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Randomized controlled trials evaluating the effect of various forms of literacy training with reliable tests are lacking in Sweden today. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a cross-over design and the use of phonologically matched wordlists specifically designed to detect transfer, would yield a more thorough method and reliable results. Six children with hearing impairment using hearing aids between 7 and 9 years of age took part in the study. The schools in which the children had their education were randomized into either an intervention group that started to practice phonics by means of a computer-assisted program after the first testing, or a control group that, continued as usual in school. Children were informed to practice daily with the program during four weeks in school. Children were tested with a battery of tests for phonological awareness, letter knowledge and word decoding at three occasions separated by four weeks. Results showed that the wordlists seemed reliable in establishing children’s decoding strategies as well as how word length affected reading speed. Both children who took part in the intervention and the control group improved their scores at the second testing. Thus, the computer-assisted reading intervention did not prove to be more effective than usual school activities. Due to a small number of participants, a large heterogeneity of the group and insufficient practice time, effects were difficult to detect. The present investigation should be considered a pilot study towards the use of more careful testing methods with adapted wordlists that enables the detection of transfer. But, to accomplish this, it is crucial to use a larger number of participants.

Randomiserade kontrollerade studier som utvärderar effekten av olika former av läs- och skrivträning med tillförlitliga tester saknas i Sverige idag. Syftet med denna undersökning var att genomföra en interventionsstudie med cross-over design och använda fonologiskt matchade ordlistor specifikt utformade för att upptäcka transfer, för att ge utdelning för en mer grundlig metod och reliabla resultat. Sex barn mellan 7 och 9 års ålder som använde hörapparat deltog i studien. Skolorna som barnen gick i randomiserades till att antingen utgöra en interventionsgrupp, som började träna med ett ljudbaserat lästräningsprogram via dator efter första testningen, eller kontrollgrupp som fortsatte med vanlig skolundervisning. Barnen informerades att träna med programmet under fyra veckor dagligen i skolan. Barnen utförde ett testbatteri innehållande tester för fonologisk medvetenhet, bokstavskännedom och ordavkodning vid tre tillfällen med fyra veckors mellanrum. Resultaten visade att ordlistorna på ett reliabelt sätt kunde fastställa barns avkodningsstrategier samt hur ordlängd påverkade läshastigheten. Både interventions- och kontrollgruppen påvisade förbättring vid andra testningen. Dock kunde det inte påvisas att den datorbaserade lästräningen var mer effektiv än sedvanlig skolundervisning. Då deltagarantalet var litet, spridningen stor och träningstiden vid datorn var låg kan detta ha bidragit till att effekterna uteblev. Studien bör ses som en pilotstudie som går mot en noggrannare form av testmetod där användandet av anpassade ordlistor möjliggör upptäckt av transfer. För att åstadkomma detta är det emellertid avgörande att det ingår ett större deltagarantal.

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise, identify and manipulate components in words. Phonological awareness is an important part of the early literacy learning, although researchers disagree on how the connection arises. In the United Kingdom, synthetic phonics is a recommended way to teach literacy and the Jolly Phonics is a common approach within this method. In Sweden, mostly synthetic but also analytic methods are used for literacy teaching. The PhonicStick is developed as a communication device for impaired people and is based on the Jolly Phonics. In this study, the PhonicStick was being tested on children aged 5 and 6 years in mainstream pre-school classes to evaluate the use of it and its use for improvement of phonological awareness. The participating children were randomly divided into a test and a control group. All children were pre- and post-tested to analyse the possible improvement of parts of the phonological awareness. The test group went through three PhonicStick sessions, including different games and tests. The results from the pre- and post-tests of phonological awareness showed no significant differences between the test and control group. However, four out of five PhonicStick tests showed a significant improvement between session 1 and session 3. This shows that the children in the study were able to handle the PhonicStick after only three sessions, including remembering phonics the without visual information and producing words including two or three phonics.

Many studies have investigated the development of children's language production, yet knowledge about how and when language comprehension develops is scarce. Researchers are agreed that comprehension generally precedes production, even though some grammatical structures are produced before the child fully comprehends them. Testing language comprehension is difficult, requiring the child to perform some kind of action in order to show his or her understanding. The aim of this study is to examine two grammatical comprehension tests, Nya SIT and TROG-2, and to compare both their content, and the results they generate. Seventy-six monolingual Swedish and bilingual 4-year-old children were tested with both tests. The conclusion is that the results of the two tests for all the children correlate fairly well, 0.7 according to Spearman's rank correlation. The correlation for the bilingual children is 0.6 and for the monolingual Swedish children 0.5. A regression analysis shows that language is the factor that has the greatest influence on the results, and that gender and age have less influence. The analysis of the test items shows that TROG-2 is a more thorough test of grammar than Nya SIT which only partly reveals the child's understanding of grammar.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder that affects the planning and programming of speech, resulting in articulatory and prosodic distortions. To this date there is no available test in Swedish for assessment of AOS. Therefore, the aim of this study was to construct a test battery that enables the assessment of level of severity of the disorder, including mild AOS. A pilot standardization was performed on 50 healthy speakers. In order to determine whether the performance on the test battery is affected by sex, age or level of education, the selection of participants was stratified by these variables.

The tasks were constructed based on previous research regarding the perceptual characteristics of AOS, taking into account also the types of tasks that have proved to be challenging for patients with AOS.

The performance varied between different tasks of the test battery. On some tasks a high portion of the participants got very high scores, while other tasks were shown to be challenging even for healthy speakers. No significant sex differences were found on any of the tasks. However, age and level of education significantly affected the performance on some of the tasks. Overall, the effect sizes for level of education were larger than for age.

In the future, the test battery should be able to determine the presence or absence and severity of AOS. For further development of the test battery, the standardization should continue using a larger sample. A clinical validation on patients with diagnosed AOS is also of great importance.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether swallowing difficulties occur in patients who are hospitalized for acute heart disease and if any association with other known risk factors could be seen in the event of dysphagia. In the study, objective swallowing assessments were carried out in combination with estimation of the participants' subjective experience of their swallowing ability and a detailed medical history to get an as comprehensive picture of the participants as possible. The results showed that objective dysphagia occurred in 30% of the participants and subjective dysphagia occurred in 20% (a total of 40% in the overall assessment) and that there was an increased risk in the presence of dyspnea. This study therefore concludes that dysphagia occurs in this patient group and that dyspnoea is a risk factor for suffering from it.

The present thesis is part of an ongoing research study on swallowing difficulties in emergency care patients and is a sub-project in Margareta Gonzalez Lindh's PhD work. The study is approved by the Ethical Review Board in Uppsala, Dnr 2014/405, and will be published in an international journal.

Anxiety and emotional reactions have a central role in many theories of stuttering, for example that persons who stutter would tend to have an emotionally sensitive temperament. The possible relation between stuttering and certain traits of temperament or personality were reviewed and analyzed, with focus on temporal relations (i.e., what comes first). It was consistently found that preschool children who stutter (as a group) do not show any tendencies toward elevated temperamental traits of shyness or social anxiety compared with children who do not stutter. Significant group differences were, however, repeatedly reported for traits associated with inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, which is likely to reflect a subgroup of children who stutter. Available data is not consistent with the proposal that the risk for persistent stuttering is increased by an emotionally reactive temperament in children who stutter. Speech-related social anxiety develops in many cases of stuttering, before adulthood. Reduction of social anxiety in adults who stutter does not in itself appear to result in significant improvement of speech fluency. Studies have not revealed any relation between the severity of the motor symptoms of stuttering and temperamental traits. It is proposed that situational variability of stuttering, related to social complexity, is an effect of interference from social cognition and not directly from the emotions of social anxiety. In summary, the studies in this review provide strong evidence that persons who stutter are not characterized by constitutional traits of anxiety or similar constructs. Educational Objectives: This paper provides a review and analysis of studies of anxiety, temperament, and personality, organized with the objective to clarify cause and effect relations. Readers will be able to (a) understand the importance of effect size and distribution of data for interpretation of group differences; (b) understand the role of temporal relations for interpretation of cause and effect; (c) discuss the results of studies of anxiety, temperament and personality in relation to stuttering; and (d) discuss situational variations of stuttering and the possible role of social cognition. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stuttering is a complex speech disorder. Previous studies indicate a tendency towards elevated motor threshold for the left hemisphere, as measured using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This may reflect a monohemispheric motor system impairment. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relative side-to-side difference (asymmetry) and the absolute levels of motor threshold for the hand area, using TMS in adults who stutter (n = 15) and in controls (n = 15). In accordance with the hypothesis, the groups differed significantly regarding the relative side-to-side difference of finger motor threshold (p = 0.0026), with the stuttering group showing higher motor threshold of the left hemisphere in relation to the right. Also the absolute level of the finger motor threshold for the left hemisphere differed between the groups (p = 0.049). The obtained results, together with previous investigations, provide support for the hypothesis that stuttering tends to be related to left hemisphere motor impairment, and possibly to a dysfunctional state of bilateral speech motor control.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between stuttering and a range of variables of possible relevance, with the main focus on neuromuscular reactivity, and anxiety. The explorative analysis also included temperament, biochemical variables, heredity, preonset lesions, and altered auditory feedback (AAF). An increased level of neuromuscular reactivity in stuttering adults has previously been reported by [Guitar, B. (2003). Acoustic startle responses and temperament in individuals who stutter. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 46, 233-240], also indicating a link to anxiety and temperament. The present study included a large number of variables in order to enable analysis of subgroups and relations between variables. Totally 32 stuttering adults were compared with nonstuttering controls. The acoustic startle eyeblink response was used as a measure of neuromuscular reactivity. No significant group difference was found regarding startle, and startle was not significantly correlated with trait anxiety, stuttering severity, or AAF. Startle was mainly related to calcium and prolactin. The stuttering group had significantly higher scores for anxiety and childhood ADHD. Two subgroups of stuttering were found, with high versus low traits of childhood ADHD, characterized by indications of preonset lesions versus heredity for stuttering. The study does not support the view that excessive reactivity is a typical characteristic of stuttering. The increased anxiety is suggested to mainly be an effect of experiences of stuttering. Learning outcomes: As a result of reading this article, the reader will be able to: (a) critically discuss the literature regarding stuttering in relation to acoustic startle, anxiety, and temperament; (b) describe the effect of calcium on neuromuscular reactivity; (c) discuss findings supporting the importance of early neurological incidents in some cases of stuttering, and the relation between such incidents and traits of ADHD or ADD; and (d) discuss the role of genetics in stuttering.

Velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) refers to the failure of separating the oral cavity from the nasal cavity during speech and deglutination. This leads to increased airflow through the nose and is the cause of resonance disturbances such as hypernasality and nasal emission. Previous studies evaluating the success of pharyngeal flap surgery to treat VPI have indicated satisfying result although some studies stress side effects due to postoperative constrictions. The underlying cause of VPI has been shown to influence the postoperative result. With this background we investigated the differences in speech, pre-, and one year post pharyngeal flap surgery and compared the three groups (a) cleft palate, (b) cleft palate in combination with a syndrome or a sequence, and (c) VPI without cleft palate. We also investigated the co-occurance of postoperative speech therapy regarding different speech parameters and the underlying cause of VPI. 66 of the 153 patients who underwent a pharyngeal flap surgery at Akademiska sjukhuset in Uppsala 2000-2011 agreed to participate in the study. 32 patients attended postoperative speech therapy. The data was collected through medical records and a survey and included perceptual analyses of speech pre-, and post surgery performed by speech and language pathologists. According to the results from the perceptual assessment, the pharyngeal flap surgery resulted in improved speech; intelligibility (p<0.001), hypernasality (p=0.005) and weak consonant pressure (p=0.001). Hyponasality did not increase significantly (p=0.55). Patients with cleft palate in combination with a syndrome or a sequence showed greater improvement regarding hypernasality (p=0.037). The only speech disturbance co-occurring with the presence of postoperative speech therapy was compensatory articulation. Patients with cleft palate seemed to receive postoperative speech therapy in a higher extent than patients with cleft palate in combination with a syndrome or a sequence. These results indicate that pharyngeal flap surgery is a successful way of treating VPI disregarding underlying cause.

Keywords: Velopharyngeal insufficiency, pharyngeal flap, cleft palate, syndrome, primary VPI, speech deviation, speech therapy 

Låggradiga gliom (LGG) är långsamt växande, maligna hjärntumörer som ofta

infiltrerar områden hjärnan som står för olika viktiga funktioner, exempelvis tal och

språk. Vid vakenkirurgi av LGG kan patientens funktioner testas fortlöpande, vilket ger

förutsättning för bevarande av funktion samt en mer aggressiv resektion. Graden av

resektion är en viktig prognostisk faktor för överlevnad. Vid språktestning under

vakenkirurgi används vanligen visuell objektsbenämning. Det finns dock patienter som

får en bestående postoperativ språkstörning, varför frågor väckts om visuell

objektsbenämning är ett tillräckligt sensitivt test för intraoperativ kartläggning av

språkliga funktioner. Syftet med denna studie var att vidareutveckla dagens

intraoperativa testförfarande, baserat på kunskaper inom logopedi, psykolingvistik,

neurologi och neurokirurgi. Litteraturgenomgången och erfarenhet från praktiska

observationer resulterade i ett intraoperativt språktestförfarande som innebär att

patienten ska producera en mening med SVO-struktur (subjekt-verb-objekt) utifrån en

bild. Till skillnad från visuell objektsbenämning, som bara eliciterar den fonologiska

och lexikala nivån av språket, testar SVO-konstruktion även den syntaktiska nivån samt

benämning av verb, vilket bland annat har visats ge en mer utbredd kortikal aktivering

än benämning av substantiv. Meningar med SVO-struktur utformades och illustrerades

med ritade bilder, vilka sedan pilottestades intraoperativt. Baserat på teoretisk kunskap

bör elicitering av SVO-konstruktion vara ett mer sensitivt intraoperativt testförfarande,

men metoden behöver valideras och vårt test standardiseras. Eftersom elicitering av

SVO-konstruktion ställer högre krav på språklig kompetens hos testledaren bör en

logoped genomföra den intraoperativa språktestningen.

Previous studies have shown that significant others to persons with aphasia are in needof increased knowledge and understanding of aphasia. The knowledge andunderstanding for aphasia has shown to be crucial to significant others in terms ofpsychosocial well-being and to be able to establish a satisfying everyday life. PresentSpeech-language pathologist services in Sweden tend to have limited involvement ofsignificant others to persons with aphasia. This study aims to design a number ofquestions, items, which will be able to measure the knowledge and understanding ofaphasia for significant others of persons with aphasia. The items result from literaturestudies and semi-structured interviews with significant others to persons with aphasia,persons with aphasia and speech-language pathologists. Transcripts from interviews areanalyzed through content analysis. The study results in 140 items presented in sevencategories, each with a number of sub-categories. Two types of items are designed:items in the form of a 6-point Likert Scale and items in the form of Multiple Choice.The items are also divided depending on whether the answer is knowledgde-based (typeA) or to be used as material for discussion (type B). The categories and items from thisstudy are consistent with previous research. To transform the items into a completequestionnaire, further validation, testing of reliability and selection is needed.

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize, reflect on and manipulate sound structures of a language. This ability has been shown to be crucial when acquiring literacy. The PhonicStick is a speech-generation communication device, which was initially developed for individuals with complex communication needs (CCN) though more recent research has focused on the effects of the device on factors important for literacy acquisition. In the present study the effects on phonological awareness were evaluated after seven group training sessions with the PhonicStick. The participants of the study were 20 typically developing South African 5-6 year old children. All participants where pre and post tested with The Phonological Awareness Test part c) isolation and a PhonicStick test which tested the ability to produce isolated phonemes and combinations of three phonemes with the device. The results of the study showed that training with the PhonicStick did not appear to improve results on The Phonological Awareness Test part c) isolation. However, it was found that the participants of the training group had improved their ability to manoeuvre the PhonicStick and to produce isolated phonemes and combinations of three phonemes.

“Internal speech” can be described as the silent speech, which is produced and audible only in the mind of the speaker. The internal speech can be considered as the planning and sequencing of speech sounds, which takes place before, or without, the speech becomes audible, and thus “external speech”. By measuring “the inner speech rate” it might be possible to see how functional the linguistic planning of a speech execution is. In the present study the internal speech rate has been studied in persons who stutter, to investigate any potential impairment in this part of the speech execution. The most prominent theory today is that stuttering is caused by an impairment in the motoric part of the speech execution, but a number of studies has also reported impairments in linguistic abilities. The internal speech is challenging to study since it is not audible. In the present study the authors have constructed a new test battery containing a number of tests of linguistic abilities, which are believed to measure the internal speech rate. The test battery consisted tasks for reading, automatic enumeration, nonword repetition and tongue-twisters. When analyzing the used material the results showed that the test battery can be considered reliable. The aim of the present study was to compare the internal speech rate between persons who stutter and persons who do not stutter. The internal speech rate was also compared to the external speech rate, in the persons who do not stutter. The results showed that the group of persons who stutter had a significantly slower internal speech than the group of persons who do not stutter. The internal speech was shown to be faster than the external speech.

“Inre tal” kan beskrivas som det tysta talet, som produceras och är hörbart i endast talarens huvud. Det inre talet kan tänkas utgöra den planering och sekvensering av språkljud som sker innan, eller utan, att talet blir hörbart och därmed “yttre tal”. Genom att mäta “inre talhastighet” kan man tänkas se hur väl den språkliga planeringen av ett talutförande fungerar. I den föreliggande studien har inre talhastighet studerats hos personer som stammar för att undersöka om det finns eventuella nedsättningar i denna del av talutförandet. Den mest framträdande teorin idag är att stamning beror på en nedsättning i den motoriska delen av talutförandet, men det förekommer även studier som rapporterar nedsättningar i språkliga förmågor. Det inre talet är svårt att studera eftersom det inte är hörbart. I föreliggande studie har författarna konstruerat ett nytt testbatteri innehållande test för olika språkliga förmågor, som antas kunna mäta den inre talhastigheten. Testbatteriet bestod av uppgifter för läsning, automatisk uppräkning, repetition av nonsensord och tungvrickare. Analyser visade att testbatteriet kan anses vara reliabelt. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att, med hjälp av testbatteriet, jämföra den inre talhastigheten mellan personer som stammar och personer som inte stammar. Den inre talhastigheten jämfördes också med den yttre talhastigheten, hos personer som inte stammar. Resultaten visade att gruppen personer som stammar hade en signifikant lägre inre talhastighet än gruppen personer som inte stammar. Den inre talhastigheten visade sig vara högre än den yttre talhastigheten. 

Swallowing may differ between different age groups and genders. This may affect performance on water swallow tests. So far there have been no comprehensive studies on the effect of age, gender and water volume on the swallowing performance of healthy adults in Sweden. The aim of this study was to present normative data for three different measures of swallowing: swallowing time, swallowing capacity and number of swallows at 100 ml and 200 ml of water in healthy adults, and to examine possible effects on swallowing of age and gender. The 239 adult participants were stratified according to age and gender. During testing, time, number of swallows and a number of deviations were noted. Results showed significantly longer swallowing times, lower swallowing capacity and more swallows both in individuals older than 70 and in women. These differences were greater when using the larger volume of water. Furthermore, results showed that 100 ml of water was insufficient for measuring sequential swallowing in some individuals.

Since 2009, the EU research network COST Action IS0804 has been working towards gaining more knowledge about bilingual language acquisition in typically and atypically developing children, and towards creating assessment tools which are specifically adapted to bilingual children. Within COST Action, one working group, Narrative and discourse, focuses on narratives as a way to assess children’s language. Narratives provide more naturalistic language samples than item-based tests and are less biased against bilingual children compared to other language assessments. The Narrative and discourse group developed the assessment tool MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). MAIN examines children’s production and comprehension of narratives on a macrostructural level (i.e. overall story structure) within the framework of story grammar (SG). One current hypothesis is that macrostructure is language independent and can therefore be compared across languages. In the current study, 16 simultaneous bilingual children (ages 4:11- 5:8, mean 5:4 years) with the language combination Swedish-English were assessed with MAIN. Their results were compared with the results of bilingual 6-7 year olds with the same language combination (Härdelin & Naylor, 2012). Results showed no significant difference regarding macrostructure between the children’s two languages, neither in production(p= 0,084) nor in comprehension (p= 0,21). However, there was a significant difference between the younger and the older children, both in production (p= 0,00099) and comprehension (p= 0,0072). Non-targetlike structures due to cross-linguistic influence,e.g. transfer and code-mixing, were noticed for both age groups. Cross-linguistic influence should thus not be mistaken for language impairment, but rather be treated as a natural part of bilingual language acquisition. In conclusion, differences in macrostructure seemed to be related to age rather than to language. The results of the current study provide insight into the performance of five-year-olds on MAIN, which has not previously been studied in a Swedish context. By comparing the results with older children, the study documents the narrative development of Swedish-English bilinguals from age 5 to 7.

Persons with aphasia (PWA) have language difficulties and their Quality of Life (QoL) has most likely been affected. Because of their loss of language abilities, it is difficult to use PWA in QoL studies. This can lead to the use of proxy responses (a person who answers for the PWA). The aim of this study was to compare the rankings from QoL questionnaires for PWA with the rankings from their spouses/caregivers (i.e., proxyresponse). We also wanted to find out which of the 11 aspects of life PWA andspouses/caregivers ranked as the most respectively the least impacted ones. A totalnumber of 57 persons participated in the study. The participants consisted of two groups, one group with PWA and one group of their spouses/caregivers. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey completed via a face-to-face interview was used to collect data from both groups. The results showed that there was poor internal consistency and a weak correlation between the two groups. The two groups ranked different aspects of life as “most impacted” and “least impacted”. The PWA ranked Vocation/Occupation as the “most impacted” and Family life as the “least impacted”aspects of life. The spouses/caregivers ranked Overall ability to communicate as the“most impacted” and Ability to self-care as the “least impacted” aspects of life. The results indicate that proxy responses may not be appropriate and should be interpreted with caution in QoL studies with PWA.

Syftet med denna studie var att pröva olika teorier om stamning, avseende nivå av muskelspänning vid flytande tal. Tjugofyra försöksdeltagare ingick i studien, tolv stammande och tolv kontrolldeltagare. Försöksdeltagarnas muskelaktivitet i musklerna orbicularis oris (OO) och depressor labii inferior (DLI) uppmättes med hjälp av elektromyografi (EMG) vid flytande tal och vid en icke verbal uppgift, att puta med läpparna. De stammandes grad av stamning bedömdes med The Wright and Ayre Stuttering Self-Rating Profile (WASSP) och Stuttering Severity Instrument, fjärde upplagan, (SSI-4) för att korrelera denna med muskelaktiviteten. Ingen statistisk signifikant skillnad avseende muskelaktivitet mellan grupperna kunde påvisas, varken i flytande tal eller vid den icke verbala uppgiften. Det fanns inte heller något signifikant samband mellan den sammanlagda muskelaktiviteten av OO och DLI vid flytande tal och stamningsgrad uppmätt med SSI-4 respektive WASSP. Inget signifikant samband kunde heller ses mellan OO vid läpputning och stamningsgrad uppmätt med SSI-4 respektive WASSP. Ett negativt signifikant samband påvisades dock mellan muskelaktivering i OO vid flytande tal och självskattad stamningsgrad. Således kan resultatet tyda på att det varken finns någon muskulär hypertoni eller hypotoni i OO och DLI i stammandes flytande tal jämfört med en icke stammande kontrollgrupp. Resultatet indikerar även att det kan finnas tendens till låg muskelaktivering vid svårare stamning.

The aim of this study was to determine if STAVUX (spelling test for adults) and Kasttranskription are suitable tests to use in the assessment of adults with spelling difficulties. At present, there are no such tests with norms for people older than 18 years. STAVUX was developed by Nilsson and Pettersson (2009) and consists of 45 words and 45 pseudo words of varying difficulty. The words are chosen to represent the different spelling patterns of the Swedish language and the pseudo words to represent the Swedish phonetic structure. A between group’s design was used to find out if STAVUX is a suitable test to use in the assessment of spelling difficulties. STAVUX was validated on 23 persons with dyslexia, aged 18-64 years, and the results were compared to a control group of 23 persons, aged 18-62 years. In this study it was also investigated if there was any correlation between spelling ability and allographic ability. The participants performed a case transcription task, where the participants were supposed to convert lower to upper case letters and upper to lower case letters, while time was measured. The test is named Kasttranskription and was designed by Hansson and Häägg (2008). The results of this study show that particularly the word part of STAVUX, contributes to the prediction of dyslexia. The dyslexic group performed significantly lower than the control group on both subtests (words and pseudo words). Both groups followed the same pattern in type of spelling errors. The majority of the participants in each group managed to perform Kasttranskription correctly. There was a significant difference in time of performance of Kasttranskription. The dyslexic group performed significantly worse in terms of time compared to the control group. The subtests of STAXUX and Kasttranskription were highly correlated with each other.

A Quick Test (AQT) Color-Form is a test that uses rapid automatized naming in order to identify cognitive impairment. It is divided into three parts, each of which consists of 40 stimuli that are to be named as quickly as possible. Previous studies have indicated that AQT separates patients with Alzheimer’s disease from normal controls with higher accuracy than the commonly used Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). The purpose of this study was to investigate, for the first time, whether AQT results collected from a consecutive series of patients at a Memory Clinic would be able to predict the diagnosis. Another aim was to study the possible relation between AQT results and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases. 492 forms from AQT Color-Form tests were analyzed and diagnostic prediction and correlation with level of CSF biomarkers were determined for the first 374 patients. The results imply that AQT Color-Form may be sensitive to some symptoms of benign memory impairment that is found in patients admitted to a Memory Clinic, but that it is not always sensitive to mild degrees of dementia. Further research consecutive series of patients is needed in order to determine the diagnostic abilities of discrimination in clinical practice.

Afasi är en språkstörning som uppstår till följd av en hjärnskada, där stroke är den vanligaste orsaken. Att få afasi innebär ofta en negativ psykosocial påverkan för personen som drabbas av afasi, men afasin medför också negativa följder för dennes närstående. Ett nytt område på frammarsch inom afasiforskningen berör hur både pma och deras närstående trots afasin ändå kan leva ett gott liv. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka faktorer som är betydelsefulla för närstående till personer med afasi för att kunna leva ett gott liv med afasi. I studien intervjuades åtta närstående till pma. De fick utifrån ett antal frågeområden dela med sig av sina erfarenheter av att leva ett gott liv med afasi. Data analyserades med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys och resulterade i 15 kategorier som indelades utifrån Socialstyrelsens Klassifikation av funktionstillstånd, funktionshinder och hälsa (ICF) domäner: Kroppsfunktioner och kroppsstruktur, Aktivitet och delaktighet, Omgivningsfaktorer och Personliga faktorer. Följande faktorer framhölls som viktiga för att hjälpa närstående att leva ett gott liv med afasi: informantens hälsa, personens med afasi hälsa, aktiviteter, egentid, god sjukvård, relationen till anhöriga, relationen mellan informanten och personen med afasi, externt stöd, informantens personlighet, personens med afasi personlighet, livssyn, prioriteringar, öppenhet, leva som tidigare och ekonomiska tillgångar. Kännedom om dessa faktorer kan bidra till att andra närstående till personer med afasi får ökade möjligheter att leva ett gott liv med afasi.

The aim of this study was to evaluate speech therapy using electropalatography (EPG) and portable training unit (PTU) in a subject with persistent articulation errors. The participant was a male adult with congenital hemifacial microsomia and micrognathia who previously had received conventional speech therapy. The subject had a retracted, velar/ uvular articulation of dental plosives with difficulty making speech understandable to listeners. A quasi-experimental prospective, controlled single-subject ABA design was used. Treatment efficacy was assessed by instrumental EPG analysis of  /t/ in single words before and after treatment and showed significant treatment results with a continuing improvement in the production of  /t/ in medial and final position even four years after completion of treatment. Perceptual listen assessment of trained and untrained listeners showed significantly improved estimation of the target /t/ in medial and final position over time. A very weak association was found between the perceptual estimation of t-likeness and the analyzed EPG values. Listener rating of spontaneous speech showed an improvement in intelligibility 4 years after completing training. The evaluation confirms previous research showing that speech therapy with EPG seems effective for providing visual feedback in the attempt to establish a correct articulation pattern, improved speech and enhanced intelligibility. This was investigated in the present study and although the results were not unambiguous, it was indicated that the method can be successful at long persisting well established articulation errors without signs of spontaneous change or after previous training without visual feedback. An important experience is to plan long term and wait for the automation of the new articulation movements that have a long establishment phase. Training with EPG is proposed to be offered to adults with persistent articulation disorders for which conventional therapy has been unable to provide desirable results.

Keywords:  Electropalatography, treatment effect, hemifacial microsomia, articulation disorder, long- term follow- up, intelligibility

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of the assessment method cervical auscultation (CA) amongst speech and language pathologists (SLPs) in Sweden working with dysphagia. We wanted to find out: How widespread is the method in the SLP profession? How widespread is the method in the country? What opinions are there about the method amongst SLP´s in Sweden? What assessment methods within dysphagia are mostly used among SLP´s in Sweden? A total of 82 SLPs participated in the study. Data were collected through an online survey. The survey questions were of both quantitative and qualitative nature. The results showed that 18% of the respondents used CA. There was a significant correlation between the frequency of use of the method and how confident SLPs felt in the assessment. Significance was also found between the frequency of use of CA and how much importance SLPs assigned to what was discovered with the method when making the overall assessment. More importance was also ascribed to the results of CA from those who felt confident in assessing with the method. The results also showed that the longer SLPs had used the method, the more confident they felt in assessing with it. The majority of those who used CA were self-taught or had learned the method through colleagues. A thought that arose was whether the SLPs in Sweden possibly believe that CA is meant to be used as the sole method of assessment, replacing non-instrumental assessment. CA does not seem to be used frequently in Sweden, mainly because of lack of evidence and reliability but many see benefits that would justify the use of CA as part of the clinical assessment.