JCPSLP Vol 16 Issue 1 2014

Warren, S. F., Fey, M. E., & Yoder, P.J. (2007). Differential treatment intensity research: A missing link to creating optimally effective communication interventions. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews , 13 (1), 70–77. Williams, A. L. (2000a). Multiple oppositions: Case studies of variables in phonological intervention. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 9 , 289–299. Williams, A. L. (2000b). Multiple oppositions: Theoretical foundations for an alternative contrastive intervention approach. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 9 , 282–288. Recommending tongue exercises and swallowing practice to people following glossectomy? Ahlberg, A., Engström, T., Nikolaidis, P., Gunnarsson, K., Johansson, H., Sharp, L., & Laurell, G. (2011). Early self-care rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients. Acta Oto-Laryngologica , 131 , 552–561. Patricia McCabe and Eric Landry As treatments improve, people with cancer survive longer and with less morbidity (ongoing illness). Consequently, clinician attention has been directed to how people live after cancer rather than whether they survive. In regards to head and neck cancer, this is an under-researched area, with much treatment being the best available practice derived solely from clinician experience rather than client-focused treatment chosen from a range of research-driven, evidence based options. This study presents a prospective non- randomised comparison of two parallel groups allocated by geographical location where one group underwent early preventive rehabilitation (experiment) and the other group was not offered any systematic rehabilitation (control). The treatment group were instructed to practise self-care activities at home including doing various exercises 1–2 times per day during radiotherapy and for three months afterwards. Speech pathology related exercises included: tongue mobility exercises consisting of five repetitions of extending the tongue as far as possible straight out, up, down, and laterally and then moving the tongue over the whole inside of the oral cavity and teeth and Mendelson manoeuvre (holding the larynx at its most superior position for 2–3 s during swallowing, repeated 10 times with a 5–15ml bolus each time). Patients in this group were also provided with physiotherapy exercises to be completed with the same frequency. The researchers hypothesised that early preventive rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients could reduce functional impairment and improve quality of life, and thereby also affect the survival of the participants. Primary outcome measures were the two-year survival rate and weight loss, and there was no difference between the two groups on these items. The secondary outcomes were sick leave, self-reported loss of function and anxiety or depression. Here the results get interesting. The control group reported less swallowing disability than the treatment group, less speech impairment, and better recovery overall. In short, doing the program was not associated with improved outcomes and therefore it cannot be recommended. While the research has flaws, the result draws our attention to many of the standard practices of head and neck clinicians including prescription of range of motion exercises during and following radiotherapy. At the very least, clinicians should collect careful data about the clinical

efficacy of these interventions and control behaviours to demonstrate that the treatment is responsible for any improvement rather than natural recovery or other client factors. speechBITE rating: 3/10 Partnerships between early childhood educators and speech pathologists that facilitate emergent literacy Girolametto, L., Weitzman, E., & Greenberg J. (2012). Facilitating emergent literacy: Efficacy of a model that partners speech-language pathologists and educator. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 21 , 47–63. Ahmed Rivera-Campos Emergent literacy skills in early childhood have been found to influence a child’s later literacy abilities. It usually falls to teachers and speech-language pathologists to ensure that young children are being adequately stimulated in this area. Literacy enrichment programs that do not require an extensive time commitment can be a powerful tool for professionals who work with young children to ensure that they are exposed to pre literacy enrichment. This paper – comparing two groups before and after intervention – studied the efficacy of the ABC and Beyond: The Hanen Program for Building Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood Settings training program with early childhood educators. The researchers were interested to see if training early childhood educators to use the program would increases educators’ use of decontextualised language during shared reading and use of utterances containing print/sound references during shared storybook reading and a post story writing activity. In addition, researchers wanted to see if children in the program used more decontextualised language during shared reading and more utterances containing print/sound references in the shared storybook reading and the post story writing activity. This paper reports the results of 20 female early childhood educators and 76 children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Toronto, Canada. The teachers were randomly assigned to two groups with only one group of teachers receiving training in the literacy program. The methodology of the research was structured to compare whether training teachers would have an impact on the pre literacy skills in young children and whether children would demonstrate behavioural changes regarding these pre literacy skills. Following the research, the teachers who were trained showed more use of decontextualised language compared to the teachers who were not trained. This suggests that children who worked with teachers who had been trained were exposed to more complex language forms than could be learned by focusing on the “here and now” events. Additionally, children who had trained teachers used more decontextualised language during shared reading. This suggests that these children were practising and acquiring more complex language skills that required them to talk about things outside their immediate context. A third measure that showed significant differences was that the trained teachers used more utterances containing print/ sound references during shared storybook reading and a post story writing activity. This suggests that children were being more frequently exposed to print/sound referencing which plays an important part in the acquisition of pre literacy skills. From the final measure, neither group of

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JCPSLP Volume 16, Number 1 2014

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology