| 1. |
- Eriksson, Karin, 1965, et al.
(författare)
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Aspects of rating communicative interaction: Effects on reliability and agreement
- 2014
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Ingår i: Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders/Equinox. - : Equinox Publishing. - 2040-5111 .- 2040-512X. ; 5:2, s. 245-267
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Communication partner training can be effective in improving communication in aphasia. However, further research is needed on how to measure the outcome of such interventions. In this paper we discuss the phenomenon of reliability in assessments in relation to the results of analyses using a rating scale designed to measure the ability to support a person with aphasia in natural conversational interaction. The scale was used by four assessors to rate 45 video recordings. Calculations of reliability and agreement produced varying results but were mostly satisfactory. However, the results highlight how interaction between factors such as complexity of assessments; design of the rating scale; factors inherent in the individual assessor; and the statistical measures used to analyse the outcome may result in a conflict between aspects of validity and reliability. Interpretations of outcome obtained with rating scales thus need to be based on knowledge about factors influencing the results.
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| 2. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983
(författare)
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Aspects of Communication, Language and Literacy in Autism Child Abilities and Parent Perspectives
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this thesis was to investigate literacy, ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) and narrative ability in children who had screened positive for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (comprehensively assessed for neuropsychiatric problems), and relate the findings to their structural linguistic capacity, as measured by language tests at the word and sentence levels. Considering the important roles of families in shaping children’s language socialisation, another aim was to explore the parental experiences of having a child go through the neuropsychiatric and language diagnostic process. The thesis includes four substudies. Almost 200 children participated in one or several of the substudies. Children with ASD were recruited after general population screening and non-ASD comparison children were recruited from schools. Eleven parents of the children with ASD were also included. Study I, aimed to investigate early and concurrent predictors of reading ability in children who had screened positive for ASD. Children were grouped into three types of reading profiles at 8 years of age: approximately one third were skilled readers, half had difficulties with both word reading and reading comprehension and one fifth were ‘hyperlexic’ (i.e. strong word decoding but poor comprehension). Children who showed poor reading comprehension also displayed oral language difficulties concurrently and already at age 3 years. In Study II, a computer application, manipulated in three conditions, was used to investigate the influence of verbal support in ToM. Neither verbal support during the ToM conditions nor higher language ability in the children with ASD was obviously linked to a better outcome on the ToM task. As expected, the ASD group performed poorer than age-matched peers without ASD on the ToM task. Study III, aimed to describe oral narrative ability in children with ASD and determine how it is related to structural language ability) and non-verbal cognitive abilities in children with and without ASD. The results for the ASD group were compared with those for both an age-matched and a younger language-matched group of children without ASD. The ASD group used shorter sentences and fewer subordinate clauses in their retold narratives. Further analyses showed that nonverbal sequential reasoning and language ability explained unique variance in their narrative performance. In Study IV, in-depth interviews were conducted with parents of 11 children with ASD included in the thesis. Following a qualitative phenomenological hermeneutic method, the essence that emerged was ‘negotiating knowledge’ and three main themes were: ‘seeking knowledge’, ‘trusting and challenging experts’, and ‘empowered but alone’. To conclude, a clear influence of language was shown for both literacy and narrative ability in children with ASD, implicating a need for a comprehensive assessment of language abilities, in order to better clinically and educationally support children and families. However, the current study also provides evidence that structural language alone cannot explain all aspects of communicative difficulties in ASD. Future studies should continue to focus on structural language ability and other possible predictors of communication development in ASD, and also place more emphasis on the families’ experiences, by involving them in developing future research.
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| 3. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing False-Belief Understanding in Children with Autism Using a Computer Application: A Pilot Study.
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of psycholinguistic research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1573-6555 .- 0090-6905. ; 47:5, s. 1085-1099
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have developed a False-Belief (FB) understanding task for use on a computer tablet, trying to assess FB understanding in a less social way. It is based on classical FB protocols, and additionally includes a manipulation of language in an attempt to explore the facilitating effect of linguistic support during FB processing. Specifically, the FB task was presented in three auditory conditions: narrative, silent, and interference. The task was assumed to shed new light on the FB difficulties often observed in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Sixty-eight children with ASD (M=7.5years) and an age matched comparison group with 98 typically developing (TD) children were assessed with the FB task. The children with ASD did not perform above chance level in any condition, and significant differences in success rates were found between the groups in two conditions (silent and narrative), with TD children performing better. We discuss implications, limitations, and further developments.
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| 4. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Child-health nurses' experiences from using pictorial support with families within child-health services in Sweden
- 2024
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Ingår i: ACTA PAEDIATRICA. - 0803-5253 .- 1651-2227.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- AimTo gain insight into child-health nurses' experiences of using pictorial support in health visits within child-health services.MethodsA qualitative study involving interviews conducted with 17 child-health nurses in Sweden. The interview data were analysed using content analysis.ResultsThe nurses experienced that pictorial support could facilitate communication with families and increase opportunities for children to participate in child-health services, although it may come with challenges. This theme can be broken down into three main categories: (1) Pictorial support makes interaction with families clearer and easier and is used in different ways; (2) The design and extensiveness of the pictorial support can create obstacles; and (3) Pictorial support influences children's attitudes towards, and participation in, health visits.ConclusionPictorial support is an important and useful tool in child-health nurses' own work and improves their communication with children and caregivers during health visits. It can also increase children's participation and help them express themselves. Communicative tools such as pictorial support are very helpful to healthcare professionals striving to offer child- and family-centred care.
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| 5. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Communicative strategies used by spouses of individuals with communication disorders related to stroke-induced aphasia and Parkinson's disease
- 2014
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Ingår i: International journal of language and communication disorders. - : Wiley. - 1368-2822. ; 49:6, s. 722-735
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract Background: A communicative disability interferes with the affected person’s ability to take active part in socialinteraction, but non-disabled communication partners may use different strategies to support communication.However, it is not known whether similar strategies can be used to compensate for different types of communicative disabilities, nor what factors contribute to the development of a particular approach by communication partners. Aims: To develop a set of categories to describe the strategies used by communication partners of adults who have problems expressing themselves due to neurogenic communicative disabilities. The reliability of assessment was a particular focus. Methods&Procedures: The material explored consisted of 21 video-recorded everyday conversations involving seven couples where one spouse had a communicative disability. Three of the dyads included a person with dysarthria and anomia related to later stages of Parkinson’s disease, while four of them included a person with stroke-induced aphasia involving anomia. First a qualitative interaction analysis was performed to explore the strategies used by the communication partners when their spouses had problems expressing themselves. The strategies were then categorized, the reliability of the categorizations was explored and the relative frequency of the various strategies was examined. Outcomes & Results: The analysis of the conversational interactions resulted in a set of nine different strategies used by the communication partners without a communicative disability. Each of these categories belonged to one of three overall themes: No participation in repair; Request for clarification or modification; and Providing candidate solutions. The reliability of the categorization was satisfactory. There were no statistically significant differences between diagnoses in the frequency of use of strategies, but the spouses of the persons with Parkinson’s disease tended to use open-class initiations of repair more often than the spouses of the persons with aphasia. Conclusions & Implications: The types of strategies used by spouses of persons with neurogenic communicative disabilities seem to be more strongly associated with individual characteristics of communicative ability than with the type of disorder involved. The set of categories developed in this study needs to be trialled on larger groups of participants, and modified if and as necessary, before it can be regarded as a valid system for the description of such strategies in general. Once this has been done it may become a useful instrument in the assessment of the strategies used by communication partners of individuals with communicative disabilities
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| 6. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Narrative Skills in Primary School Children with Autism in Relation to Language and Nonverbal Temporal Sequencing
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0090-6905 .- 1573-6555. ; 49, s. 475-489
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research has suggested that temporal sequencing of narrative events might be a domain-general ability that underlies oral narrative capacities. The current study investigated this issue in a group of children with known pragmatic and narrative difficulties, namely Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We hypothesized (1) that children with ASD (n = 45) would retell narratives of poorer quality than both chronological age-matched (CAM) children and younger children matched on sentence-level language skills (LM), and (2) that nonverbal temporal sequencing skills would uniquely predict individual differences in oral narrative performance in children with ASD. The results show that children with ASD performed poorer on all measures of oral narrative quality compared with the CAM group, and on eight of ten measures compared with the LM group. Thus, our first hypothesis was confirmed, suggesting that narrative difficulties in ASD cannot be fully explained by impaired language. The second hypothesis was only partly confirmed: nonverbal temporal sequencing explained significant or marginally significant variance in some, but not all, aspects of oral narrative performance of children with ASD. These results are discussed from theoretical and clinical/educational perspectives, in relation to the heterogeneity of language skills in ASD and to domain-general features of narrative processing.
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| 7. |
- Carlsson, Emilia, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Negotiating knowledge: parents’ experience of the neuropsychiatric diagnostic process for children with autism
- 2016
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Ingår i: International journal of language and communication disorders. - : Wiley. - 1368-2822. ; 51:3, s. 328-338
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Parents often recognize problems in their child’s development earlier than health professionals do and there is new emphasis on the importance of involving parents in the diagnostic process. In Gothenburg, Sweden, over 100 children were identified as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2009–11 through a general population language and autism screening of 2.5 year olds at the city’s child healthcare centres. Aims: To increase understanding of parents’ lived experience of the neuropsychiatric diagnostic process, i.e. the period from the initial screening at age 2.5 years to the 2-year follow-up of the ASD diagnosis. Methods & Procedures: A qualitative design, a phenomenological hermeneutic method, was used. Interviews were conducted with parents of 11 children who were diagnosed with ASD 2 years prior. The parents were interviewed about their experiences of the neuropsychiatric diagnostic process, i.e. the time before the screening, the time during the neuropsychiatric multidisciplinary evaluation and the time after diagnosis. The interviews lasted for 45–130 min, and an interview guide with set questions was used. Most of the interviews were conducted at the parents’ homes. Outcomes & Results: The essence that emerged from the data was negotiating knowledge, and the three themes capturing the parents’ experiences of going through the process of having their child diagnosed with ASD were seeking knowledge, trusting and challenging experts, and empowered but alone. Conclusions & Implications: The parents expected intervention to start directly after diagnosis but felt they had to fight to obtain the resources their child needed. After the process, they described that they felt empowered but still alone, i.e. although they received useful and important information about their child, they were left to manage the situation by themselves. As for clinical implications, the study points to the necessity of developing routines to support the parents during and after the diagnostic process. Recommended measures include developing a checklist outlining relevant contacts and agencies, establishing a coordinator responsible for each child, dividing the summary meeting at the clinic into two parts, making more than one visit to the preschool, and providing a parental training programme.
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| 8. |
- Dyne, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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"Aha, so that’s how it’s done!"–parents’ voices on an early language and literacy intervention
- 2024
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Ingår i: Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. - 1401-5439 .- 1651-2022.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The early intervention Språkstart Halland targets children aged 0–3 years. During home visits at 6 and 11 months, library staff deliver gift-packs containing books, toys, songs, and rhymes to promote early language stimulation. Parents are encouraged to engage in ‘talk, play, sing, read’ activities to support language development. The aim of the present study was to examine parents’ experiences of the 6- and 11-month visits and develop an understanding of their general impressions and thoughts regarding the perceived impact of the visits. Parents (n = 15) were interviewed in four focus groups and two one-on-one interviews. Data was analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings show that the intervention changed the parents’ mindset and increased their knowledge regarding early language stimulation. Tools and strategies benefitting the parent-child interaction were gained. A positive experience and personal guidance created motivation for the parents to carry out the language stimulating activities after the visit. Social gains were described. The findings imply usefulness of the intervention in supporting children’s language and literacy development.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
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| 11. |
- Linnsand, Petra, et al.
(författare)
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Intervention in autism based on Early Start Denver Model in a multiethnic immigrant setting—experiences of preschool staff involved in its implementation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. - 2813-4540. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Early interventions for young children with autism have been shown to enhance developmental outcomes. However, opportunities for targeted interventions in autism, both in care and preschool, are often lacking, particularly in immigrant communities. The early start denver model (ESDM) stands as one of the most well-established intervention models, including improvement in core developmental domains and reduction of maladaptive behaviours, also delivered in preschool settings. An intervention program based on the ESDM was implemented in collaboration with parents, preschool staff, and health care professionals locally in a multiethnic immigrant and socioeconomically disadvantaged area in Gothenburg, Sweden. Purpose: The present study aimed to describe a low intensity intervention program based on the ESDM for young children with autism in a multiethnic immigrant setting and capture the experiences of the preschool staff involved in implementing the program. Method: Fifteen preschool professionals were interviewed through focus group interviews. Data were analyzed using content analysis. The interviews focused on capturing the crucial factors in the intervention program and to get more in-depth information about the intervention program's influence on the children with autism, their parents, the preschool staff, and preschool activities. Results: Central components of the intervention program were emphasized by the preschool staff. These encompassed contextual prerequisites, such as the preschool staff's participation in intervention program fostered by the local environment and features linked to the ESDM methodology. The preschool staff emphasized that shared objectives and regular network meetings as fundamental components of the model. They also underscored the seamless alignment between the ESDM and the preschool curriculum emphasizing how ESDM strategies could be easily integrated into the preschool's daily routines. The staff's experience indicated that the implementation of ESDM enriched the learning experiences of children with autism and yielded benefits to their parents, fellow peers in the preschool, and the preschool staff. Conclusions: The intervention program based on the ESDM presents a promising model for young children with autism in a multiethnic immigrant setting. Several critical factors based on the preschool staff's experiences were essential for implementation: contextual prerequisites such as organizational support, close collaboration with healthcare professionals, good competence among preschool staff, and the ESDM itself.
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| 12. |
- Miniscalco, Carmela, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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A longitudinal case study of six children with autism and specified language and non-verbal profiles
- 2022
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Ingår i: Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0269-9206 .- 1464-5076. ; 36:4-5, s. 398-416
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Language skills as well as general cognitive skills show a considerable variation in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In previous studies, at least three profiles based on these skills have been suggested; autism with language and non-verbal cognitive skills within the average/normal range (ALN), autism with language disorder (ALD) without concurrent non-verbal cognitive disability, and autism with language disorder and cognitive disability, i.e. autism with a more general delay (AGD). The aim of the present longitudinal case study is to illustrate these three groups more thorough by presenting the developmental trajectories of children belonging to each profile. Six children were chosen based on their language and cognitive profiles from the first age 3-year assessment. They came from a larger group of children with ASD identified by autism screening at child health-care centres at age 2.5 years. These six children represent one boy and one girl from each of the three subgroups ALN, ALD and AGD, and were assessed a second time at age 5 and a third time at age 8 years, regarding expressive and receptive language skills, autistic severity and non-verbal cognitive skills. Although preliminary, our results indicate a rather stable developmental trajectory from age 3 to 8 years characterising children with autism based on language and non-verbal cognitive functioning. Thus, in order to help intervention planning and increase predictions of outcome, it seems important to specify both linguistic and cognitive level already at the first assessment in children with ASD.
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| 13. |
- Schachinger-Lorentzon, Ulrika, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Developmental language disorder: similarities and differences between 6-year-old mono- and multilingual children
- 2024
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Ingår i: Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. - 1401-5439 .- 1651-2022.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigated language ability in 6-year-old mono- and multilingual children who, at age 2;6 years, had screened positive for developmental language disorder (DLD). One hundred children (32 girls, 68 boys) were assessed at an average age of 2;9 years (T1) and 85 of them (30 girls, 55 boys) were reassessed at age 6;0 years (T2) using a standardised test battery. Of these, 68 (23 girls, 45 boys) met the criteria for DLD diagnosis; 28 of them were monolingual and 40 multilingual. Language profiles at T2 were analysed, as were the associations between DLD and a mono- or multilingual background as well as other measures collected at T1, including mean length of utterance (MLU), heredity and parental education. As expected, the results showed that the total group (including both mono- and multilingual children) scored below test norms for 6-year-olds on all language tests, except for receptive vocabulary, where the monolingual children scored in line with those norms. The multilingual group performed significantly less well than the monolingual one on language comprehension, receptive vocabulary, recalling sentences, word finding and story retelling; disparities regarding MLU and language comprehension were already evident at T1. Interestingly, MLU at T1 showed a moderate association with language comprehension at T2 in the total group. The monolingual children were more likely than the multilinguals to have heredity for DLD or reading and writing disorders. In conclusion, language difficulties identified through screening and assessment before age 3 years often persist at age 6 years.
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| 14. |
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| 15. |
- Åsberg Johnels, Jakob, 1978, et al.
(författare)
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Current profiles and early predictors of reading skills in school-age children with autism spectrum disorders: A longitudinal, retrospective population study.
- 2019
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Ingår i: Autism : the international journal of research and practice. - : SAGE Publications. - 1461-7005. ; 23:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study explores current reading profiles and concurrent and early predictors of reading in children with autism spectrum disorder. Before the age of 3years, the study cohort underwent a neurodevelopmental assessment following identification in a population-based autism screening. At age 8years, reading, language and cognition were assessed. Approximately half of the sample ( n=25) were 'poor readers' at age 8years, meaning that they scored below the normal range on tests of single word reading and reading comprehension. And 18 were 'skilled readers' performing above cut-offs. The final subgroup ( n = 10) presented with a 'hyperlexic/poor comprehenders' profile of normal word reading, but poor reading comprehension. The 'poor readers' scored low on all assessments, as well as showing more severe autistic behaviours than 'skilled readers'. Group differences between 'skilled readers' and 'hyperlexics/poor comprehenders' were more subtle: these subgroups did not differ on autistic severity, phonological processing or non-verbal intelligence quotient, but the 'hyperlexics/poor comprehenders' scored significantly lower on tests of oral language. When data from age 3 were considered, no differences were seen between the subgroups in social skills, autistic severity or intelligence quotient. Importantly, however, it was possible to identify oral language weaknesses in those that 5years later presented as 'poor readers' or 'hyperlexics'.
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