Toby Macrae

University of Canterbury | UC · Psychology, Speech and Hearing

Purpose: There has been concern that a shift in disability funding to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in Australia may have influenced paediatric speech and language intervention to involve parents less in service delivery. This study aimed to describe paediatric speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) practices and perceptions of pare...

While primary diagnosis is only one aspect of the presentation of a child with neurodevelopmental delay/disorder, the degree to which early expressive language reflects diagnostic divisions must be understood in order to reduce the risk of obscuring clinically important differences and similarities across diagnoses. We present original data from th...

Background: Previous studies have explored the size and word type composition (nouns, predicates, etc.) of expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome, both spoken and signed. Separately, overall preferences for modality of expression have also been explored. Aims: To extend previous findings by describing the relationships...

Purpose The aim of this study was to describe and explain changes in severity of speech sound disorder (SSD) and token-to-token inconsistency in children with high levels of inconsistency. Method Thirty-nine children (aged 4;6–7;11 [years;months]) with SSDs and high levels of token-to-token inconsistency were assessed every 6 months for 2 years (i...

Purpose The aim of this study was to compare word-initial and word-final consonant cluster productions in young children who speak African American English (AAE) and compare their productions to what we know about cluster productions in children who speak Mainstream American English (MAE), in order to minimize misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders...

Purpose This clinical focus article provides readers with a description of the stimulus characteristics of 12 popular tests of speech sound production. Method Using significance testing and descriptive analyses, stimulus items were compared in terms of the number of opportunities for production of all consonant singletons, clusters, and rhotic and...

This paper describes a comprehensive speech sound assessment for preschool children suspected of having a speech sound disorder (SSD). Recommended components include standardized single-word testing, additional single-word testing, connected speech sampling, phonological analyses, stimulability testing, and inconsistency testing. While data collect...

This is a follow-up to a paper that was presented at the 2014 Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, which included preliminary data from 12 children. Data collection is ongoing and the data from all participants will be presented at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in 2015. While speech variability and disordered...

The purpose of this study was to examine potential concurrent predictors and replicate rates of token-to-token inconsistency (inconsistency in repeated productions of the same word) in 43 children with typical speech-language development, ages 2;6 to 4;2. A standard linear regression was used to determine which variables, if any, among age, express...

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a motor learning guided (MLG) approach to speech treatment in a unique case of speech disturbance following surgery for stress velopharyngeal incompetence (SVPI). The patient was a 20-year-old female college student. Treatment took place over 6 sessions and focused on eliciting product...

Purpose The authors compared preschool children with co-occurring speech sound disorder (SSD) and language impairment (LI) to children with SSD only in their numbers and types of speech sound errors. Method In this post hoc quasi-experimental study, independent samples t tests were used to compare the groups in the standard score from different te...

Purpose The authors of this study examined relationships between measures of word and speech error variability and between these and other speech and language measures in preschool children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Method In this correlational study, 18 preschool children with SSD, age-appropriate receptive vocabulary, and normal oral mot...

The present study investigated the effects of lexical age of acquisition (AoA), phonological complexity, age and expressive vocabulary on spoken word variability and accuracy in typically developing infants, aged 1;9-3;1. It was hypothesized that later-acquired words and those with more complex speech sounds would be produced more variably and less...

Aim: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated phoneme awareness/speech intervention in comparison to an alternating speech/morphosyntax intervention for specific areas targeted by the different interventions, as well as the extent of indirect gains in nontargeted areas. Method: A total of 30 children with co-occurring s...

The present study sought to investigate word and segment duration and variability in four preschool-aged children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and four control children with typical development. Group comparisons revealed that the children in the SSD group produced significantly longer word and vowel durations than their peers. No group differe...

In honour of Miccio's memory, this article revisits the topic of stimulability in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Eighteen children with SSD, aged 3;6-5;5 (M = 4;8), were tested for their system-wide stimulability, percentage consonants correct (PCC), phonetic inventory size, and oral- and speech-motor skills. Pearson Product Moment Cor...

The phenomenon of back vowel fronting is a sweeping change affecting U.S. dialects. The apparent uniformity of these changes compared to those affecting front vowel classes in regional dialects is one of its most striking aspects. While this fronting, affecting the /uw/, /&smallupsilon;/, and /ow/ vowel classes, has been noted by almost every resea...