First Words: A Biological Study Of Childhood Speech

For most children there is no clear reason as to why there is a delay in the development of speech, language and communication skills. Therefore, an adult should never assume that the child’s speech, language and communication problems are due to hearing loss. It may be that the child is experiencing communicating difficulties that are unrelated to their hearing problems because the child may not have acquired the vocabulary necessary to express his thoughts and actions.

Speech, language and communication difficulties can have a profound and lasting effect on children’s lives and development. These can affect their ability to communicate and interact with others. The impact of these difficulties will vary depending on the severity of the problems, the support they receive, the demands of the child’s environment

Analyse the importance of early identification of speech, language and communication delays and disorders and the potential risks of late recognition.

While speech-sound errors may occur in a typically developing child, if these errors persist beyond the expected age, it becomes indicative of a speech disorder and requires treatment (Peña-Brooks & Hedge, 2015). Speech-sound disorders in children will not only affect intelligibility of the individual, but can also have pervasive effects on communication skills, social involvement, and future employment, leading to an overall reduced quality of life (Johnson, Beitchman, and Brownlie, 2010). However, if individuals with speech-sound disorders receive speech-language services in childhood, evidence supports these children are likely to become effective communicators (Johnson, Beitchman, and Brownlie, 2010). Speech-language pathologists

Neurological systems were also evaluated to identify any existing health or comorbidities promptly and to utilize interventions such as referral to neurologists, ophthalmologists, or speech pathologists if necessary. Developmental red flags, in this case, would include the inability to understand the use of action words and being unable to follow two-step direction (Bellman et al., 2013). This would be indicative of receptive language delay. Expressive language delays are characterized by a child’s inability to ask for things by name, use no less than 200 words, or repeat phrases in response to questions (Stevenson & Richman, 2016). However, none of these red flags was reported by the child’s

Those students are always in for a long road of speech therapy as well as, problems with reading. I am interested in new research in the area because these students are typically of average intelligence but struggle in school immensely because of their disorder. According to the webinar on Childhood Apraxia of Speech, CAS is defined as a neurological childhood speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired. The main features of the disorder consist of inconsistent errors lengthened, disrupted coarticulatory transitions, and inappropriate prosody. Motor performance is the generalization of learned behaviors while motor learning is the retention or generalization of learned behaviors. Motor learning is the problem that children with CAS encounter. Phonological awareness is important for students with CAS because they have difficulty with reading and spelling. The training of sounds can be done while also training speech sound production. A new therapy technique for CAS is using ultrasound biofeedback to establish a motor skill at the syllable or word level. The benefits of ultrasound are that the student can visually see the elevation of the tongue or retraction on hard to form sounds such as /r/. The disadvantage is that most clinicians do not have access to ultrasound at a reasonable cost to

Child hood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder that affects children’s ability to say sounds, syllables, and words. The brain has trouble coordinating muscle movements that are needed for speech. The child knows exactly what to speak, but the brain has trouble coordinating the muscle movements. It is different for every person that has this type of disorder. In some other cases, it can be an unknown cause, meaning it can happen out of the blue, or by mutations. One of the articles is based off of reliability and validity testing and scoring by the Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skills, while the other has different assessments that were tested and transcribed.

Any intervention plan needs to include three components to be successful. The first being clinical expertise of the professionals that the disorder pertains to. Therefore, with speech being the target, a speech language pathologist would use his/her clinical judgment. The next factor includes current research and studies that involve the disorder being targeted. The intervention plan needs to be based in science, and there needs to have been previous research done to prove its effectiveness. This assures both the clinician and the client that the treatment will yield results if preformed correctly. The most important aspect is the last component, involving the child and their caregivers. It is pertinent that the patient is the main focus of all decisions, and with young infants that includes the caregiver/s as well. In order to devise a proper intervention plan, the patient and the caregiver/s concerns and wants need to be met. If patient or caregiver would like to target a specific difficulty, it is the clinician’s responsibility to use their professional expertise and current research to compose a plan that best suits the client and his/her needs. (Ritzman,

With a very young child, they may not coo or babble during infancy, produce first words late and lack some sounds, only produce a few different consonant and vowel sounds, have difficulty combining sounds, avoid using difficult sounds by replacing or deleting them, and experience eating problems. In older children, common signs are that they can comprehend language much easier than they can produce it, struggle more with language production when anxious, are hard to understand, sound choppy and monotonous, seem to grope to produce certain sounds, and have difficulty imitating speech, though they are more fluid and clear with imitation than with spontaneous production. At any age, a child may portray delayed language development, issues with expressive language, fine motor impairments, hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, and difficulty learning to write (“Childhood Apraxia,” 2011). Other reported possible symptoms of CAS include extended reliance on nonverbal communication and omission of consonant sounds in the initial and final positions of words (“Apraxia: Symptoms, Causes,” n.d.).

When talking about the language development of children it consists of four domains, which are the phonological development grammatical development, lexical development and pragmatic development. Phonological development focuses on the development of speech sounds which deals with the pronunciation of the words. At my field site, which is located at Brooklyn College, I noticed two students’ phonological development. I was observing the ones class. One of the students, Nathanial was given the object ball and the teacher kept repeating herself and said, “Ball, this is a ball. Ball.” N tries to repeat after her and trying to tell he me, he lends against me and said, “ba”. Nathanial could only pronounce the beginning of the word. Then

Language is so important that if a person suffers from a speech difficulty, it has a major impact on their lives.

When diagnosing a problem in speech and language, one may find a delay in learning how to talk or not talking

The second group of children were made up of kids who showed no abnormal signs of language development. This group was then split in half like the first group of children. Group IIA, was told that they had the start of a stuttering problem and were told among other things, “Use your will power…Do anything to keep from stuttering…Don't ever speak unless you can do it right. ” (Reynolds, 2003). The other half of the “normal speaking” group, group IIB, was praised for their good speech.

Speech and language delays can be problematic for preschoolers, school aged children and adolescents. These delays range in degree of severity and have many causes; physical and developmentally. Communication plays a specific and important role to all people, especially, preschool children who are developing speech and language skills at fast rate. The consequences of these delays can be devastating for the children affected and can follow them into adulthood. These effects may include academic problems, social and emotional issues and may even lead into mental illness. Children with speech and language delays need professional intervention as young as possible. However even with intervention, some children are still at risk of suffering

When children experience early speech difficulties they tend to be at risk later on. By being susceptible to language skills early on allows the child (ren) to be more proficiency and react in a way that contributes to them being able to express themselves in a way that causes them to use a variety of different phonemes and at the same time mix and maneuver other language and literacy skills. Numerous studies have found that there is a strong link between language problems, reading and overall academic achievement (Konza, 2006, Snow Burns and Griffin, 1998, Justice and Ezell, 2000).