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Unit of Study SPCH2011 - Communication Development Across the Lifespan (2022)

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Unit Snapshot

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Unit description

Students learn about communication development and changes across the lifespan in relation to range of practice areas: speech, language, voice, fluency and swallowing.  In addition to lectures and tutorials students conduct an experiential activity to observe these phenomena in children and adults via case studies.  Knowledge of typical communication enables students to contrast atypical communication in subsequent units to inform assessment and diagnosis for speech pathology practice.

Unit content

This unit covers content in three areas:

  1. Communication development from infancy and childhood through to healthy adulthood and ageing and to the end of life.
  2. Observation, interviewing, documentation and presentation skills in speech pathology.
  3. Principles and protocols for speech and language sampling and basic analysis of components of communication.

Availabilities

Location Domestic International
Coffs Harbour
Session2
Session2
Gold Coast
Session2
Session2

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

explain aspects of communication and social development in typical childhood development

record, analyse and report observations of communicative behaviours drawing on developmental norms and appropriate principles and frameworks

identify and evaluate a range of methods to to interview and to elicit a child language sample for the purpose of analysis and interpretation

prepare a transcript of typical child language for the purpose of speech pathology analysis and interpretation.

Prescribed learning resources

Prescribed Texts
  • McLeod, S & McCormack, J, 2015, An Introduction to Speech, Language and Literacy, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia. ISBN: 95527926.
  • Note that an eBook version is also available: Peterson, C, 2013, Looking forward through the lifespan: Developmental psychology, 6th edn, Pearson Australia. ISBN: 9781442556508.

Prescribed Learning Resources may change in future Teaching Periods.