Showing papers in "International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders in 1973"

Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia

Abstract: SummaryFeatures of developmental dyspraxia are described and comparisons are made with acquired conditions. The interrelationship of aphasia and dyspraxia is discussed. Consideration of the underlying mechanisms includes a description of the role of proprioception in acquisition and maintenance of speech and this is reviewed with reference to other perceptual processes. Some features which characterise the speech of the dyspraxic child are described and this, is followed by reference to current evaluative measures with indications for therapeutic programmes.

A follow-up study of children with disorders of speech development.

Abstract: SummaryA group of 58 children, initially presenting with delayed speech development, were reviewed. Twenty-three were being educated in primary schools, and two in secondary schools. Two children were at schools for the deaf, and three were at schools for partially hearing children. Three children attended schools for children with disorders of language development. Nine children went to schools for the educationally subnormal, and two to units for physically and mentally handicapped children. One child was taught at home by a teacher engaged by the parents, one was attending a private school, one was of pre-school age and two were at home receiving long term assessment (awaiting placement in some type of school). Three children go to training centres and three are resident in mental subnormality hospitals. Three children have left school.The study was concerned with the fate of children with secondary speech disorders and specific disorders of language development. Some of the problems of these various g...

Children of seven years with marked speech defects.

Abstract: SummaryAn enquiry into the prevalence and associations of disorders of speech and language in a large national sample of 7-year-old children taking part in the NCDS led to the definition of a group of 215 children (144 boys and 71 girls) with normal hearing but marked speech defects. These children were studied in depth in relation to social factors, perinatal experience, developmental history and school progress. The rest of the national sample was used as controls. The group as a whole came from lower-income homes and the children were later members of large families. They had been later in walking and talking, were more clumsy, had more visual defects and demonstrated more emotional disturbance than the controls. Their performance in reading, number work, copying-design and draw-a-man tests was below average. Provisional figures for the follow-up at 11 years showed that more than half of the children were attending special schools or receiving remedial teaching. Some suggestions for improved methods of...

Prediction of persisting speech defect.

Abstract: SummaryA predictive articulation screening test was devised for school entrants to find out if, by its use it would be possible to select for speech therapy only those children whose speech was unlikely to improve quickly, i.e. during their first two terms in school.Ten separate tests regarded as being predictive of speech improvement were tried out. School entrants found to have defective speech at the first survey were retested six months later. The results on the predictive tests of those who improved were compared with the predictive test results of those who had not improved. It was found that three of the tests were good predictors in 85 % of cases. Using these it was possible to predict which speech defective children would improve sufficiently within six months not to require speech therapy.

Linguistic mythology and the first year of life. An edited version of the sixth Jansson Memorial Lecture.

Abstract: It is perhaps natural that the first year of life should be the most neglected and misunderstood by students of language development in children. Our traditional models of language are based upon such notions as syllable, vowel, consonant, word, clause, and sentence, and few of these concepts seem applicable to the utterance of the child during its first year. There is therefore a ready tendency to dismiss most of this period as a “prelinguistic” stage of development, of little relevance for the understanding of the processes of language acquisition when they “really” begin - which is usually assumed to be towards the end of the first year. And even when people do decide to take infant vocalization into account, they find themselves faced with considerable difficulties as to how they can set about studying it, in view of the absence until recently of appropriate techniques of analysis - especially for recording a child's behaviour and for transcribing its utterances. For such reasons, it is not surprising...

Repetition of comprehensible sentences by children with deviant speech

Abstract: Recently the imitation of sentence strings has been found useful in probing the linguistic abilities of language disordered and normal children. The impetus for this method was provided by Chomsky (1964), who regarded repetition performance as one indirect way of tapping linguistic competence for the syntactic, semantic and phonological rules of grammar. The technique he suggested was to have the child repeat “sentences and nonsentences, phonologically possible sequences and phonologically impossible ones” for the analysis and interpretation of error patterns across levels of the grammar. Correct placement of elements would suggest acquired competence, while misplacement would indicate lapses in performance, or nonacquisition of linguistic competence. In this manner, Chomsky speculated, it might be possible to determine whether fully developed conceptions of sentence structure exist under the telegraphic speech patterns so commonly observed in young children. Subsequent repetition studies on the whole hav...

Clinician Bias in Evaluating Speech Proficiency

Abstract: Summary The effect of clinician bias in evaluating the speech of children was studied Case presentations were made to 30 clinicians by means of videotape Prior to evaluation, graduate-student clinicians were exposed to fabricated case-histories containing positive-bias or negative-bias factors, or to no case-history information The clinicians generated phonetic inventories, scaled judgments of articulatory proficiency, scaled prognoses, and scaled therapeutic judgments The case-history preconditions had little effect on the measured behaviour of the clinicians Implications for clinical evaluative procedures are discussed

Acquired Receptive Language Difficulties in Childhood: a Case Study

Abstract: The case history of an eight-year-old girl with an acquired receptive language difficulty is reported. The remedial programme is described, together with an analysis of her progress. The importance of detailed case reporting and the relative merits of diagnostic categories are discussed.

Electro-Physiological Tests of Hearing

Abstract: Speech is the unique achievement of the human species and the development of overt speech is one of a young child's major developmental milestones. The speech therapist who may be called upon to help a child with a speech or language problem has the right to make the a priori assumption that the patient's hearing is normal, or at least adequate, unless evidence to the contrary is presented, a point of view firmly endorsed by the “Quirk” Committee. As speech and language are so interrelated with hearing there is sometimes some controversy on this point in the case of the language-impaired subject. In the vast majority of cases this matter can be speedily and accurately decided by conventional audiometric methods, using Ewing distraction-type tests in the very young, or routine pure tone audiometry in the older cases. Only rarely is there any problem in assessing hearing by means of conventional audiometry, but when such a problem does arise, electro-physiological tests can be very useful in clarifying the ...

A Case Study Demonstrating the Value of Aphasia Therapy

Abstract: Summary This case history tends to support the value of aphasia therapy because the patient was treated succesfully long after the accepted period of spontaneous recovery. It is considered that, since the patient made very little recovery for nine months subsequent to onset, he can act as his own “control,” and his improvement was due to treatment.

Language and the Pre-School Child

Abstract: SummaryDemands for both increased educational provision for preschool children, and the inclusion of structured programmes of work to facilitate children's acquisition of language are discussed; future implications are considered, including whether or not acquisition can be directly influencedIt is proposed that speech therapists have a contribution to make to the experimental design of such programmes. Future programmes, however, should aim to help children acquire communicative competence.

British amendments to an American test for aphasia: outline and discussion.

Abstract: Summary Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia is a battery of tests devised by the American speech pathologist Dr Hildred Schuell and associates at the V.A. Hospital Minneapolis, (first published in 1965). We have devised a set of British amendments to this test to replace certain sections which, from the point of view of content, have an American bias, and which, in many cases, have tended to be omitted by British therapists using his test. We have administered these sections of the test, both original and amended versions, to a sample of normal and dysphasic populations, throughout Britain. Our results demonstrate that there is no significant difference between the scores on the original and amended versions for the normal sample. A previous study has already demonstrated that the cultural bias of the test is not revealed numerically in testing normals, because they are able to adjust to and compensate for the American orientation of the test material. (Allan 1972). With the dysphasic population, there was a significant reduction in error score on the British version of one of the tests subjected to statistical analysis. Statistical comparison of the results on other amended tests did not reveal any significant tendency. The experience and comments of clinicians, however, indicate that the British amendments are more suitable for use in this country, and in order to include all parts of the test, essential in certain cases.

Standardization of the Queensland University Aphasia and Language Test (Q.U.A.L.T.): PILOT REPORT OF PROGRESS*

Abstract: Summary A pilot study was made in relation to 4 representative Sub-tests during standardization of the Queensland University Aphasia and Language Test (QUALT). Certain Sub-items of the Items revealed significant differences in performance between boys and girls, and between Australian children who spoke mainly English and children whose main language at home was not English. However, the proportion of Sub-items showing these differences was such that they could be rejected from the respective Items and still leave 7 or more Sub-items in each Item, thus offering reasonable chances of constructing 3–4 Parallel Forms of the QUALT. Performance of children in each Sub-test improved with age. The evidence so far suggests that the QUALT may be usefully and validly normed on children.