Carol-Anne Murphy

• PhD, MSc, BSc
• Associate Professor at University of Limerick

Background Phonological difficulties are prevalent in children with speech and/or language disorders and may hamper their later language outcomes and academic achievements. These children often form a significant proportion of speech and language therapists’ caseloads. There is a shortage of information on evidence‐based interventions for improving...

Background Without intervention and support, autistic children may have limited interactions with their peers in inclusive preschool settings, thus restricting the potential of this environment to support children’s learning and social development. Peer-mediated interventions (PMIs) include a variety of approaches which aim to support non-autistic...

Purpose Qualitative engagement with stakeholders in the development of interventions can provide insight into strategies to maximize feasibility in real-life settings. We engaged stakeholders (autistic adults, early childhood educators, early childhood sector leaders and policy influencers, parents of autistic children, and speech-language patholog...

Purpose The aim of this study was to map the use of implementation science frameworks, models, and theories in intervention research targeting learning needs in the classroom. Method A scoping review was conducted. Electronic database and manual searches were conducted. Two reviewers independently completed screening, data extraction, and quality...

Background Ten percent of the school-aged population have speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) that impact access to the curriculum. Successful implementation of classroom-based SLCN interventions can reduce barriers to learning, thereby improving educational outcomes for this vulnerable population. The challenges of implementing innova...

Peer mediated intervention (PMI) is an evidence-based approach to supporting social and communication development for children on the autism spectrum. For PMI to be integrated into everyday practice, it needs to be acceptable to stakeholders. This article engaged with autistic individuals, early childhood educators, parents, and speech and language...

Current methods for reporting interventions do not allow key questions of importance to practitioners, service providers, policy‐makers and people with DLD to be answered, and hence limit the implementation of effective interventions in the real world. To extend the existing EQUATOR guidelines to the context of speech language therapy/pathology for...

In Language Assessment Across Modalities: Paired-Papers on Signed and Spoken Language Assessment, volume editors Tobias Haug, Wolfgang Mann, and Ute Knoch bring together—for the first time—researchers, clinicians, and practitioners from two different fields: signed language and spoken language. The volume examines theoretical and practical issues r...

In Language Assessment Across Modalities: Paired-Papers on Signed and Spoken Language Assessment, volume editors Tobias Haug, Wolfgang Mann, and Ute Knoch bring together—for the first time—researchers, clinicians, and practitioners from two different fields: signed language and spoken language. The volume examines theoretical and practical issues r...

Effective co-practice is considered a linchpin of inclusive education. Speech and language therapists (SLT), in collaboration with teachers, are amongst the professionals who have a role in ensuring inclusion for students. The challenges of collaboration are well documented, with communication considered a potential antidote. Proposals for how coll...

Background: Understanding the factors that influence the implementation of health interventions in the context of education is essential to improving outcomes for children and young people with speech and language needs (SLCN). Yet implementation considerations have not been adequately addressed when developing interventions for this context. The a...

Background: The empirical evidence accumulated on the efficacy, effectiveness, and efficiency of psychotherapeutic treatments in children and adolescents calls for an update. The main goal of this paper objective was to carry out a selective review of empirically supported psychological treatments for a variety of common psychological disorders and...

Purpose The aim of this study was to extract key learning from intervention studies in which qualitative aspects of dosage, dose form, have been examined for children with developmental language disorder (DLD)—in vocabulary, morphosyntax, and phonology domains. This research paper emerged from a pair of systematic reviews, aiming to synthesize avai...

Background: Understanding the factors that influence the implementation of health interventions in the context of education is essential to improving outcomes for children and young people with speech and language needs (SLCN). Yet implementation considerations have not been adequately addressed when developing interventions for this context. The a...

Effective co-practice is considered a linchpin of inclusive education. Speech and language therapists (SLT), in collaboration with teachers, are amongst the professionals who have a role in ensuring inclusion for students. The challenges of collaboration are well documented, with communication considered a potential antidote. Proposals for how coll...

In peer-mediated intervention (PMI), peers act as agents of intervention. Previous reviews in this area have not addressed the effectiveness of using PMI with children with autism who are minimally verbal. Following a systematic search, we reviewed 25 studies where PMI was used to increase communication in minimally verbal participants. The majorit...

Purpose: Considerable progress has been made in recent years in generating external evidence underpinning interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD), but less is known about the practitioner decision-making process underpinning such interventions and whether such decisions are context specific or are internationally gene...

Background : The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11 th , 2020. An ongoing challenge in healthcare is ensuring that up-to-date and high-quality research evidence is implemented in practice. In the context of a global pandemic it is assumed, given the increased pressures on healthcare professionals...

Purpose The aim of this study was to examine the degree to which quantitative aspects of dosage (dose, dose frequency, and total intervention duration) have been examined in intervention studies for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Additionally, to establish the optimal quantitative dosage characteristics for phonology, vocabula...

Children and adolescents with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) comprise approximately 10% of the school population and are at risk of adverse social, emotional, academic and vocational outcomes. Providing effective in-school language supports requires feedback and coaching involving speech and language therapist (SLT)/ teacher collab...

Background Implementation of innovations in healthcare, including new medicines, in the United Kingdom is often lacking behind other countries [1]. The slow uptake of new medicines can delay improvements in patient care and healthcare efficiency. This systematic review aimed to identify factors affecting the uptake of new medicines into practice wi...

Background Population-based studies provide important data to inform policy and service planning for vulnerable children in society. The aim of this study was to characterise social and educational circumstances and self-concept among a nationally representative sample of 13 year olds with developmental disabilities in Ireland. Methods A cross-sec...

Purpose: To ascertain stakeholders’ agreement and disagreement about inter-professional collaboration (IPC) when supporting the child with a developmental language disorder (DLD) in school. Materials and methods: Two rounds of an online Delphi survey were undertaken with a purposive sample of 26 participants (researchers, practitioners and parents)...

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a well-established framework for supporting clinical decision-making in the discipline of speech-language pathology. The benefits of using evidence to inform clinical practice are acknowledged by clinicians and researchers alike. Even so, after over two decades of EBP advocacy, much clinical uncertainty remains and...

Although most children learn language relatively quickly, as many as 10 per cent of them are slow to start speaking and are said to have developmental language disorder (DLD). Children with DLD are managed by a variety of different professionals in different countries, are offered different services for different periods of time and are given a var...

Background Effective collaboration between speech and language therapists (SLTs) and teachers is essential in meeting the needs of children with developmental language disorders in school, but it is difficult to achieve. Currently, many children receive inadequate speech and language therapy services and/or support in school. The aim of this study...

Background Inter‐professional collaboration (IPC) has been recommended for many years as a means by which the needs of children with developmental language disorders (DLD) can be met at school. However, effective IPC remains difficult to achieve and our knowledge of how to support it is limited. A shared understanding between those involved has bee...

Purpose This study followed up children identified with expressive language delay (ELD) or receptive/expressive language delay (R/ELD) at 2 years of age, Time 1 (T1), in order to identify their language profiles at 4–5 years, Time 2 (T2), and explore relationships to T1 language, gesture use, and symbolic comprehension. Method Nineteen of 22 child...

Appendix S2. Background document, with the statements for round 2.

Appendix S1. Background document, with the statements for round 1.

Appendix S4. Report showing quantitative and qualitative responses to Round 1 statements.

Appendix S3. Relationship between Round 2 statements and final statements reported in Results section.

Appendix S5. Report showing quantitative and qualitative responses to Round 2 statements.

This review aims to to explore the optimal dosage of PHONOLOGY, VOCABULARY and MORPHOSYNTAX interventions in children with LI in terms of a. total ‘dose’ (cumulative intervention intensity) b. dose frequency (the number of sessions per week) c. duration (the number of weeks). Research questions 1. Which dosage data are reported in PHONOLOGY, VO...

This review aims to: To identify the methods of intervention used to treat phonological difficulties in children with primary language impairment (PLI) (or Developmental language disorder) and the level of evidence supporting those interventions. To identify the impact of interventions on children’s phonological skills and on secondary outcomes. T...

This review aims to: Identify interventions which impact on vocabulary as reflected in the available literature, and to map them onto specific theoretical orientations and paradigms (linguistic, psychological, and neurocognitive). More specifically: a. Which linguistic/language and/or cognitive domains are targeted in vocabulary interventions for...

This is a systematic review of interventions for grammatical difficulties in children with Developmental language disorder (or primary language impairment). The review asks What are the interventions used to treat grammatical difficulties in children with primary language impairment? What is the impact of these interventions on grammatical impairm...

Introduction Despite well-documented sentence production and verb-related difficulties in children with Developmental Language Disorder (CwDLD), few tools specifically assess these needs. Additionally, there are equivocal findings about some verb-related difficulties. ‘Captain Grey and the Greedy Aliens’ is a story-retell tool assessing verb and se...

A position statement on children with developmental language disorder in Ireland written on behalf of IASLT (Irish Association of Speech and Language therapists). The document includes guidance and recommendations for change, for practitioners and policy makers in this area and incorporates findings from (1) focus groups with parents of children wi...

Background: Lack of agreement about criteria and terminology for children's language problems affects access to services as well as hindering research and practice. We report the second phase of a study using an online Delphi method to address these issues. In the first phase, we focused on criteria for language disorder. Here we consider terminol...

Interventions for children with language impairment need to be underpinned by accurate identification at baseline of their strengths and weaknesses. Children with specific or primary language impairment are vulnerable to sentence production difficulties, which may persist into adolescence, affecting narrative skills (Wetherell et al., 2007) and spo...

Delayed or impaired language development is a common developmental concern, yet there is little agreement about the criteria used to identify and classify language impairments in children. Children's language difficulties are at the interface between education, medicine and the allied professions, who may all adopt different approaches to conceptua...

Early school leaving is an international concern. Previous research indicates that the school context contributes to early school leaving. This systematic review is aimed to gather marginalised young peoples’ perceptions concerning contextual factors that contributed to and interfered with their decisions to stay in alternative education. Twenty-th...

Language comprehension impairments in children, explained by both linguistic knowledge and general processing deficits (Hsu & Bishop 2014), contribute to a poor prognosis (Law et al 2008). A weak but growing evidence base for intervention (Law et al 2010) includes a metalinguistic approach, Shape Coding, effective with older children and adolescent...

Background: Children with Specific Language Impairment (CwSLI) demonstrate difficulties with verb knowledge and production of argument structure. Research findings into their use of verb alternations are inconsistent and there are few studies on their production from the perspective of event structure. Black and Chiat (2008) propose complexity of e...

Few studies that have characterised sentence production in children with SLI have both tracked changes over time and following intervention. One group study, motivated by a theoretical model of sentence production, involved assessment of sentence production components including verb production at single word, sentence and narrative levels, follow-u...

Sentence production difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) include problems with production of verb argument structure, complex sentences and morphology, with several studies attesting to particular weaknesses in verb knowledge. Children may group according to relative strengths and weaknesses in production of verb argumen...

A group of children with SLI (N=18; C.A. 6; 05-10; 02) were assessed to differentiate among profiles and patterns of sentence production ability with follow-up assessment to determine stability. The assessment battery included a task to explore sentence generation (from verbs covering a range of semantic and syntactic classes). Narrative data (pict...

Background: Recent literature has demonstrated the long-term nature of SLI, which impacts on an individual’s educational, social, and emotional experiences (Brinton et al., 2005). There is limited service provision for adolescents with SLI and little is known about their experiences in Ireland. Aim: To qualitatively explore the experience of adoles...

Psycholinguistic profiling of children with SLI using speech and single word processing models has yielded promising results in the assessment and remediation of phonological, semantic and literacy difficulties. Children with SLI can have problems with sentence comprehension and production. This theoretical paper outlines a rationale for applying G...

Research has shown that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have difficulties with word learning (Leonard, 1998). There are limited studies suggesting optimal ways of improving word learning in older children with SLI. The aim of this research was to investigate the efficacy of teaching context clues for word learning to school-age chi...