Summary

This keynote highlights the interrelationships among communication, play and peer interactions in preschool children with ASD. Adult and peer mediated play, narrative play and integrated play groups will be described and videotaped examples will be shared. Intervention effectiveness will be highlighted using current research.

Educational Objectives

Participants will be able to:

1. Explain the importance of play in foster social interactions among children with ASD and their typical peers.

2. Describe two interventions that support the interaction of children with ASD and their typical peers in the context of play.

Speaker Biography

Patricia PRELOCK , Ph.D., is Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Professor of Communication Sciences & Disorders, and Professor of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. Dr. PRELOCK coordinates parent training programs designed for caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorders and has been awarded more than 11 million dollars in university, state and federal funding as a PI or Co-PI to develop innovations in interdisciplinary training supporting children and youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families, to facilitate training in speech-language pathology, and to support her intervention work in autism spectrum disorders. She has over 150 publications and 469 peer-reviewed and invited presentations in the areas of autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities, collaboration, language assessment and intervention, and language learning disabilities. Dr. PRELOCK received the 1998 Friends Award through the Vermont Parent Information Center and the first annual Autism Society of Vermont Excellence in Service Award in 2000. She also received the University of Vermont’s Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award in 2000. Dr. PRELOCK was named an ASHA Fellow in 2000 and a University of Vermont Scholar in 2003. She was awarded the Puppets Choice Award through Kids on the Block of Vermont in 2010 for her work in autism. In 2011 she was named the Cecil & Ida Green Honors Professor Visiting Scholar at Texas Christian University and in 2014, she and her colleagues received the Editor’s Award for the best paper in Contemporary Issues in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Dr. PRELOCK earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kent State University and her doctoral degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a Board Certified Specialist in Child Language, and a Hanen certified SLP for It takes Two to Talk, More Than Words and Talkability. She was the 2013 President for the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (Asha).

Abstract

Advancement in hearing technology as well as provision of speech and language therapy in recent years means many deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children can achieve a higher level of speech perception and production abilities. As such, sign language is no longer perceived to be necessary, if not a hurdle, for these children in their development of spoken language, and speech in particular. In this presentation, I take the acquisition theories of bimodal bilingualism as the point of departure and examine the validity of the common perception that sign language is the source of linguistic confusion in DHH children’ spoken language development. I will focus on the processes of linguistic differentiation of a group of bimodal bilingual children of a co-enrollment program in Hong Kong. In the studies that I will be reporting, focus is on a group of primary school children who have been systematically exposed to Hong Kong Sign Language since KG1-3 levels, depending on when they join the program. Through analyzing the qualities of their development of metalinguistic awareness about the grammatical properties of Cantonese, written Chinese and Hong Kong Sign Language, we argue for their early linguistic differentiation abilities between Chinese and Hong Kong Sign Language, in line with theories of bilingual acquisition. Corollary to the observation is the occurrence of manually coded Chinese as part and partial development of bimodal bilingual children. This signing variety adopts the grammatical patterns of Chinese, but it is overlaid with mostly natural HKSL signs wherever the processing load is appropriate. From the data, these children’s naïve production of manually coded Chinese sentences does not prevent them from judging these sentences to be grammatically distinct from those that are generated by the grammar of Hong Kong Sign Language. We argue that it is the bimodal bilingual environment with plenty of opportunities for these children to interact with both deaf and hearing participants that heightens their metalinguistic awareness about the different grammatical properties of Chinese and Hong Kong Sign Language.

Speaker Biography

Prof. Gladys TANG received her doctoral degree in applied linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her research interests are language acquisition and language pedagogy. Her interest in sign language research also took her to embark on a series of research projects in recent years on the linguistics of Hong Kong Sign Language, the acquisition of sign language and the development of deaf literacy by deaf children. She has published on second language acquisition, second language pedagogy, sign linguistics, sign language acquisition and deaf education. She is Director of the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, Asian liaison of International Sign Linguistics Society and member of the Advisory Board of Sign Language Linguistic Society.

Abstract

Sound of Silence
Around 20% of the adult population reports persistent tinnitus and one-tenth of them are very distressed by it. What are the available treatment options for these people? Are there any evidence-based management methods for tinnitus relief? This presentation will summarise the evidence on available tinnitus management approaches. Test findings of recent research in the area will also be presented.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Anna KAM is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong. She is an audiologist and also has a bachelor degree in speech pathology. She was the Chairperson of the Continuing Professional Development Board of the Hong Kong Society of Audiology (2011 – 2014). Her research interests include advanced technologies in aural rehabilitation, tinnitus treatment and auditory processing. She has received more than $2.5 million grants for tinnitus research. She is also the first author of the only validated tinnitus measurement tools available in Hong Kong.