Authors: Joy Stackhouse, Maggie Vance, Michelle Pascoe and Bill Wells
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (2007) £36.99
ISBN978-0-470-51659-1
This fourth book in the Children's Speech and Literacy Difficulties series is a collection of assessment tasks to complement the psycholinguistic model set out in detail in Book 1 of the series.
It has been developed for use with children and young people but the principles are applicable to any age. It uses typical development (3-7 years) as a basis for identifying atypical performance.
Each group of tasks is introduced in relation to the psycholinguistic framework with individual tasks being described in terms of the aims, purpose, instructions, scoring procedures, normative data, etc. Additional information is included to assist with interpretation of results, planning and evaluating therapy and in assessing 'at risk' factors and persisting difficulties.
As for the CD-rom, it conveniently reproduces the appendices (scoring sheets, record forms and questionnaires) for printing, plus the sets of pictures required for some of the tasks. It is disappointing to find, however, that the pictures are poorly reproduced clip-art.
While there is much to recommend the Stackhouse and Wells' series, the book doesn't provide a neat package that can be put into practise quickly. For those who are interested in the complex links between speech and literacy this book does provide a recap of the psycholinguist approach for revision purposes, but book 1 of the series should be read to gain a thorough understanding of the psycholinguistic model. If you have read book 1, you will find this 4th book very familiar.
Review by: E. Penny Buckle MEd BSc(Hons)
CertSpLD CertMRCSLT MASLTIP
Independent Speech and Language
Therapist (HPC Reg'd)