Dr. Rebecca Armstrong is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences within the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Queensland. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland in 2017, focusing on research within the same school. With clinical experience working with school-age children, she is passionate about advancing paediatric speech pathology through teaching and research. Her expertise spans a range of areas including speech, language, literacy, and special needs in communication, particularly for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorders. Additional research interests include word learning processes such as incidental word learning, cross-situational word learning, and fast mapping in children with communication difficulties; epidemiology of communication disorders through population-based studies on early predictors and long-term outcomes; and school readiness.

Dr. Armstrong has led and collaborated on several funded projects, including 'Legal vocabulary knowledge in young people: Benchmarking typical performance on a language screener used within the youth justice setting' (2024-2026, Speech Pathology Australia), 'Addressing long waits in child development services: What do families do while waiting and how does this impact parental self-efficacy?' (2023-2026, Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service), 'Co-design of an environment that supports shared book reading within a community centre' (2021-2022, Children's Health Queensland), and 'Inter-professional collaboration between teachers and speech pathologists' (2020-2022, Speech Pathology Australia). Her key publications include co-editing the book Reading Success in the Primary Years: An Evidence-Based Interdisciplinary Approach to Guide Assessment and Intervention (Springer, 2020); book chapters such as 'Patterns of language development from childhood to adulthood and the associated long-term psychosocial outcomes' (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and 'Sound amplification in school contexts: implications for inclusive practice' (Routledge, 2021); and highly cited journal articles like 'The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and narrative assessment: Evidence for specific narrative impairments in autism spectrum disorders' (International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2015, 90 citations), 'Late talkers and later language outcomes: Predicting the different language trajectories' (2017, 84 citations), 'Change in receptive vocabulary from childhood to adulthood: Associated mental health, education and employment outcomes' (2017, 62 citations), and 'Interprofessional practice between speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers: A mixed-methods systematic review' (Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2023). She has presented findings at national and international conferences, contributing to evidence-based practices in paediatric communication interventions. Her Google Scholar profile reflects over 430 citations.

Professional Email: rebecca.armstrong@uq.edu.au