Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between speech perception, speech production, and vocabulary abilities in children with and without speech sound disorders (SSDs), analyzing the data both by group and continuously. Method: Sixty-one Australian English--speaking children aged 48-69 months participated in this…

Purpose: Reporting of outcome and experience measures is critical to our understanding of the effect of intervention for speech sound disorders (SSD) in children. There is currently no agreed-upon set of measures for reporting intervention outcomes and experiences. In this article, we introduce the Speech Outcome Reporting Taxonomy (SORT), a tool…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate whether preschool- and early school-age children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) have difficulties with speech perception. Method: Systematic searching of 8 electronic databases identified 73 eligible studies across 71 articles examining the…

Background: When planning evidence-based intervention services for children with phonology-based speech sound disorders (SSD), speech and language therapists (SLTs) need to integrate research evidence regarding service delivery and intervention intensity within their clinical practice. However, relatively little is known about the optimal…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine if polysyllable accuracy in preschoolers with speech sound disorders (SSD) was related to known predictors of later literacy development: phonological processing, receptive vocabulary, and print knowledge. Polysyllables--words of three or more syllables--are important to consider because unlike…

Purpose: The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of computer-assisted input-based intervention for children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: The Sound Start Study was a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Seventy-nine early childhood centers were invited to participate, 45 were recruited, and 1,205 parents and educators of 4- and…

Early childhood educators are frequently called on to support preschool-aged children with speech sound disorders and to engage these children in activities that target their speech production. This study explored factors that acted as facilitators and/or barriers to the provision of computer-based support for children with speech sound disorders…

Accurate production of polysyllables (words of three or more syllables) can be challenging for children with phonological impairment. Research with typically developing children has suggested that children can improve their polysyllable productions in response to requests for clarification containing an incorrect model of a target word (Gozzard et…

Speech sound disorders are a common communication difficulty in preschool children. Teachers indicate difficulty identifying and supporting these children. The aim of this research was to describe speech and language characteristics of children identified by their parents and/or teachers as having possible communication concerns. 275 Australian 4-…

A major goal of phonological intervention is to help bring a child's speech development to within normal range for his or her developmental stage. Reaching that goal may take longer than anticipated for some children. This paper illustrates an in-depth retrospective evaluation of assessment data from one child with a phonological impairment, who…