Background: An increasing body of empirical evidence suggests that early intervention has positive outcomes for parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Parental self-efficacy has been used as an outcome measure in some empirical studies; however, there is a lack of evidence of the impact of parent training programmes on parenting self-efficacy beliefs.Objectives: This systematic review sought to assess the effectiveness of parenting interventions to increase parental self-efficacy levels in parents of young children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.Method: We conducted a broad literature search, which included grey literature, such as dissertations and unpublished conference presentations, to identify all relevant prospective studies reporting on our study objective. Articles were selected for inclusion using predefined criteria and data were extracted onto a purposely designed data extraction form. Twenty-five articles met our search criteria. We extracted parenting self-efficacy scores before, and on, completion of parenting interventions and performed a meta-analysis using standardised mean difference. We also conducted a risk of bias assessment for all the included studies.Results: Parent training programmes resulted in a statistically significant increase in parental self-efficacy levels (standardised mean difference, 0.60 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 0.38–0.83]; I2, 74%) relative to baseline measurements. Parents of children younger than 5 years demonstrated the highest increase in levels of parental self-efficacy after parenting interventions. Furthermore, this review showed that psychologists and other healthcare practitioners are successfully able to implement training programmes that enhance parenting self-efficacy.Conclusion: Parent training programmes are effective in increasing parental self-efficacy in parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Background: Understanding how the cognitive, emotional and behavioural components of sibling attitudes interact with one another at various stages of a sibling’s lifespan will allow clinicians to provide better support to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families. However, no research exists which focusses on describing the attitudes of adolescent siblings of children with ASD within the South African context towards their sibling with an ASD. The primary aim of this study was to investigate how typically developing adolescents recall their past attitudes and describe their present attitudes towards their sibling with an ASD.Methods: Thirty typically developing adolescents who have siblings with ASD were selected to complete the survey instrument, the Lifespan Sibling Relationship Scale, using a cross-sectional design.Results: Results indicate that the measure has internal consistency within this sample. Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests were used to test for significant differences between the mean values for the two self-reported time periods. Friedman analysis of variances (ANOVAs) was used to test for significant differences in the three components of attitudes, namely affect, behaviour and cognition. Results indicate that participants held more positive attitudes towards their siblings with ASD as adolescents compared with when they were younger and that adolescents rated their current emotions towards and beliefs about their sibling with ASD to be more positive than their current interaction experiences.Conclusion: As siblings’ attitudes appear to change over time, clinicians should use a lifespan approach to sibling attitudes when designing and implementing supports for siblings of children with ASD.

(1) Background: Speech synthesis has customarily focused on adult speech, but with the rapid development of speech-synthesis technology, it is now possible to create child voices with a limited amount of child-speech data. This scoping review summarises the evidence base related to developing synthesised speech for children. (2) Method: The included studies were those that were (1) published between 2006 and 2021 and (2) included child participants or voices of children aged between 2–16 years old. (3) Results: 58 studies were identified. They were discussed based on the languages used, the speech-synthesis systems and/or methods used, the speech data used, the intelligibility of the speech and the ages of the voices. Based on the reviewed studies, relative to adult-speech synthesis, developing child-speech synthesis is notably more challenging. Child speech often presents with acoustic variability and articulatory errors. To account for this, researchers have most often attempted to adapt adult-speech models, using a variety of different adaptation techniques. (4) Conclusions: Adapting adult speech has proven successful in child-speech synthesis. It appears that the resulting quality can be improved by training a large amount of pre-selected speech data, aided by a neural-network classifier, to better match the children’s speech. We encourage future research surrounding individualised synthetic speech for children with CCN, with special attention to children who make use of low-resource languages.

OBJECTIVE. The primary aim of this study was to ascertain the relevance of the vocabulary of the Language Development Survey (LDS) for typically developing South African toddlers who attend ethno-linguistically diverse early childhood development centres. RATIONALE. The need for exploration of the expressive vocabulary of this population stems from the diverse linguistic contexts to which toddlers are exposed on a day-to-day basis in South Africa. Many parents prefer English as the language of learning and teaching for their child. As a result, toddlers interact with ethno-linguistically diverse peers from a young age, usually within their early childhood development centres. METHOD. An adapted version of the LDS was presented to 40 middle-class parents in Mpumalanga. Vocabulary commonly used by toddlers was determined and a comparison of parent responses made between the present study and the original American-based survey. RESULTS. Results revealed that nouns were used most often by toddlers, in keeping with research on vocabulary acquisition. Significant correlations between the two groups were evident in 12 of the 14 categories. Parents reported that nouns, verbs, adjectives and words from other word classes were used similarly by toddlers, despite differences in their linguistic exposure. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the LDS is a valuable clinical screening tool for speech-language therapists who deliver services to toddlers within the South African context.This study was completed in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the first author’s master’s degree in the Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria (http://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/28830)The National Research Foundation (NRF)http://www.sajcd.org.za/index.php/SAJCDhttp://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/28830am201

It is well-known that children with expressive communication difficulties have the right to communicate, but they should also have the right to do so in whichever language they choose, with a voice that closely matches their age, gender, and dialect. This study aimed to develop naturalistic synthetic child speech, matching the vocal identity of three children with expressive communication difficulties, using Tacotron 2, for three under-resourced South African languages, namely South African English (SAE), Afrikaans, and isiXhosa. Due to the scarcity of child speech corpora, 2 hours of child speech data per child was collected from three 11- to 12-year-old children. Two adult models were used to "warm start" the child speech synthesis. To determine the naturalness of the synthetic voices, 124 listeners participated in a mean opinion score survey (Likert Score) and optionally gave qualitative feedback. Despite limited training data used in this study, we successfully developed a synthesized child voice of adequate quality in each language. This study highlights that with recent technological advancements, it is possible to develop synthetic child speech that matches the vocal identity of a child with expressive communication difficulties in different under-resourced languages.

Background. Typically developing children who have a younger sibling with a disability often feel inadequately supported and excluded from family interactions. However, early intervention programmes often use family activities and routines as intervention settings. Siblings’ negative attitudes towards participation in such activities may therefore hamper intercession efforts. Objective. To determine the attitudes of typically developing children toward their younger siblings with severe speech and language disabilities in four everyday life situations identified by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Children and Youth Version, namely communication, domestic life, interpersonal interaction and relationships, and major life areas. Methods. An adapted structured interview format was used to determine the attitude of the 27 participants, 6- to 10-year-old typically developing South Africans. Results. Typically developing peers were most positive towards participation in play activities with their sibling with a disability. They were also positive towards participation in household tasks. They were less positive towards communication participation and least positive about participation in interpersonal relationships. A significant difference between certain components of attitudes was reported for three of the four domains. Conclusion. The attitudes of typically developing children are generally positive towards participating with their younger siblings with severe speech and language disabilities. These results can be used to select activities for activity-based interventions and to guide interventions aimed at supporting the siblings of children with disabilities.