Speech Disorders in Children

Author note: This paper was prepared for the American Federation of Teachers by Louisa C. Moats, project director, Washington D.C. site of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Interventions Project, and clinical associate professor of pediatrics, University of Texas, Houston, Health Sciences Center. Her work is supported in part by grant HD30995, “Early Interventions for Children with Reading Problems,”

These DIBELS screening assessments were developed to help educators identify struggling, at-risk readers, so that appropriate types and levels of support can be implemented within the school system. They were designed to support efforts at the primary grade levels (K-6th) to prevent reading struggles as the learn progress through the school system. Furthermore, this test was to aid in the elimination in remediation lessons inside of the classroom.

The participants consisted of 43 preschoolers with verbalization and sound disorders between the ages of four and five. The participants were selected through clinical recommendations in upstate New York from May 2007 to April 2008. Children were primarily from middle

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

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

The components of the Cycles Phonological Remediation Approach were developed from theories of phonological development, principles of cognitive psychology, and ongoing research in phonological acquisition (Hodson, 2006). Hodson proposes that children who are highly unintelligible would benefit from a treatment program that targets pattern errors in systematic cycles and uses auditory bombardment in combination with practice activities during therapy sessions. Clinicians interested in employing this method could benefit from research that answers the question- “is the cycles approach more effective than the traditional articulation therapy approach in the treatment of children who are highly

English language development: The study authors did not find any statistically significant differences in the mean language development test scores between the BCIRC students and the comparison group students both in the study findings and the subgroup findings. However, the WWC reported that the intervention had potentially positive effects on English language development reading achievement because the study showed the substantively important positive effect with the large effect sizes (.29 in the study finding /.38, .22, .53 in the subgroup findings), and it also did not show a statistically significant or substantively important negative effect. However, the WWC did confirm the statistically significant positive effects of this finding because only one study was reviewed.

Additionally, more than one third of children with minimal hearing loss fail at least one grade and exhibit social and/or emotional problems by the fourth grade. Such difficulties can often persist throughout the lifetime of an individual with a hearing impairment. The United States Department of Health states that the future of the child with hearing loss depends on early identification of hearing loss and its appropriate management. Landmark studies showed that with early identification and intervention prior to six months of age, children are able to achieve near age appropriate language skills (Baroch, 2003). Children with hearing loss born in hospitals that implemented UNHS were 2.6 times more likely than children with hearing loss born in non-screening hospitals of having language development within the normal range of development (Yoshinaga-Itano, 2003). Yoshinaga-Itano, Sedey, Coulter, & Mehl (1998) showed that children who were identified with hearing loss and received intervention services before the age of 6 months had significantly better receptive and expressive language scores than children identified after the age of 6 months. Early identified children with intervention have language development similar to their nonverbal cognitive development

In 1939 an experiment now known as the “Monster Study” was conducted on 22 orphaned children by Wendell Johnson, a very influential speech pathologist at the University of Iowa. In this experiment the orphaned children were divided up into two separate groups. One group was given positive speech therapy, in which they were praised for their fluency. The other group was given negative speech therapy. They were belittled for every speech imperfection and told that they were stutterers. Many of the normal speaking children who were subjected to the negative speech therapy experienced negative psychological effects and some developed lasting speech impediments.

When a child has problems on reading, we can conclude that s/he may get dyslexia. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability. One of the reasons that make dyslexia hard to be diagnosed is lack of the single test to accurately predict if a child gets dyslexia or not, since every child has different developing pace. For instance, some children have problems on speaking out words, but s/he can remember other more complicated things. People used to think that visual difficulty is the reason of dyslexia. However, people now that dyslexia was generated by both speech and hearing difficulties. Even though there was not single test to diagnoses dyslexia, if a child still unable to speak at 3 years old, then parents should aware of dyslexia.

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).

Many students around the United States have reading difficulties, which can be due to a variety of reason such as: low socioeconomic status, family history of learning disabilities, a neurological disorder, limited exposure, etc. Reading difficulties can lead to further problems with education and learning, therefore the struggles should be addressed and intervention techniques should be implemented promptly. The interventions need to be individualized for the student based on their needs in order to improve the student’s reading to the best of their abilities.

“Phonological disorders in children can result from physical or organic causes or may be functional in nature ("Phonological disorders in," 2013)”. Children with a phonological disorder may experience a higher risk for reading and writing disabilities. “If left unresolved, phonological disorders have long-term consequences that may interfere with an individual's future social, academic, and vocational well-being, largely resulting from persistent, reduced intelligibility of speech ("Phonological disorders in," 2013).”

Learning to read is one of the most foundational skills needed for educational success. As children learn to read they develop the ability to decode, interpret, and store information from what they are reading. Reading comprehension allows a child to gain meaning from text and decoding allows a child to process sounds into words. Reading is vital to educational success because it allows a student to learn new information and build upon their prior knowledge. Students who attain reading skills are more likely to achieve academic success while students who have reading difficulties are likely to struggle academically and fall behind their peers. Reading difficulties have been prominent within the US for years. For example, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress statistics shows that only about 33% of fourth graders are at or above proficient at reading (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2011). Studies show that the cause of reading difficulties is based primarily on genes, environment, and instructional experience (Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, Scanlon, 2004). Students with a language learning disorder have difficulty comprehending spoken and written language thus making it difficult to learn new information. Children with reading disabilities are more likely to struggle during elementary school years as students are asked to think about what they read more critically. Speech language pathologists and teachers can help