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.
hannahmjulien 
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