Listening to the needs of the local community, Leah Fabiano-Smith (Communication Disorders) and her students have created a speech-development testing program for bilingual children that will also help advance research in their field.

Fabiano-Smith said there is no speech-language testing facility in the area for bilingual children, so she created a program that would fill the gap. Since August, Fabiano-Smith visits the Agri-Business Child Development Center in New Paltz once a week to perform free speech evaluations.

“It’s a win-win program,” said Fabiano-Smith. “They get the free service and we get the data.”

She has also turned the program into a learning experience for her students. Two New Paltz students – an undergraduate and a graduate – accompany Fabiano-Smith to the school, which serves children, from birth to 5 years old, of migrant workers. The team tests two children each week in both English and Spanish using such programs as Microsoft Access, laptops and digital recorders. The college students participating this semester are bilingual, but it is not a requirement.

Fabiano-Smith said having her students experience this type of setting is ideal because it provides them with the real-life research clinic experience. She said students will learn what it is like to work in a setting where there can be distractions or situations they have to address while gathering data.

If a child exhibits signs that there is an audiological or speech development issue, he/she is brought to the college for a full audiological exam or recommended to a speech language pathologist.

“We’re helping families make connections with professionals in the area,” Fabiano-Smith said.

The data and digital recordings collected during the visits are also helping to advance research in the area of speech-language development in bilingual children. The project is one of four projects Fabiano-Smith is working on to study what normal speech development looks like in bilingual children, specifically those whose first language is Spanish.

While the clinical positions are primarily for Communication Disorders students, there are other research experiences open to students of all majors. In total, Fabiano-Smith has 10 students working for her in paid positions or as volunteers on transcribing, translating and data entry.

Fabiano-Smith said that all information about the subjects is confidential. While trust-building is very important, so, too, is the well-being of the child’s language development.

In that vein, Fabiano-Smith tells the parents that their child’s participation in the project will not only benefit them, but also help many bilingual children.

Tags: bilingual, Communication Disorders, faculty/staff collaboration, research, speech development

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