Purpose: Parents, professionals, and policy makers need information on the long-term prognosis for children with communication disorders. Our primary purpose in this report was to help fill this gap by profiling the family, educational, occupational, and quality of life outcomes of young adults at 25 years of age (N = 244) from the Ottawa Language…

This study examined the characteristics of 14 English Language Learners classified as having learning disabilities (LD) who were also identified as having speech and language impairments (SI) prior to, at, or after initial identification as LD. Data were collected under the auspices of a longitudinal study, Bilingual Exceptional Students:…

Phonological process analysis was carried out using a 40-word imitation task with 30 11;6-14;6 year old Kannada-speaking persons with Down syndrome in comparison with 15 non-verbal mental age matched typically developing children. Percentages of occurrence were significantly higher for the Down syndrome group with certain exceptions. Some…

This article analysed the acoustic structure of voiced stop ++ vowel sequences in a group of persons who stutter (PWS). This phonetic unit was chosen because successful production is highly dependent on the differential tweaking of right-to-left anticipatory coarticulation as a function of stop place. Thus, essential elements of both speech motor…

This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4-7 years with…

Speech-sound disorders are common in preschool-age children, and are characterized by difficulty in the planning and production of speech sounds and their combination into words and sentences. The objective of this study was to review and compare the results of the "Sensory Profile" ([Dunn, 1999]) in children with a specific type of speech-sound…

This article documents the typological occurrence and interactions of two seemingly independent error patterns, namely Velar Fronting and Labial Harmony, in a cross-sectional investigation of the sound systems of 235 children with phonological delays (ages 3;0 to 7;9). The results revealed that the occurrence of Labial Harmony depends on the…

Velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS) is a genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion of chromosome 22q11.2. Although there is some variability, VCFS is associated with a characteristic physical, behavioral, and cognitive phenotype. This review article focuses on aspects of language and literacy development in VCFS, describing what is known and…

The goal of this research programme was to evaluate the role of word lexicality in effecting phonological change in children's sound systems. Four children with functional speech sound disorders (SSDs) were enrolled in an across-subjects multiple baseline single-subject design; two were treated using high-frequency real words (RWs) and two were…

This study describes the realization of onset and coda clusters in a 4-year old child acquiring American English, and with a higher than usual level of unintelligible speech. It reviews previous studies that have tested cluster realization against markedness and, in particular, the sonority hypothesis. This latter predicts steep rises in sonority…

The critical role of communication in schools cannot be understated. Communication skills are a necessity both in the academic and social atmosphere of the school environment. Unfortunately, there are a large number of children in the schools today identified with speech and language disorders. This special edition of "Psychology in the Schools"…

This paper uses the methodology of conversation analysis (CA) to examine the practice of co-constructed turn and utterance production in impaired communication. An investigation of the conversations between two family dyads, featuring one person with dysarthric speech and one with aphasic language, reveals one way in which single turns and…

This article provides a conceptualization of physical impairment as an object loss comparable to the loss of a loved one. It exists when, for example, a person has only one limb, or an illness in an organ of the body. Parkinson's disease is just such an impairment that denies the author the ability to utilize his body's previous capacity of…

Including children as research participants is an important new direction in early childhood research. However, it is rare for such studies to include the voices of children with significant communication impairment. This article suggests that drawing may be an appropriate non-verbal method for "listening" to these children's ideas and recording…

In theories of spoken language production, the gestural code prescribing the movements of the speech organs is usually viewed as a linear string of holistic, encapsulated, hard-wired, phonetic plans, e.g., of the size of phonemes or syllables. Interactions between phonetic units on the surface of overt speech are commonly attributed to either the…