FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCES

DISCIPLINE OF SPEECH PATHOLOGY

NEWSLETTERISSUE NUMBER 9 – APRIL 2012

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WELCOME to the new year! Everyone is in full swing. We have our biggest-ever intake into the Masters program; a fresh group of research students, most of whom have received funding for their work through scholarships or grants; and numerous grants to our academic staff to begin exciting new initiatives, from addressing health needs in traumatic brain injury, vocally fatigued, children, and urban Aboriginal children to addressing needs in curriculum renewal. We have also welcomed some old and new faces to our teaching team to assist with our growing program, which means we are bursting at the seams in S Block. Last but not least, we are very proud to announce Professor Michelle Lincoln and Leanne Togher who have received promotions in recognition of their outstanding contributions to research, teaching and service at the university. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our recent achievements in this edition of the newsletter.

OUR PEOPLE Dr Joanne Arciuli has accepted an invitation to serve as a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Scientific Studies of Reading (SSR). SSR has an impact factor of 1.973 and is ranked 5/177 for journals in the Education and Educational Research Category.

Dr Scott Barnes is a post-doctoral fellow for the NHMRC Centre for Clinical Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation. His research focuses on interactions between people with aphasia and their friends and family with a view to developing novel aphasia assessments and interventions. Scott works with Professor Leanne Togher and has been with the Discipline for 7 months.

Mimi Naylor has just joined the Clinical Educator team this academic year as the sole Adult CE. She principally manages students on clinical placement at St Josephs Hospital in Auburn, for Motor Speech Group or Stoke Group. She has worked overseas in the UK and India as a Speech Pathologist within hospital systems and is enjoying the cultural change of working within the University.

Congratulations to Dr Tricia McCabe who has been awarded the 2012 Faculty of Health Sciences L&T Award for Outstanding Teaching.

STUDENTS’ SUCCESS Awards & Scholarships Speech Pathology Australia national

research awards were presented to University of Sydney Speech Pathology students Claire Layfield, Elise Bogart, Kate Anderson, Elizabeth Murray. These awards recognise the high quality PG studies being conducted by these students.

2011 Speech Pathology Australia Student Awards. Congratulations to Miss Renae Nash (Undergraduate) and Ms Rebecca Morton-Chandra (MSLP Honours).

2011 HOC Mai Scholarship awarded to Siobhan Maree Lohan (MSLP)

The University Medal was awarded to Ms Naanthini Manokaran, Speech Pathology Honours student.

2012 Cerebral Palsy Alliance Professor Henry J Cowan Memorial Scholarship (Speech Pathology) – Congratulations to Patricia Mary Nicoll

2012 Douglas and Lola Douglas Scholarship (Speech Pathology) – Congratulations to Susannah Joy Borg

2012 Ageing, Disability and Home Care Scholarships (Speech Pathology) –Congratulations to Iris Yue Yun Hor

2012 Rotary Miranda and Educational Speech Pathology & Therapy Services Scholarship - Congratulations to Aimee Leigh Clark, Jessica Jean Habib, Iris Yue Yun Hor, Jordana Paige Stanford, Laura Vaccari

Congratulations to Lisa Lim, who recently completed her research Masters under the supervision of Dr Joanne Arciuli (primary supervisor) and Dr Natalie Munro (assoc supervisor). Lisa investigated predictors of reading ability and spelling ability in Singaporean children with Down syndrome. We are pleased that Lisa has returned to begin her PhD, which will examine reading and spelling interventions in the same population.

We would also like to congratulate Renae Nash who recently graduated with First Class Honours from the UG Speech Pathology program at The University of Sydney (supervisor: Dr Joanne Arciuli). Renae has received two awards for outstanding achievement including the 2011 University of Sydney Academic Merit prize. Renae’s Honours research examined the relationship between prosody awareness and reading ability in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Renae and Dr Arciuli will present this research as part of the Prosody Symposium at the Annual Conference of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading in July 2011 (Montreal).

SERVICE RECOGNITION AWARD The 2011 Deirdre Russell Award for Service The 2011 award was presented to Speech Pathology, Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC) in November 2011. Congratulations to ADHC and thank you for supporting the Discipline and its students. ADHC have had a long-standing relationship with the Discipline of Speech Pathology in the Faculty of Health Sciences both in the training of our students as well as in research. In the last 5 years alone, ADHC Speech Pathologists have supervised over 170 student placements across all parts of NSW- from Metro South and Metro North to the rural areas of ADHC Western, Southern and Hunter regions. Almost 100 of these clinical placements have been in the last two years and we are really pleased that a high number of our recent graduates, including many in this room, have had lengthy adult or paediatric clinical placements within ADHC services. In particular- we’ve greatly appreciated the contribution of Felicity Burke, Practice Leader in Speech Pathology, in formalizing many documents and processes within the service. Felicity has represented the service in a variety of ways and we have greatly valued her thorough updates of ADHC changes through forums such as our discipline’s External Advisory Committee.

Associate Professor Kirrie Ballard (right) presenting the award to Ms Harmony

Turnbull, Regional Senior Speech Pathologist, ADHC

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BREAKING SCIENCE Dr Joanne Arciuli recently collaborated with Professor Rhea Paul (Yale) on a study examining prosodic processing in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their typically developing peers. Their work is now in press at the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) and is now available online. The study was a follow up study based on the earlier work of Arciuli and Cupples (2006) that was also published in QJEP. Arciuli and Paul (in press) demonstrated that adolescents with ASD lack sensitivity to probabilistic cues to lexical stress in the spelling patterns of English words, during silent reading. They propose that this lack of sensitivity might be due to impaired implicit learning. QJEP has an impact factor of 2.212. The Abstract for the Arciuli and Paul (in press) article included below:

“Lexical stress refers to the opposition of strong and weak syllables within polysyllabic words and is a core feature of the English prosodic system. There are probabilistic cues to lexical stress present in English orthography. For example, most disyllabic English words ending with the letters “-ure” have first-syllable stress (e.g., “pasture”, but note words such as “endure”), whereas most ending with “-ose” have second- syllable stress (e.g., “propose”, but note examples such as “glucose”). Adult native speakers of English are sensitive to these probabilities during silent reading. During testing, they tend to assign first-syllable stress when reading a nonword such as “lenture” but second-syllable stress when reading “fostpose” (Arciuli & Cupples, 2006). Difficulties with prosody, including problems processing lexical stress, are a notable feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study investigated the ability of adolescents with ASD (13–17 years of age) to show this sensitivity compared with a group of typically developing peers. Results indicated reduced sensitivity to probabilistic cues to lexical stress in the group with ASD. The implications of these findings are discussed.”

GRANT SUCCESS WOW, what an amazing 6 months Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute Centre of Research Excellence in Urban Aboriginal Children's Health. Chief Investigator: Dr Alison Purcell. Funding $2.5 million. Period: 2012-2015. This grant will enable an extension of the work Alison has been doing with the SEARCH team and represents recognition for the important progress they have made in recent years.

Centres of Research Excellence - Investigators: Skye McDonald, Leanne Togher. Title: Centre in traumatic brain injury psychosocial rehabilitation Administering Institution: University of New South Wales. Funding: $2,500,000.

Project Grant - Investigators: Emily Banks, Sandra Eades, Catherine D'este, Sandra Bailey, Sally Redman, Alison Purcell, Anna Williamson, Hasantha Gunasekera, Peter McIntyre and Kathleen Clapham. Title: Longitudinal investigation of health outcomes in urban Aboriginal children: SEARCH follow-up. Administering Institution: Australian National University. Funding: $1,727,460. Funding Period: 2012-2014

Partnership Grants - Investigators: Jonathan Craig, Alison Purcell. Title: SEARCH: better evidence, better health for urban Aboriginal children. Administering Institution: School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. Funding: $1,395,760. Funding Period: 2012-2014.

Hong Kong Research Grant Council General Research Fund. Investigators: Dr Karen Chan, Ms Chen Fei, Prof Jiang Ping Kong, Dr Elaine Kwong, Dr Estella Ma, Dr Cate Madill, Samantha Warhurst, Prof William Wei. Collaborating Institutions: Hong Kong University, Peking University. Project Title: High-speed imaging of vocal fold vibration patterns in vocally fatigued teachers. Amount awarded: $756,873HKD over 2 years.

Bridging Support Grant for Australian Research Council/Discovery Projects (DP) Arciuli, Joanne; Ballard, Kirrie; Vogel, Adam $40,000.

National Stroke Foundation Small Project Grant – Chief Investigators: Dr Kyla Brown, Dr Emma Power, A/Professor Bronwyn Davidson and Professor Leanne Togher. Title: A friend in need is a friend indeed: A Phase II trial of an intervention program for friends to reduce social isolation of people with aphasia following stroke. Funding: $19,715.75.

National Stroke Foundation Small Project Grant - Claire Layfield. Title: Applying principles of motor learning to dysphasia rehabilitation. Funding: $17,280.

University of Sydney Widening Participation Grants - Alison Purcell, Elizabeth Bourne, Carl Sokkar, Julia Blackford, Sarah Lewis, Chris Chapparo and Emma Power. Title: Scaffolding for Clinical Success. Curriculum renewal. Funding: $15,000.

Learning & Teaching Grant - Sarah Lewis, Roger Bourne, Elaine Ryan, John Robinson Patrick Brennan, Mark McEntee and Alison Purcell. Title: A Mentoring Scheme to Widen Participation in Medical Radiation Science. Curriculum renewal. Funding: $13,020.

IPDF Grant - Patricia McCabe Title: Childhood Apraxia of Speech Assessment International Consortium. Funding: $9,500.

RESEARCH DEGREE GRADUATES Ms Nisrine El-Choueifati – Master of

Applied Science - 30th March 2012 Miss Lisa Su Li Lim – Master of Applied

Science - 30th March 2012 Dr Susan Christina Morrison - Doctor of

Philosophy (CSD) – 30th March 2012

Dr Susan Morrison (centre) at graduation with her supervisor, Professor Michelle

Lincoln (left) and Dr Tricia McCabe

SASH RECOGNITION Thank you! The Discipline wants to recognise and thank the efforts of students who have volunteered to be a part of the Student Association of Speech and Hearing (SASH) committee during their degree. These students give up valuable time and energy to provide much needed services at reduced cost; organise professional training workshops; cater for whole-of-campus and end of year events; give students a voice at Discipline meetings. So very much appreciated by the Discipline.

Associate Professor Kirrie Ballard

presenting Thank You gifts to previous SASH Committee members Roisin Glover

(centre) and Sarah Richardson (right)

MILESTONE PASSED Honours Program We have just graduated our 150th honours graduate since honours was introduced in 1990. The first graduate was Felicity Mobbs and the 150th is Charlotte Jocelyn-May. Some interesting facts about the honours program – to the best of our knowledge, out of the 150: 12 now have PhDs another 11 are currently enrolled to

complete a PhD The most successful year in converting

honours degrees to PhD goes to both 1993 honours graduates with Dr Elise Baker and Dr Linda Wilson and 1997 honours graduates with Dr Emma Power, Dr Natalie Munro.

If you completed an honours degree with us we would be delighted to know where you are and what you are doing now.

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PG RESEARCH STUDENT PROFILE – Anne Fulcher

For 32 years we have had an annual family muster Santa photo. I see it as a special chance to record and count my blessings. Our children have not always been so agreeable! One thing they have been consistently part of and continually supported, has been my work with infants with congenital hearing impairment. I regard this 38 year marathon as another blessing in my life. My work has taken me to job sites around the world and speaking engagements at highly motivating international conferences. It was exciting to be a therapist in one of the first cochlear implant centres in the world, the Sydney Children’s Cochlear Implant Centre. However, the bulk of my working life has been with The Shepherd Centre, a charity early intervention service dedicated to assisting infants with hearing impairment to learn to listen and speak. I have witnessed the evolution from cumbersome, irritating, whistling and grossly inadequate hearing aid boxes worn on the chest to micro aids and the miracle of our own Professor Graeme Clark’s amazing cochlear implant invention now available even for tiny infants. I have listened to mostly unintelligible speech being transformed to such a high quality that some of our graduates earn public speaking prizes and achieve career milestones that

can even encompass that of medical practitioner. This revolution in outcomes for babies with hearing impairment is truly inspiring. Children are now able to reach their full potential, regardless of level of hearing loss. In 2006, when the government threatened to cease their 30% contribution to The Shepherd Centre’s running costs unless we could produce convincing data to support our outcomes, my knee jerk reaction was to immediately offer assistance. Encouraged by my extraordinary team of supervisors, Alison Purcell, Elise Baker and Natalie Munro, not to mention MANY wonderful and inspiring staff and post-grad colleagues from The Faculty of Health Sciences, I am now approaching the completion of my part-time PhD project. The data are very exciting and indicate that if diagnosis of hearing impairment, fitting of appropriate amplification and enrolment in auditory-verbal early intervention occurs prior to 6 months of age then there is a significantly positive impact on speech/language outcomes. Moreover, it is apparent that even babies with substantial severe/profound hearing impairment who are fitted with a cochlear implant prior to 12 months of age can reach age appropriate speech/language outcomes as early as 3 years of age. Indeed, these babies are doing as well and sometimes better than children with far less hearing impairment. So thank you, University of Sydney for the opportunity to now sing this success to the rafters. The much needed evidence can now be provided to the government, but even more importantly, we are now able to advise the majority of families, “Yes, research does indeed indicate that it is possible for you to look forward to chatting with your child…just like their hearing peers ”. This advice became all the more pertinent when our first grandson was recently diagnosed with moderate/ severe hearing impairment at just 4 days old.

FAREWELL TO OUR GRADUATING STUDENTS

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LAB UPDATE Psycholinguistics Research Laboratory Dr Joanne Arciuli’s Psycholinguistics Research Laboratory hosted an SBS film crew recently. They came to film a recording session being conducted as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, AusTalk, that is creating Australia’s first audio-visual database of Australian English. Dr Arciuli is a Chief Investigator on this project as is Dr Felicity Cox from Macquarie University. Sarah de Launey is a recent graduate from the Linguistics department at The University of Sydney (Hons). She is the research assistant at the Psycholinguistics Lab responsible for recruitment and data collection. Dr Dominique Estival is the AusTalk project manager (employed at the University of Western Sydney to oversee the recording sites situated around Australia that are part of this large collaborative project). All four are pictured in the photo (from left: Dominique, Felicity, Jo and Sarah who is seated). More details on AusTalk can be found here: https://austalk.edu.au

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SYDNEY IDEAS – The University of Sydney’s unique public program of lectures on Camperdown Campus The University’s premier public lecture series aims to bring some of Sydney’s, Australia’s and the world’s, leading thinkers to the wider Sydney community. For more details go to www.sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas

Graduate Choir Jubilee Concert – Sunday 6th May, 2012. On Sunday May 6th the Sydney University Graduate Choir celebrates its 60th Anniversary with a performance of Mendelssohn’s Paulus in the Great Hall at the University of Sydney, conducted by Music Director Christopher Bowen OAM and accompanied by a superb professional orchestra. For more details go to http://sydney.edu.au/seymour/boxoffice/program.mendelssohn.shtml

Faculty of Health Sciences 2012 Awards Night – Tuesday 29th May, 2012. The annual Faculty of Health Sciences Awards Night recognises and congratulates the most promising students and alumni in health sciences, and the inspiring teaching and research that drive these achievements. Find out more at http://sydney.edu.au/health_sciences/awards/2012/index.shtml

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Faculty of Health Sciences Discipline of Speech Pathology PO Box 170, 75 East Street LIDCOMBE NSW 1825 Australia Phone: +61 2 9351 9447 Fax: +61 2 9351 9173 Email: speech.info@sydney.edu.au

Produced by the Discipline of Speech Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Sydney, April 2012.

The University reserves the right to make alterations to any information contained within this publication without notice.

CRICOS Provider No. 00026A

Website: http://sydney.edu.au/health_sciences/speech_pathology/