DOSE RELEVANCE IN DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT AND SUBSEQUENT LANGUAGE INTERVENTIONS OF BILINGUAL POPULATIONS DELIVERED THROUGH TELETHERPAY

Author

Alysh Oetzel, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Date of Award

5-2021

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Communication Disorders and Sciences

First Advisor

Boyer, Valerie

Second Advisor

Muzio, Diane

Third Advisor

Franca, Maria C.

Abstract

In 2007, it was estimated that approximately 20% of the United States population spoke more than one language (Grosjean, 2012). As this statistic continues to rise, it is imperative that speech-language pathologists (SLP) are prepared to serve a linguistically inclusive caseload. Dynamic assessment (DA) allows clinicians to assess bilingual children while avoiding sources of bias that are often associated with norm-referenced testing. Utilizing DA to evaluate the multifaceted skills associated with narrative language can provide clinician’s clinical direction for intervention planning (Douglas, Chanthongthip, Ukrainetz, Spencer, and Steeve, 2017). DA is often structured as a pretest-teach-posttest model, which provides insight on current learning ability rather than current skillset. Dose refers to both the measured quantity of a therapeutic agent to be taken at one time and the specification of on-going exposure to an again (i.e., daily, weekly, monthly, etc) (Justice, 2018). In reference to speech-language pathology, dose often refers to the duration of intervention sessions over a given period. However, researchers are beginning to conceptualize dose as the engagement in therapeutic events rather than the duration of time spent in a session (Williams, 2012). In such cases, dose is represented as something the child does (e.g., produces a target phoneme) and as something the clinician does (e.g., providing exposure to a target phoneme) (Hassink & Leonard, 2010). While research on dose continues to develop, there is little research on implications of dose in bilingual populations. Due to the current COVID-19 global pandemic, many SLPs have transitioned their practice to alternative methods of delivery. The current study aims to examine the impact and opinions of practicing SLPs on dose, narrative intervention, and dynamic assessment of bilingual populations. The study surveyed licensed SLPs to obtain information on the current practices and definitions of dose, DA, and subsequent language interventions to bilingual populations.