Reliability of Speech Generating Devices: A 5-Year Review

Individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) depend on technology to meet their daily needs and form relationships. Speech generating devices (SGDs) are integral components of communication systems. Reliability of SGDs is critical for effective use in everyday life. This study examined the reliability of new SGDs and found that mean time to first failure was 42.7 (SD = 41.2) weeks and at least 40% required repairs within the first year of use. The components that most frequently broke down were touch screens, wiring, main boards, batteries, memory cards, and AC adaptors. The costs of repairing SGDs were analyzed. The clinical implications of device breakdown are identified for key stakeholders, including clients, families, service providers, funding agencies, and manufacturers.     

A thirteen‐year follow‐up study of young Norwegian adults with dyslexia in childhood: reading development and educational levels

As part of a larger follow‐up study, 75 students were diagnosed with dyslexia at 10 years of age. At the end of secondary school, grades for the whole cohort of 16‐year olds were examined. At age 23 the whole study group responded to a questionnaire and the subgroup with dyslexia who responded to this questionnaire were invited to come for testing and interviews. The persistence of dyslexia into young adulthood and educational levels were examined. The results showed that almost all students still suffered dyslexia and showed lower decoding ability. However, they only showed slightly lower educational attainment levels compared with a representative sample of half the cohort (n=530) they were part of. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The form and function of questions in children's conversations

The children's questions analysed here were taken from a corpus of spontaneous conversations between several French-speaking children aged 3; 0 to 4; 10 in a day-care center during ‘free play’ time. The form of their questions is described and a classification of their function is presented. The results of these two classifications are laid out in a double-entry table, which permits a discussion of the form-function mapping issue.     

Footsteps and Hauntings: the Theory and Practice of the 'Romantic Biographer'in Richard Holmes'Footsteps and Jacques Reda's Le Sens de la marche

From an investigation of four biographic studies of figures from France and England's Romantic Generation, as they unfold in Richard Holmes' Footsteps. Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985), and under the dual theme of footsteps and hauntings , a working definition is established of the Romantic Biographer. This definition is then applied to Jacques Réda's Le Sens de la marche (1990) where a sequence of chapters on La Fontaine, Wordsworth, Renard, Proust and Follain are structured around similar notions of journeying, identifying and creating. A number of parallels are elucidated between the two authors, their biographic enterprise and the limits this places on their own developmental or creative processes.     

Book Reviews

Essays on Time‐Based Linguistic Analysis Charles‐James N. Bailey Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 423 pp.

Luxembourg and Lëtzebuergesch: Language and Communication at the Crossroads of Europe Gerald Newton (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning: Selected Papers of Ruqaiya Hasan Carmel Cloran, David Butt and Geoffrey Williams (eds.) London: Cassell, 1996, vi + 248pp.

Measuring Second Language Performance Tim Mcnamara Harlow: Longman, 1996, 323 pp.

Inter‐Cultural Communication at Work Michael Clyne Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 250 pp.     

Reviews

Cameron, Deborah. Verbal Hygiene. (The Politics of Language Series). London: Routledge. 1995. Pp.xvi+264.

Edwards, John. Multilingualism. London: Routledge. 1994. Pp.xiv+210+46.

Mills, Sara. Feminist stylistics. London: Routledge. ('Interface’ series). 1995. Pp.x+230.