Financial:
Casey Taliancich-Klinger, PhD CCC-SLP receives a salary from Western Psychological Services and Our Lady of the Lake University. She is receiving an honorarium from Bilinguistics for providing this course today.

Non-Financial:
Casey Taliancich-Klinger, PhD CCC-SLP does not have any non-financial relationships to disclose.

The term maze refers to communicative disfluencies that interrupt the forward flow of language production and do not contribute additional meaning to the utterance such as connectors, filled pauses, repetitions, and revisions. Individuals produce mazes in real time while speaking with differing levels of frequency. In the literature, there is overlap in how mazes and non-stuttering- like disfluencies are described. In this course we will explore the overlap between mazes and non-stuttering like disfluencies in the language of monolingual English and Spanish-English bilingual children. We will examine mazes produced in narratives.

Mazes have been attributed to certain groups such as children with developmental language disorder (DLD), fluency disorders, and those who are bilingual. These groups have been shown to produce mazes at higher rates than children with typical language skills. Historically, accurate diagnoses of speech and language disorders in dual language learners (DLLs) has been a clinical challenge for speech language pathologists due to several factors including but not limited to the availability of dual language clinicians, the lack of appropriate assessment materials, and lack of knowledge/norms for DLL development (Castilla-Earls et al., 2020; Guiberson & Atkins, 2012). Castilla-Earls et al. (2020) discussed the importance of observation of learning (i.e., dynamic assessment) and connected speech and language production (i.e. language sample analysis) as part of using converging evidence in diagnostic decision making for DLLs. Both of these assessment tools will likely include observations of mazes in the language production of DLL children. In this presentation the focus will be on examining mazes in narratives. If more mazes are exhibited in one language during narrative production, it is possible for their narratives to be misinterpreted as a sign of DLD (Byrd et al., 2015). The course will discuss potential differences between English and Spanish in maze use, clinical implications for the presence of mazes in a diagnostic decision and treatment.

Participants will be able to:
• Define what mazes are
• Provide examples of mazes in English and Spanish
• Identify maze patterns in the narratives of Spanish-English bilingual children
• Identify intervention strategies for bilingual children related to mazes

Time-Ordered Agenda
10 minutes–Introductions and disclosures
15 minutes– What are mazes? Definitions and general overview
15 minutes– The overlap between mazes and non-stuttering like disfluencies
15 minutes– How to examine mazes in narratives/diagnostic/treatment implications
15 minutes– Case studies
5 minutes- Summary and closing
15 minutes- Moderated question and answer session