Please note: The language used in the descriptions reflects the language of the posters’ content.
Individuals with communication disabilities face higher risks of negative health outcomes due to barriers in two-way communication within healthcare. Alberta Health Services (AHS) produced practice resources and training materials to improve Communication Access (CA) and reduce these inequities. This qualitative study explored allied health providers’ perspectives on the current state of CA within AHS.
While many providers were unaware of the AHS-developed resources and tools, they reported familiarity with CA strategies and identified opportunities for enhancing CA within clinical practice. Our findings highlight the need for greater awareness and integration of CA practices across health services.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level : Introductory
This study examined interactive alignment (IA), the unconscious process in which conversational partners begin to use the same words, gestures, and other communication features over time. Transcripts of conversations between 18 adults with traumatic brain injury and their partners were analyzed before and after Communication Partner Training using recurrence quantification analysis with the Dynamic Analysis of Discourse software.
Results showed no increase in IA but a decrease in determinism, suggesting greater conversational flexibility. Findings highlight the potential of IA as a tool for examining communication processes and evaluating intervention effects.
Intended Audience
Speech-Language Pathologists
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
There has been ongoing research regarding what terminology is most appropriate when referring to individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD/Autism). This terminology can generally be categorized into identity-first language (IFL) such as “Autistic person”, and person-first language (PFL) such as “child with autism.” This study surveyed Autistic adults, parents of children diagnosed with ASD, and Speech-Language Pathologists (S-LPs) to collect preferences for autism-related terminology.
All groups most highly endorsed “Autistic”; however, terms were endorsed at different rates across groups (Autistic adults = 71.42%; parents = 40.48%; and SLPs = 37.00%). Thematic analysis showed various motivations behind participant preferences.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
There is limited published research on caregivers’ experiences with CAS diagnosis, therapy access, and perspectives on speech-language pathology care. To address these gaps, we conducted an international questionnaire study examining caregivers’ experiences with CAS assessment and therapy. Results revealed important information about caregivers’ early concerns about their children’s speech, typical age of CAS diagnosis, number of S-LPs seen, preferences regarding speech therapy delivery, and type of therapy received.
Families experienced challenges accessing timely and sufficient CAS-specific care. The caregivers expressed a desire to understand more about their child’s diagnosis and treatment, and for their child to receive evidence-based CAS-specific treatment.
Intended Audience
Speech-Language Pathologists
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
Dysphagia is a prevalent non-motor symptom in Parkinson disease (PD) that negatively impacts quality of life but is poorly assessed by existing patient-reported questionnaires. A systematic survey was conducted to identify validated English-language dysphagia questionnaires in PD. Three reviewers independently screened and appraised tools using the QAS-99. Twelve questionnaires (54 dysphagia-related items) were identified, with a median of two items per tool.
Major issues included unclear intent (74%), technical jargon (89%), missing reference periods (20%), double-barrelled items (48%), overlapping response categories (83%), and missing response options (80%). Validated tools are limited and vary in quality, underscoring the need for standardization.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations continue to be underrepresented in Canada’s Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) workforce. CALD students often face systemic barriers in admissions, academics, and clinical placements. On the other hand, they bring valuable multilingual and intercultural skills that are essential for serving diverse clients. The current project is a scoping review that examines existing knowledge of recruiting, educating, and retaining CALD SLP students, exploring both barriers and strengths.
With a transformative lens, this study aims to inform culturally responsive education and workforce development and generate a collection of best-practice recommendations in our field.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Adult (18-64)
Level: Intermediate
Les déficits syntaxiques sont fréquents chez les adultes ayant un trouble acquis du langage. Toutefois, diverses barrières entravent la prise en charge de ces difficultés par les orthophonistes. Ainsi, la présente étude avait pour but de documenter les pratiques cliniques des orthophonistes francophones en lien avec les déficits syntaxiques.
Pour ce faire, un sondage en ligne a été diffusé aux orthophonistes francophones au Québec, en France, en Belgique et en Suisse, pour un total de 112 répondants. Les barrières principales mentionnées sont en lien avec le manque de matériel et de formation en lien avec les déficits syntaxiques acquis.
Auditoire cible
Groupes d’âge
Cotation : Avancé
Individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) remain underrepresented in qualitative research, reflecting broader disability hierarchies that privilege some disabilities over others. This scoping review examined qualitative studies published over the past decade that included AAC users, highlighting methodological practices, barriers, and innovations. Informed by disability scholarship (Forber-Pratt, 2025), we emphasize the need to dismantle these hierarchies by ensuring disability representation across participants, research teams, and dissemination practices.
Attendees will gain strategies to design inclusive research protocols, integrate positionality statements, and center AAC users’ perspectives—advancing both methodological rigor and equity in the speech-language pathology evidence base.
Authors:
Intended Audience
Speech-Language Pathologists
Age Groups
Level: Advanced
This study introduces a novel multi-deviant paradigm to investigate auditory temporal resolution in young adults. Silent gaps of varying durations (10 or 30 ms) were inserted at six temporal positions within 500-ms white noise bursts, eliciting Deviant-Related Negativity (DRN) responses.
Results showed larger DRN amplitudes for longer gaps and reduced responses for gaps occurring after 300 ms, supporting the existence of a limited temporal integration window. The multi-deviant paradigm produced results comparable to single-deviant sequences, highlighting its efficiency.
This approach provides an objective measure of temporal resolution, with potential clinical applications for populations that are difficult to test behaviorally.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Advanced
Students who are d/Deaf and/or Hard of Hearing (DHH) require additional support in the classroom and benefit from curriculum-based assessment and intervention approaches. As such resources for use with DHH students are often limited, we have collaborated with Specialist Teachers of the Deaf and educational Speech Language Pathologists to develop, test, revise, and implement into practice a curriculum-based tool for the assessment of spoken language skills in DHH students. The assessment tool includes sections addressing vocabulary, morphology, sentential syntax, and discourse level oral language skills, and an accompanying intervention kit template. The tool is freely available online.
Intended Audience
Age Group
School Aged (5-17)
Level: Intermediate
The Stimulation Activation Motivation (SAM) Aphasia Program offers a unique, evidence-based approach to supporting individuals living with aphasia. This poster will outline the program’s interdisciplinary framework, emphasizing functional communication, social participation, and person-centered care. Through clinical data, participant feedback, and real-world outcomes, we will demonstrate how SAM fosters communication confidence and community reintegration.
Attendees will gain insights into strategies and adaptable program structures for diverse clinical settings. This presentation is ideal for clinicians, students, and researchers interested in innovative, client-driven models that align with SAC’s commitment to best practices in aphasia rehabilitation.
Brianna Borean, SE Health
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
This study examined language development in French minority daycare settings in Sudbury, Ontario, using linguistic profiling to assess 34 children aged 18-48 months. Four linguistic profiles were established ranging from minimal to majority French exposure, plus one for children flagged by the Language Use Inventory. The research employed the LUI and a language exposure questionnaire alongside educator training in language stimulation strategies (LSS).
Results revealed significant challenges in assessment tool adaptation for minority contexts, communication barriers, and LSS effectiveness. Findings contribute practical insights for supporting bilingual development in minority language settings and highlight the need for culturally appropriate assessment tools.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Advanced
Recently, it has been proposed that pragmatic tasks can be classified into two categories: linguistic-pragmatics (i.e., contexts where language skills are required to understand a social situation) and social-pragmatics (contexts where, in addition to language skills, Theory of Mind is needed). To test this hypothesis, we developed a new pragmatic task to examine the contribution of structural language and Theory of Mind (ToM) to pragmatics in neurotypical and neurodivergent children.
Results suggest that this new test could be used to assess the pragmatic skills of school-aged Canadian children, and that language skills and ToM are closely related to pragmatics.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Clinicians assessing bilingual children often rely on questionnaires to evaluate language exposure and proficiency, yet these tools vary widely in content and usability. This review critically examined six commonly used measures, revealing limited item overlap and inconsistent design quality. Using established evaluation frameworks, we assessed both psychometric and pragmatic properties, including assessor burden and clinical relevance. Our findings underscore the importance of selecting questionnaires based on specific clinical needs rather than assuming interchangeability.
We provide practical recommendations to help SLPs choose the most appropriate tool for their setting, supporting more accurate and equitable bilingual language assessment.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Shared-book reading is a key activity supporting children’s language and literacy development. In this study, we examined the home reading practices of 48 families (25 monolingual, 23 bilingual) using a detailed questionnaire and information about children’s language exposure and use. Results revealed that some practices are similar across families, such as the length of shared reading sessions. We also identified differences, including the age at which parents began reading to their children.
Findings provide new insights for speech-language pathologists into the home reading practices of bilingual families, which have implications for assessment and intervention approaches used with bilingual children.
Authors:
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Advanced
Children with cleft lip and palate frequently have language delay and speech pathologists are required to provide intervention that faciatates improved language outcomes. To explore the effectiveness of the different language intervention approaches available for children with cleft lip and palate this study presents a systematic review of language interventions for children aged 0 to 18 with cleft lip and/or palate. A total of 14 studies were included for data extraction using the Template for Intervention Description and Replication.
The findings indicated that there is a varied repertoire of language intervention approaches available to clinicians, that result in positive outcomes.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
While clinically informative, speech and language samples are difficult and time consuming to collect, transcribe, analyze, and interpret.
Given the significant barriers, speech-language pathologist’s frequently report not collecting these samples. Software that automates transcription processes, and automatically tags clinically relevant features, for pediatric populations would facilitate the completion of speech and language sampling. Our presentation will discuss ongoing work to develop an Automatic Speech Recognition pipeline that embeds clinical evaluation frameworks within processing.
This presentation will discuss considerations for evaluating the effectiveness of our pipeline, and the relevance of user-centred approaches to designing automatically produced clinical summaries.
Intended Audience
Speech-Language Pathologists
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
This study explores a new virtual group guided by a speech-language pathologist and a patient partner designed to help individuals with head and neck cancer maintain their ability to swallow during radiotherapy, with or without chemotherapy, treatments. By targeting a known barrier to effective dysphagia prevention—low therapeutic adherence—this intervention model may support earlier intervention, reduce the incidence of severe swallowing difficulties, and enhance patient outcomes.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
This study explores how internal factors (age, exposure length) and external factors (language input quality) influence heritage and majority language skills in school-aged Farsi-English bilingual children. Thirty-seven participants completed tasks assessing vocabulary, morphosyntax, and narrative abilities in both languages.
Results reveal strong within-language links between vocabulary and grammar, with no cross-language transfer. Verbal working memory related only to Farsi morphosyntax likely due to its complex morphology. Age and quality of input were key predictors of language skills and heritage language maintenance.
Findings contribute to our knowledge in bilingual language development and inform the creation of a Farsi language assessment tool.
Intended Audience
Age Group
School Aged (5-17)
Level: Advanced
Previous research has demonstrated that early literacy practices can greatly influence later reading achievement, especially for middle and upper-class white Canadians. Nonetheless, there is a gap in research regarding early literacy practices within diverse cultural home environments across Canada. Investigating emergent literacy practices in Black Canadian households is essential when considering the intersections of race, culture, and income inequality.
This study aims to examine oral language and emergent literacy practices among low-income Black families in Canada to increase our understanding of cultural, dialectical, and language differences that affect the home literacy environment.
Tanya Matthews, PhD, CCC-SLP, McGill University
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
By one estimate, only around 50% of pediatric therapy session time is spent on therapeutic activities. Understanding how session time is used is essential for evaluating clinical practice and maximizing therapy efficiency. This poster introduces the Speech Pathology session Observation Tool – Components (SPOT-C), developed to holistically measure session time use and capture client, clinician, and environmental factors, including engagement. Pilot testing demonstrated that the SPOT-C is feasible, reliable, and provides a comprehensive measure of session components.
These findings highlight its potential to assist in understanding clinical sessions and enhance the efficiency of pediatric speech-language therapy interventions.
Intended Audience
Speech-Language Pathologists
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
The study examined verbal and non-verbal processing as predictors of language proficiency in 60 bilingual and trilingual children. Participants completed various standardized tasks, including non-verbal (Odd One Out, WCST, digit span) and verbal processing tasks (CLPT, RAN, non-word repetition), alongside an Icelandic proficiency test. Two regression models were tested. The linguistic model explained 82% of variance (p < .001), with non-word repetition and CLPT significantly predicting language proficiency. The cognitive model explained 62% of variance (p < .001), with length of residence (LOR) as the strongest predictor. Findings highlight the role of exposure and language-specific processing skills in Icelandic development.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
L’acquisition du vocabulaire de niveau 2 est essentielle au développement langagier et à la réussite scolaire, mais les enfants en contexte minoritaire y ont moins accès. Ce projet a adapté en français un programme d’intervention ciblant le vocabulaire de niveau 2. Dans une étude de faisabilité, six livres ont été lus à 93 enfants préscolaires. Plus de 80 % sont demeurés attentifs et plus de 70 % ont participé activement. L’intervention en cours examine l’effet de dosage et de stratégie sur l’acquisition du vocabulaire. Les résultats sur l’effet de ces variables sur l’acquisition et le maintien du vocabulaire seront présentés.
Auditoire cible
Groupe d’âge
Les enfants d’âge préscolaire (de 0 à 4 ans)
Cotation : Intermédiaire
This presentation explores the use of neuroimaging to study language development in early childhood, addressing both theoretical and practical considerations. It begins with a scoping review on neuroimaging in paediatric language development, highlighting key findings and challenges such as motion artifacts and limited population diversity. Then preliminary data are presented from an ongoing study using child-friendly diffusion MRI protocols with late-talking toddlers, preschoolers with developmental language disorder and typically developing peers.
Findings suggest the feasibility of neuroimaging in these populations and reveal basal ganglia as a key region in language outcomes, offering insights for future research.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Oral health is a complex and vital component of overall health and well-being. Canadian seniors, particularly those with cognitive impairment, are at increased risk for poor oral health. This systematic review synthesized evidence on interventions aimed at improving the oral health of persons with dementia (e.g., reducing resistant behaviours and improving the delivery of effective oral hygiene care).
A diverse range of interventions, including communication and memory strategies, education programs, oral health aids, and personalized care planning, were identified in this review to support optimal oral health care delivery for individuals with dementia.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
In most parts of Canada, social communication services for autistic children are primarily offered in English, which can pose challenges for families who speak other languages. Beyond language barriers, some strategies used to support autistic children’s social communication may not align with the cultural values or practices of diverse families. In this study, we examined the perspectives of caregivers of autistic children from minority language backgrounds, as well as clinicians working with these families. Our aim was to gather insights that can inform adaptation to current intervention approaches, to make programs more inclusive, accessible, and culturally and linguistically relevant.
Intended Audience
Age Group
Preschool (0-4)
Level: Intermediate
Background: Friendships are essential to well-being, and children with disabilities are frequently isolated. We piloted an intervention in middle school, including education about disability and recess clubs.
Method: Peer attitudes were measured pre/post educational session; interviews with children with disabilities, peers, and teachers explored the impacts of the intervention.
Results: There was a significant difference in peer attitudes post-educational session between peers who did and did not participate in clubs (U=197.500, N1=13, N2=21, p=.029).
Themes:
Conclusion: Interventions, including education and recess clubs, may support inclusion.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
School Aged (5-17)
Level: Introductory
La COVID longue (CL) est une affection caractérisée par la persistance des symptômes de la COVID-19 3 mois après l’infection. Plusieurs de ces symptômes persistants touchent la sphère communicationnelle (ex. : dysphonie, anomie). Cependant, l’étendue et la persistance dans le temps de ces atteintes communicationnelles est inconnue. Il importe donc d’approfondir les connaissances sur les atteintes communicationnelles associées à la CL pour assurer une prise en charge adaptée et spécifique aux besoins de la clientèle.
Cette revue systématique a pour but de brosser un portrait des atteintes communicationnelles en CL.
Auteures :
Auditoire cible
Les orthophonistes
Groupes d’âge
Cotation : Introductif
Parmi les personnes atteintes de la maladie de Parkinson (paMP), certaines présentent un déficit de compréhension de la prosodie affective (CPA). La CPA permet d’inférer l’état émotionnel de l’autre à partir de sa voix. Un déficit de CPA participe à réduire la participation sociale des individus. Cette étude, visant à mieux comprendre l’origine fonctionnelle des déficits de CPA chez les paMP, a comparé 17 paMP à 32 participants contrôles.
Les paMP présentent un déficit général de CPA, avec un déficit spécifique au niveau perceptuel, sans atteinte lexicale ou sémantique. Ces résultats suggèrent de cibler les habiletés perceptuelles dans les interventions.
Auditoire cible
Groupe d’âge
Les enfants d’âge scolaire (de 5 à 17 ans)
Cotation : Intermédiaire
La variante logopénique de l’aphasie primaire progressive (vlAPP) se caractérise entre autres, par des difficultés de production orale de mots (POM). Les déficits sous-jacents qui sont à la source de ces difficultés sont controversés dans la littérature: atteintes sémantiques, lexicales et post-lexicales sont proposées. Ces atteintes variées mettent en évidence l’absence de consensus scientifique sur l’origine des déficits de POM, et montrent aussi les différences méthodologiques qui limitent la mise en commun des résultats et qui engendrent des questionnements quant aux conclusions des études rapportées.
Ce projet permet de démystifier la controverse entourant les difficultés de POM dans la vlAPP.
Auditoire cible
Groupe d’âge
Les personnes âgées (65 ans et plus)
Cotation : Intermédiaire
Current interventions for acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) typically target either articulation or prosody, despite both being core diagnostic criteria. While effective for specific targets, articulatory-kinematic approaches show poor generalisation, and rate/rhythm methods offer limited articulatory gains, creating clinical uncertainty. This study evaluates Rapid Syllable Transition (ReST) treatment, which integrates articulation and prosody, in five adults with AOS and mild aphasia post-stroke in an n-of-1 design study.
Delivered twice weekly over six weeks, ReST aims to improve speech intelligibility through improving both sound and prosodic accuracy. We will share the findings of the research and provide clinical implementation recommendations.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Many school-age struggling readers invest time and money in extracurricular reading programs so these programs must optimize outcomes. This sequential multiple assignment randomized trial compared eight-week interventions:
Across two phases, 49 children completed one intervention program and then completed the same or the other intervention.
Comparable improvements in reading were observed for both programs regardless of initial program completed or whether the child maintained or switched programs. Word recognition fluency scores were significantly higher for children who completed the reason-based program first.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Cette étude examine l’efficacité de la communication en suppléance à la communication (SC) chez les enfants francophones vivant en contexte minoritaire, en se concentrant sur les groupements de vocabulaire réellement utilisés.
Contrairement aux analyses antérieures qui traitaient séparément le français, l’anglais et l’alternance de codes, cette recherche innove en regroupant toutes les variantes bilingues exprimant la même intention communicative (p. ex. Veux-tu watcher un movie et Want to regarder un movie).
À partir de 60 transcriptions scolaires, l’étude dégagera une liste représentative de groupements pour améliorer la programmation des appareils de SC et soutenir une communication plus rapide et efficace.
Auditoire cible
Groupe d’âge
Les enfants d’âge scolaire (de 5 à 17 ans)
Cotation : Intermédiaire
Alberta Health Services (AHS) produced resources and training materials in Communication Access to support staff in providing accessible care for patients with communication differences (CD). This research surveyed allied health providers to assess uptake and identify factors influencing resource use. While participants reported adjusting their communication to meet patient needs, they indicated limited knowledge of CD and lower confidence during interactions. Barriers included environmental constraints and limited access to resources, while facilitators included provider-initiated strategies and collaboration with other care partners.
Findings highlight the need for broader implementation that includes ongoing training, education, and leadership support to enhance Communication Access.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
This study aims to describe the acoustic speech changes occurring during the first year of testosterone hormone replacement therapy (T). Using data extracted from sixty YouTube videos posted by trans masculine people documenting voice changes, and comparing this data to two groups of cisgender (cis) men and women, this study employed a novel recruitment strategy to supplement the concern of low participant numbers in the existing literature.
Measures included mean fundamental frequency (MF0) and formant frequencies, used to estimate changes in vocal tract length (VTL). Results demonstrate an average reduction of MF0 of 44% and an increase of VTL of 5%.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Intermediate
Acquired communication disorders (ACDs) often follow strokes and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). In Canada, adults from the Atikamekw Nation face a higher incidence of stroke and TBI than the non-Indigenous population, placing them at substantial risk of presenting an ACD. Most are bilingual in Atikamekw and French, yet no SLP assessment tools exist in these languages.
This study aims to identify factors that facilitate or hinder ACD assessment. Semi-structured interviews with speech-language pathologists and Atikamekw healthcare professionals reveal limited tools, lack of culturally adapted services, and access barriers. Findings will guide the future development of bilingual, culturally safe SLP assessments.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
Multilingual children are often assessed with tools designed for monolingual English speakers, increasing the risk of misdiagnosis of language disorder. This study examined Jamaican Creole (JamC)-Jamaican English (JamC-JamE) speaking preschoolers’ (n=27) responses on the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT) and incorporated response patterns and familiarity ratings from adults in the same linguistic community (n=10).
While most test items were familiar, children’s valid responses did not always match traditional scoring. An adapted scoring method, built on participant response patterns, more accurately reflected vocabulary knowledge. Findings highlight the promise of adapted protocols and the importance of culturally responsive assessment for multilingual children.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
This study examined visual sequence learning in Persian-speaking late talkers (LT, n=16) and typically developing peers (TD, n=16) using consecutive geometric shape sequences. It explored group differences and the relationship between sequence learning and grammatical development (measured by mean length of utterance, MLU), aiming to identify LT at risk for developmental language disorders.
Although no statistically significant results emerged, LT showed potentially lower performance. This may reflect limited engagement with stimuli and highlights the need for more functional learning assessments.
Further research with larger samples is recommended to clarify these findings and better contextualize learning and impairment in both groups.
Intended Audience
Age Group
Preschool (0-4)
Level: Intermediate
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and other school-based clinicians play a key role in supporting children with disabilities. To capture children’s perspectives, we conducted a meta-aggregative systematic review of qualitative studies involving SLP, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy in schools. Our synthesis showed that children want greater autonomy in decisions, holistic support for learning and well-being, and therapists who are knowledgeable, empathetic, and willing to advocate for them. They also valued individualized and flexible services, chances to build friendships, and active involvement in setting goals. Centring children’s voices can enrich practice, guiding SLPs to design supports that are meaningful, empowering, and inclusive.
Intended Audience
Age Group
School Aged (5-17)
Level: Intermediate
Hearing loss is a highly prevalent condition linked to multifaceted consequences (Lin et al., 2019). This presentation highlights the importance of efficient hearing related protocols in healthcare settings. Outcomes showed that use of a simple pre-screening protocol for all admissions to a transitional care unit captured a much higher percentage of patients with likely hearing difficulties, compared to a “by referral” system.
The team posits that hearing difficulties can be easily missed; pre-screening is efficient, and may result in more patients receiving hearing care they need. Professionals in speech-language pathology and audiology make excellent champions for this type of programming.
Intended Audience
Age Groups
Level: Introductory
