Kelly Farquharson, Professor in the School of Communication Science and Disorders, has been awarded a $12,500 grant from the Institute of Pediatric Rare Diseases (IPRD) for her work, “Developing the Scoring for Expressive Evaluation and Diagnosis (SEED) paradigm for pediatric speech disorders.”

As a speech-language pathologist, Farquharson’s research consists of studying how separate cognitive and environmental factors can impact children with speech and language disorders and how they develop literacy skills. Specifically, her grant-awarded work centers on developing a more in-depth approach to scoring assessments that require children to produce speech.

“We often ask children to read words from a page…but what if their speech is difficult to understand, or includes specific error patterns associated with a delay or disorder?” said Farquharson. “In this case, it can be challenging to know if we are accurately measuring what the child knows and what kinds of words they can read.”

With the grant awarded to Farquharson by the IPRD she will continue her research with her Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI), Dr. Katy Cabbage (Washington State University). Farquharson hopes to support fellow speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to accurately diagnose pediatric speech sound disorders and other related disorders.

“Children who have speech that is difficult to understand often also have a host of related challenges, such as learning new vocabulary words, learning to read, and learning to spell,” Farquharson said. “I am incredibly grateful to the Institute of Pediatric Rare Diseases (IPRD) for their trust in our work.”