ASHA 2015

ASHA 2015 – A Comparison of High and Low Dosages of Milieu Teaching Models on Vocabulary Acquisition (Julien & Reichle)

This is a quick follow up on my trip to Denver for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Generally, it was a positive experience, despite a flight delay and bumpy ride to Denver.  I enjoyed some quality time with Liza at the gate.  Mentors provide support in many ways including when we may feel nervous (even about flying).   I had some great questions related to my research project and am excited to continue to think about treatment intensity within intervention studies.

Dr. Christine Dollaghan’s talk was probably the most compelling to me – she discussed her ideas about assessment tools and how we think about them in terms of sensitivity and specificity as well as their potential impact.   She encouraged us to think about assessments as “decisional” or “non-decisional.” Decisional assessments are those that have lingering effects, such as receiving (or not) a diagnosis of a particular communication disorder or becoming eligible (or not) for services.  Decisional assessments initiate experiences that would not otherwise have occurred in a person’s life.   Because of their potential impacts, Dr. Dollaghan challenged how we evaluate our tools and described the potential negative consequences of false positives and false negatives.   Near the end of her talk, she asked, “What would it mean if we changed how we thought about assessments?” One of her answers was to think about examining constellations of skills.  I’m still considering what this means for my practice and interest in social communication but I think it is a valuable way to consider assessment and to move our field forward in how we think about the decisions we make about services and approaches to intervention.

Finally, my time at ASHA was a valuable reminder about connecting with colleagues – I went to a handful of sessions with a colleague from my MA program (she lives and practices in IL now) and it was refreshing to hear her ideas and talk about some of the current challenges in her practice.  I got to spend some time with Bita, too!  Dr. Benjamin Munson (with Dr. Leah Fabiano-Smith and Dr. Fred Eckman) facilitated a great session related to Bilingual Phonological Acquisition and Second Language Phonology. There was a strong U of MN – Twin Cities contingent in attendance and it was great to see so many colleagues and talk about their clinical practices.

As has been the case the past few years, I was exhausted but energized about my work and my place in the field of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences.

Ten (Current Focus)

Most of my work focus is devoted to drafting my prospectus. It is an exciting and rigorous task.  I plan to write a post about it once the project is off the ground.  In one sentence?  I will be examining how children with ASD initiate requests for communicative repair during communicative breakdowns (i.e., when they do not understand their social partner’s bid).   There is some evidence related to how children with ASD respond to requests for repair, but we know very little about how they may initiate requests.

Some of my work focus is thinking ahead to next week and the ASHA Convention in Denver. I am presenting a (fabric) poster related to treatment intensity and vocabulary acquisition in learners with ASD.  Conferences combine some of my most favorite things – learning, thinking, receiving feedback, seeing colleagues/friends (Bita!) and one of my least favorite things – flying on an airplane.

All of my focus wants to be on reading Dr. Barry Prizant’s new book, “Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism,” although I finally made it through the library queue and it is now in my possession until the end of the month. (Yep, I proudly read real, printed and bound, books from the public library.)  I plan to read it while I’m traveling next week and will write my thoughts in a future post.   Really looking forward to the book. I anticipate it is going to be a great resource for parents who are interested in learning about the SCERTS model and a strengths based approach to intervention.   I am certain he’ll use person-first language. Therefore, it will have nice examples for graduate students to consider as they are thinking about how we refer to the people and families with whom we work.

In general, I am trying focus on one thing at a time, like the frog in the photo. I walk by him when I leave the gym.  I guess he is a reminder to cultivate awareness, to focus on the present.  Perhaps next week, I’ll remember his message as I enjoy ASHA and the break from prospectus-writing.