Clinical Question: For a preschool student with a severe phonological disorder, will incorporating a non-developmental target sequence be a more efficient approach than a developmental target sequence for improving speech sound production? Method: EBP Intervention Comparison Review. Sources: ASHA publications, PsycINFO database, PubMed database.…

Pam Shanks describes the stages in the child's development of language and reminds us that the Montessori principle of observation should guide the support of the child with articulation errors. For most children with developmental articulation delays, the directress can implement Montessori materials and use conversational strategies to emphasize…

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-…

In the realm of special education, the parents' participation is mandated by IDEA (2004) and programs and schools must provide them the information and opportunities to be involved in the decision-making process and to work with professionals, early childhood special educators, and service providers. This purpose of this study was to address the…

Background: Knowledge is scarce on what contributes to whether children with early language delay (LD) show persistent, recovering or sometimes late-onset LD without a prior history of early LD in subsequent preschool years. Aims: To explore whether an integrative model of vital risk factors, including poor early communication skills, family…

This study investigated the effects of a scaffolded-language intervention using cloze procedures, semantically contingent expansions, contrastive word pairs, and direct models on speech abilities in two preschoolers with speech and language impairment speaking African American English. Effects of the lexical and phonological characteristics (i.e.,…

This study used a multiple probe across participants' research design to evaluate the effects of instruction on the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences (LSCs) by three young children with autism spectrum disorder and limited speech. All three children (ages 3-5 years) reached criterion for identifying the LSCs targeted during instruction,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe normative and validation data on the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS; McLeod, Harrison, & McCormack, 2012c) for English-speaking children. Method: The ICS is a 7-item, parent-report measure of children's speech intelligibility with a range of communicative partners. Data were collected…

The primary focus of this research study was to examine the benefit of a using a multimodal approach to speech sound correction with preschool children. The approach uses the auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic modalities and includes a unique, interactive visual focus that attempts to provide a visual representation of a phonemic category. The…

Purpose: To undertake a community (nonclinical) study to describe the speech of preschool children who had been identified by parents/teachers as having difficulties "talking and making speech sounds" and compare the speech characteristics of those who had and had not accessed the services of a speech-language pathologist (SLP). Method:…

Purpose: To determine if speech error patterns in preschoolers with speech sound disorders (SSDs) predict articulation and phonological awareness (PA) outcomes almost 4 years later. Method: Twenty-five children with histories of preschool SSDs (and normal receptive language) were tested at an average age of 4;6 (years;months) and were followed up…

Clinical Question: Would preschool children with SSD demonstrate similar or greater improvement in speech sound production during interventions including phonemic awareness goals and procedures than during speech sound interventions without those elements? Method: EBP Intervention Comparison Review. Sources: Google Scholar, ASHA publications.…

The purpose of this article is to describe communicative-participation outcomes measured by the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS©; Thomas-Stonell et al., 2013) for interventions provided by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in different community settings for preschoolers with speech-language impairments (Sp/LI) with and…

Aim: The cognitive-linguistic abilities of 2 subgroups of children with speech impairment were compared to better understand underlying deficits that might influence effective intervention. Methods: Two groups of 23 children, aged 3;3 to 5;6, performed executive function tasks assessing cognitive flexibility and nonverbal rule abstraction.…

Purpose: To develop a system for numerically quantifying a speaker's phonetic accuracy through transcription-based measures. With a focus on normal and disordered speech in children, the authors describe a system for differentially weighting speech sound errors on the basis of various levels of phonetic accuracy using a Weighted Speech Sound…