions. According to the speech therapists, the assessment of a multilingual client is challenging. Nonetheless, most of the speech therapists who responded to the survey assessed all their clients’ languages. The result differs from the international study whereby speech therapists rarely assess the home languages of their clients. Assessment of the home language is important for the differential diagnosis. A language disorder cannot be reliably diagnosed based on a single language assessment. Finnish speech therapists mainly used the interview in the anamnesis phase and an interpreter when using assessment methods. Speech therapists were insecure when assessing a multilingual client, especially client's home language skills, but more confident when assessing the client's Finnish, Swedish or Sami skills. Nearly half of the speech therapists had challenges with interpreters, and most respondents would be interested in working with language analysts in the future.
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