Stay informed as a
speech–language
pathologist

or, by its more formal title: Grammatical concepts of English: Suggested order of interventionHave you ever asked the following? “I know that I still need to work on grammar with older kids with DLD to ensure academic success, but what rationale should I have for selecting targets?”  “How do I decide what order to tackle the many areas of grammar that need support?” “Is there any evidence to help me decide whether I should work on passives or relative clauses or adverbial clauses first? They all seem important—and hard!”​We're (finally!) ready with some answers.

Speech sound disorders. It’s one of those things our relatives who don’t really understand what we do assume is the only thing we do. It’s one of the areas of practice our field was founded on, and one where we’re fortunate to have an array of treatment approaches (like, dozens) backed up by decades of research. All these evidence-based options can be a challenge to navigate, though, and choosing the right approach could mean the difference between a child meeting their goals and “graduating” from speech and that same child staying on the caseload for years. That’s exactly why we’ve put together this Ask TISLP: to give you a starting point for making informed treatment decisions. To narrow things down, we’ll be focusing only on idiopathic (traditionally called “functional”) SSDs—those rooted in articulation and/or phonology and without a known cause. That means that we’re not talking CAS, dysarthria, or speech disorders related to cleft/craniofacial conditions or to hearing differences. But never fear! You can search all of those topics using the filters here to find reviews on supporting speech for those kiddos.  Here’s what to expect…

Gestalt language processing (GLP): it is *everywhere* right now, and everyone is talking about it.  Why’s it so hot? We’ll get to that. What even is this? We’ll get to that too, no worries. But the big question that’s been blowing up our email, DMs, and search engine— Is there research behind GLP? Is it EBP?  Quick answer—yes, partly…it’s complicated! So while we wish we could pull this off in a quick soundbite, you’re going to need to grab a chair or an earbud and settle in for the ride. Let’s go!

The CDC rolled out revamped milestone checklists this month, and they’ve caused a lot of stir in the early intervention world. The goal of their project was to reduce the “wait and see” method of surveillance that rules the day in pediatricians’ offices by providing clearer guidance for when further screening and evaluation should be conducted. We can get behind the goals of the project and like many of the changes; however, some of the updated language milestones don’t align with current evidence—in a way that could undermine those goals.

Hey, remember that time a study that aggregated speech norms broke the internet? Haha, wow, that was fun, and also traumatic. I’m glad there aren’t too many papers that challenge long-standing ‘norms’ and fundamentally shift the information speech pathologists are communicating to parents. *Record scratch* OK, so if you’re in pediatrics (and you’re reading this, so you probably are) you might, at some point, have used some sort of speech intelligibility patter with parents and teachers like: ‘Kids should be 50% intelligible to strangers at two years, 75% at three years, and 100% intelligible (albeit not error-free) by four years.’ I know I have…

If you’re in the cognitive screening business, you’ve heard of the MOCA. And if you’ve heard of the MOCA, you know it used to be free to administer, but now requires a $125.00 certification fee. This has caused quite a bit of confusion for SLPs, as it seems our training should exempt us from this requirement (which was put in place to ensure quality administration).  Some SLPs still use the MOCA without certification while others work in facilities that require them to become certified, sometimes even having to pay out of pocket...