"Talk of the Town" is a community led approach to supporting the speech, language and communication (SLC) skills of children and young people, aged 0-19, living in areas of social disadvantage. It is delivered by the Communication Trust. This evaluation reports on a randomised controlled trial undertaken with 2696 pupils in 64 primary…

Many studies have pointed to impaired speech intelligibility in young people with Down's syndrome (DS). Some have attributed these problems to delayed phonological development, while others have identified disordered speech patterns, which could be related to a dyspraxic element in their speech. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to examine…

Background: Angelman syndrome (AS) is a rare neurogenetic disorder that overlaps with autism and is associated with severe cognitive, speech and motor impairments. Communication and social deficits are found among children with AS, both of which may be linked to impairments in joint attention. Methods: The participants in this study were four…

Background: Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) form a heterogeneous group who differ in terms of the severity of their condition, underlying cause, speech errors, involvement of other aspects of the linguistic system and treatment response. To date there is no universal and agreed-upon classification system. Instead, a number of…

Recent research has acknowledged the importance of morphological awareness, beyond phonological awareness, to literacy achievement in both reading and writing for children, adolescents, and adults. Morphological awareness is the ability to recognize, reflect on, and manipulate the sublexical structure of words--the roots, prefixes, and suffixes.…

Several authors mentioned the occurrence of articulation problems in the neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) population. However, few studies have undertaken a detailed analysis of the articulation skills of NF1 patients, especially in schoolchildren and adults. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine in depth the articulation skills of…

Students exhibiting speech deficits may not have the appropriate skills or support structures necessary to obtain adequate or acceptable literacy development as mixed results from past research have indicated that some students with speech impairments have the capacity to gain appropriate literacy skills. The purpose of the qualitative holistic…

Background: The majority of speech and language therapists (SLTs) work with children who have speech, language and communication needs. There is limited information about their working practices and clinical experience and their views of how changes to healthcare may impact upon their practice. Aims: To investigate the working practices and…

Purpose: To compare the relative effects of random vs. blocked practice schedules in treatment for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Although there have been repeated suggestions in the literature to use random practice in CAS treatment, no systematic studies exist that have directly compared random with blocked practice in this population.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the speech-associated labiomandibular movement during articulation production in Mandarin-speaking children with spastic quadriplegic (SQ) cerebral palsy (CP). Twelve children with SQ CP (aged 7-11 years) and 12 age-matched healthy children as controls were enrolled for the study. All children underwent…

Animal studies elucidating the neurobiology of fragile X syndrome (FXS) have led to multiple controlled trials in humans, with the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC-C) commonly adopted as a primary outcome measure. A multi-site collaboration examined the psychometric properties of the ABC-C in 630 individuals (ages 3-25) with FXS using…

Purpose: This study explored relationships among perceptual, ultrasound, and acoustic measurements of children's correct and misarticulated /r/ sounds. Longitudinal data documenting changes across these parameters were collected from 2 children who acquired /r/ over a period of intervention and were compared with data from children with typical…

In this welcome second edition of "The Effective Teacher's Guide to Autism and Communication Difficulties", best-selling author Michael Farrell addresses how teachers and others can develop provision for students with autism and students that have difficulties with speech, grammar, meaning, use of language and comprehension. Updated and expanded,…

Although some studies have explored the adult therapeutic relationship in speech-language pathology, few, if any, have examined it with regard to children. This study aimed to explore the therapeutic relationship in pediatric speech and language therapy, focusing on the child's experience. Accordingly, the study was qualitative and involved the…

Dysarthria following surgical resection of childhood posterior fossa tumour (PFT) is most commonly documented in a select group of participants with mutism in the acute recovery phase, thus limiting knowledge of post-operative prognosis for this population of children as a whole. Here we report on the speech characteristics of 13 cases seen…