Assessments and Goal Making

1. Assessments and Goal Making Jennifer Lozier M.S. CCC-SLP

2. What you will learn • Assessment and goal making for the following speech/language areas: • Receptive language • Expressive language/communication • Articulation • Pragmatics

3. WHY IS TEACHING COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT?

4. DIFFICULTIES WITH BOTHEXPRESSIVE AND RECEPTIVECOMMUNICATIONBEHAVIORPROBLEMS LEAD TO

5. CHARACTERISTICS OFCOMMUNICATIONDIFFERENCES IN AUTISM MISSING THE BASIC “BUILDING BLOCKS” OF COMMUNICATION

6. Asperger’s Syndrome • Developmental, neurobiological disorder that is part of the autism spectrum. Most common among boys. Characteristics include: • Impaired social skills • Obtuseness, limited interests, and unusual preoccupations • Preference for sameness in routines or rituals; difficulties with transitions • Speech and language difficulties, particularly in the areas of pragmatics and prosody

7. Characteristics cont’d • Limited facial expressions apart from anger or misery • Excellent rote memory and musical ability • Difficulty reading nonverbal communications (body language) • Poor awareness of personal body space • Clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements • Extreme sensitivity to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights

8. TEACHING COMMUNICATION SKILLS BEGINS WITH

9. Assessment of Receptive Skills • Vocabulary/Identifying objects • Simple Directions • Complex Directions (prepositions, quantity, quality, negation, etc.) • “Wh”; yes/no questions • Functional Communication Questions (name, age, address) • Feelings, Relationships • Slang, Idioms (put foot in mouth)

10. Assessmentof Expressive Communication Skills • What? • How? (System) • Tantrum, gesture, picture, written word, sign language, verbal • Where? (Context) • Why? (Function) • Asks for help • Makes a request (or choose last option) • Refuses/protest • Gets attention

11. Assessmentof Expressive Communication Skills • Vocabulary/Labeling objects • Requesting • Sentence length • Grammar • Conversation/turn-taking • Speech sample

12. Speech sample examples • What would you do if you had a million dollars? • Pretend I’ve never had a pizza before. Describe it to me. • Do you have a pet? Tell me about it. • Tell me what you and your friends play or talk about together. • Tell me about your favorite movie or TV show. • *Or show a detailed picture and have them tell about it.

13. Speech sample findings • Vocabulary- Were they able to name objects? • Sentence length- Were they speaking in 1-2 word phrases or complete sentences? • Grammar- Were they using past tense verbs, -ing, plurals, etc.? • Pragmatics- Were they able to stay on topic? Show feelings/perspectives of others?

14. Assessment of Articulation Skills • Normal articulation is a series of complex actions. • Accurate articulation requires exact placement, sequencing, timing, direction, and force of the articulators. • Some articulation disorders are the result of hearing loss, cleft palate, cerebral palsy, etc.

15. Assessment of Articulation Skills • Simple tasks- counting, days of week, naming objects and colors, reading, etc. • Look at: • Number of errors • Error types (substitutions, omissions, additions, etc.) • Consistency of errors • Intelligibility • Rate of speech • Stimulability- Can they make the sound if you do and tell them where to put their tongue, lips, etc.?

16. Reading Passages • “I like to swim when it is hot outside. It is very fun. I swim in a big pool. I can jump in the water. I get all wet. I can float on my back. I can float on my tummy too. I open my eyes under the water. I can see my brother. I can see my mom. They watch me. I think the water is cool. It feels good. I like to splash and blow bubbles and yell. After I swim, I dry off with my towel. My towel is yellow. It has a picture of a treasure chest on it.”

17. Assessment of Pragmatic Skills • Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communicative interactions. • Respond to greetings • Make requests • Describe events • Take turns • Make eye contact • Repeat

18. Assessment of Pragmatic Skills • Maintain topic • Role-play • Initiate activity or dialogue • Feelings • Idioms

19. Assessing Nonverbal Children • Play behaviors • Use of gestures, signs, and symbols (pointing, directing) • Use of nonspeech vocalizations • Use of meaningful vocalizations • Nonverbal responses to verbal stimuli • Appropriate use of objects • Imitation of words • Possible spontaneous productions of words • Communicative intent

20. Assessing Minimally Verbal Children • All of the above and: • Naming of familiar objects • Counting or reciting days of week • Use of simple phrases • Use of simple grammatical morphemes (-ing, -s) • Length of average utterances • Comprehension of words and simple phrases

21. Assessing a Child Who Uses Early Multiword Combinations • All of the above and: • Response to simple commands • Produces sentences • More advanced grammar • Comprehension of conversational speech

22. Goal Making • After assessing the child and figuring out their areas of weakness, make measureable goals for them • SMART goals

23. Goals • S- Specific • M- Measurable • A- Attainable • R- Relevant • T- Time-based

24. Goal examples • By July 2015, Jane will produce the /s/ sound in all positions of sentences in 8/10 trials independently as measured by clinical data. • By July 2015, Jane will increase her attention as evidenced by her ability to keep her hands in her lap for 15 minutes with no more than 4 prompts. • By July 2015, Jane will use plurals in sentences with 80% accuracy independently as measured by clinical data.

25. References • Nadine Waurin is an Autism Consultant out of North Caroline. She travels the world sharing her knowledge about working with students with autism. She provided many of the slides. • Linda Hodgdon – Two of her books, Solving Behavior Problems in Autism and Visual Strategies for Improving Communication were used in making this presentation. • Assessment in Speech-Language Pathology-4th Edition. Kenneth G. Shipley, Julie G. McAfee