News

NEW PAPER ALERT: THE “A-19 SCALE”

We are thrilled to announce the publication of our research paper "Content and Construct Validity of the European Portuguese A-19 Scale of Children’s Attitudes". This project has been a collaborative effort with esteemed Professor Barry Guitar.   This paper focuses on feelings and attitudes towards communication in children who stutter, an important but often overlooked aspect of stuttering. We aim to underscore the critical role of Speech and Language Therapists in nurturing the communication skills of all children, with or without diagnosed conditions.   Our study validated the European Portuguese A-19 scale, a critical tool to assess feelings and attitudes of school-age children who stutter. It further emphasizes the importance of early, multidimensional assessments to combat negative attitudes towards communication.   The  final Portuguese version of A-19 was used in a pilot study in which 42 children participated (21 children who stutter and 21 children who do not stutter) and provided insightful findings on how children, both those who stutter and those without diagnosed disabilities, feel and think about communication. We must note, however, that this study includes a sample of children who stutter and are already attending speech and language therapy sessions. Future research should consider larger and more diverse sample sizes to strengthen the findings.   Findings from this study can be instrumental in the development of better approaches to stuttering treatment in Portuguese-speaking populations and further emphasize the role of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive factors in speech therapy.   The paper is now available for your reading: https://lnkd.in/dgsSVPKT. We hope you'll find it as interesting and informative as we did while working on it!   📖 Authors: Elsa Marta Soares, Ana Rita S. Valente, Gonçalo Leal, Barry Guitar   #Stuttering #Stammering #SpeechTherapy #Research #Communication #SLT #ChildDevelopment #ResearchAndDevelopment...