The purpose of this study was to measure the speech perception of children with speech sound disorders and compare it to that of adults and typically developing children. A secondary purpose was to determine if an adaptive-tracking tool, the Wide Range Acoustic Accuracy Scale (WRAAS) equalized task demands across participants independent of perceptual ability. The participants included 31 adults, 15 typically developing children, and 15 children with speech sound disorders. Children with speech sound disorders all had difficulty producing /r/ correctly. Each participant completed perceptual testing discriminating differences in three syllable contrast pairs: /bɑ/-/wɑ/, /dɑ/-/gɑ/, and /rɑ/-/wɑ/. Results indicated that children with speech sound disorders had significantly poorer perception than the adults for /bɑ/-/wɑ/ and /dɑ/-/gɑ/ and significantly poorer perception than their typically developing peers for the /rɑ/-/wɑ/ contrast. Adults and typically developing children did not differ in their perception of any contrast. Results also indicated that WRAAS equalized the number of trials across all participants irrespective of perceptual ability. We discuss clinical implications of these results and how WRAAS may be used in future research and in clinical work to efficiently and effectively determine perceptual abilities of children with speech sound disorders.

The development of reading competency is one of the most significant pedagogical achievements during the first few years of schooling. Although most children learn to read successfully when exposed to reading instruction, up to 18% of children experience significant reading difficulty (Shaywitz, 1998). As a group, young children with speech impairment are at risk of reading impairment, with approximately 50% of these children demonstrating poor acquisition of early reading skills (Nathan, Stackhouse, Goulandris, & Snowling, 2004; Larivee & Catts, 1999). A number of variables contribute to reading outcomes for children with speech impairment including co-occurring language impairment, the nature and severity of their speech impairment as well as social and cultural influences. An area of research that has received increasing attention is understanding how access to the underlying sound structure or phonological representations of spoken words stored in long-term memory account for reading difficulties observed in children (Elbro, 1996; Fowler, 1991). Researchers have hypothesised that children with speech impairment may be at increased risk of reading disability due to deficits at the level of phonological representations (Bird, Bishop, & Freeman, 1995). Phonological representation deficits can manifest in poor performance on tasks that require children to think about the sound structure of words. Knowledge about the phonological components of words is commonly referred to as phonological awareness. Identifying and manipulating phonemes within words are examples of phonological awareness skills. Some children with speech impairment perform poorly on phonological awareness measures compared to children without speech difficulties (Bird et al., 1995; Carroll & Snowling, 2004; Rvachew, Ohberg, Grawburg, & Heyding, 2003). As performance on phonological awareness tasks is a strong predictor of early reading ability (Hogan, Catts, & Little, 2005), there is an important need to determine if children with speech impairment who demonstrate poor phonological awareness, have deficits at the level of phonological representations. This thesis reports a series of studies that investigated the relationship between phonological representations, phonological awareness, and word decoding ability in children with moderate to severe speech impairment. A child with complex communication needs (CCN) who used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) was also examined to determine how the absence of effective articulation skills influences the development of phonological representations. The study employed a longitudinal design to compare the performance of nine children (aged 3:09-5:03 at initial assessment) with moderate to severe speech impairment and 17 children with typical speech development on novel assessment measures designed to determine characteristics of children's phonological representations. The tasks required children to judge the accuracy of spoken multisyllable words and newly learned nonwords. The relationships between performance on these tasks and measures of speech, phonological awareness and early print decoding were also examined. Four assessment trials were implemented at six-monthly intervals over an 18-month period. The first assessment trial was administered approximately 6 to12 months before children commenced school. The fourth trial was administered after children had completed 6 to 12 months of formal education. The child with CCN completed three assessment trials over a period of 16 months. Data analyses revealed that the children with speech impairment had significantly greater difficulty (p<0.01) judging mispronounced multisyllable words compared to their peers with typical speech development. As a group, children with speech impairment also demonstrated inferior performance on the judgment of mispronounced forms of newly learned nonwords (p<0.05). No group differences were observed on the judgment of correctly pronounced real and nonword stimuli. Significant group differences on speech production and phoneme segmentation tasks were identified at each assessment trial. Moderate to high correlations (i.e., r = 0.40 to 0.70) were also observed between performance on the phonological representation tasks and performance on phonological awareness and speech production measures at each trial across the study. Although no significant group differences were observed on the nonword decoding task, 4 of the 9 children with speech impairment could not decode any letters in nonwords (compared to only 1 child without speech impairment) at the final assessment trial when children were 6-years-old. Two children with speech impairment showed superior nonword decoding ability at trial 3 and 4. The within-group variability observed on the nonword decoding task highlighted the heterogeneity of children with speech impairment. The performances of four children with speech impairment with differing types of speech error patterns were analysed to investigate the role of phonological representations in their speech and phonological awareness development. The child with delayed speech development and excellent phonological awareness at trial 1, demonstrated superior phonological awareness and word decoding skills at age 6 years, although his performance on phonological representation tasks was inconsistent across trials. In contrast, a child with delayed development and poor early phonological awareness demonstrated weak performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness, and decoding at each successive assessment trial. The child with a high percentage of inconsistent speech error patterns generally demonstrated poor performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness and decoding measures at each of the 4 assessment trials. The child with consistent and unusual speech error patterns showed increasingly stronger performance on the phonological representation tasks and average performance on phonological awareness but limited word decoding ability at age 6. The 11-year-old girl with CCN, whose speech attempts were limited and unintelligible, demonstrated below average performance on phonological representation tasks, suggesting that an absence of articulatory feedback may negatively influence the development of well-specified phonological representations. This thesis provides evidence for the use of receptive tasks to identify differences in the phonological representations of children with and without speech impairment. The findings also provide support for the link between the representation of phonological information in long-term memory and children's speech production accuracy, phonological awareness and print decoding ability. The variable performance of some children with speech impairment and the child with cerebral palsy demonstrate the need to consider individual characteristics to develop an understanding of how children store and access speech sound information to assist their acquisition of early reading skills.

The thesis is an overview of current approaches to the issue of listeners attitudes towards speakers based on the characteristics of their speech, with regard to the methodology and to the types of monitored attributes of speech. The existing research results and methodological approaches are evaluated with specific attention given to speech defects in Czech language. A review of survey data was conducted that addressed the attitudes of Czech listeners towards Czech speakers with speech defects, specifically with sigmatism. For this purpose, records of 8 speakers with sigmatism selected from the Prague Phonetic Corpus were used. These records were modified in a manner that corresponds to the methods of Matched guise technique. Afterwards a perception test and a questionnaire were compiled in order to investigate the real attitudes of the Czech listeners toward selected Czech speakers, respectively their speech impairments. The test was presented to homogeneous group of 42 respondents. The results suggest a significant link between sigmatism and the negative attitudes of listeners towards speakers, especially the perception of their social status. The overall result of this thesis is the description of the target area (see the title of the paper) the has led to the formulation of hypotheses for...

The development of reading competency is one of the most significant pedagogical achievements during the first few years of schooling. Although most children learn to read successfully when exposed to reading instruction, up to 18% of children experience significant reading difficulty (Shaywitz, 1998). As a group, young children with speech impairment are at risk of reading impairment, with approximately 50% of these children demonstrating poor acquisition of early reading skills (Nathan, Stackhouse, Goulandris, & Snowling, 2004; Larivee & Catts, 1999). A number of variables contribute to reading outcomes for children with speech impairment including co-occurring language impairment, the nature and severity of their speech impairment as well as social and cultural influences. An area of research that has received increasing attention is understanding how access to the underlying sound structure or phonological representations of spoken words stored in long-term memory account for reading difficulties observed in children (Elbro, 1996; Fowler, 1991). Researchers have hypothesised that children with speech impairment may be at increased risk of reading disability due to deficits at the level of phonological representations (Bird, Bishop, & Freeman, 1995). Phonological representation deficits can manifest in poor performance on tasks that require children to think about the sound structure of words. Knowledge about the phonological components of words is commonly referred to as phonological awareness. Identifying and manipulating phonemes within words are examples of phonological awareness skills. Some children with speech impairment perform poorly on phonological awareness measures compared to children without speech difficulties (Bird et al., 1995; Carroll & Snowling, 2004; Rvachew, Ohberg, Grawburg, & Heyding, 2003). As performance on phonological awareness tasks is a strong predictor of early reading ability (Hogan, Catts, & Little, 2005), there is an important need to determine if children with speech impairment who demonstrate poor phonological awareness, have deficits at the level of phonological representations. This thesis reports a series of studies that investigated the relationship between phonological representations, phonological awareness, and word decoding ability in children with moderate to severe speech impairment. A child with complex communication needs (CCN) who used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) was also examined to determine how the absence of effective articulation skills influences the development of phonological representations. The study employed a longitudinal design to compare the performance of nine children (aged 3:09-5:03 at initial assessment) with moderate to severe speech impairment and 17 children with typical speech development on novel assessment measures designed to determine characteristics of children's phonological representations. The tasks required children to judge the accuracy of spoken multisyllable words and newly learned nonwords. The relationships between performance on these tasks and measures of speech, phonological awareness and early print decoding were also examined. Four assessment trials were implemented at six-monthly intervals over an 18-month period. The first assessment trial was administered approximately 6 to12 months before children commenced school. The fourth trial was administered after children had completed 6 to 12 months of formal education. The child with CCN completed three assessment trials over a period of 16 months. Data analyses revealed that the children with speech impairment had significantly greater difficulty (p<0.01) judging mispronounced multisyllable words compared to their peers with typical speech development. As a group, children with speech impairment also demonstrated inferior performance on the judgment of mispronounced forms of newly learned nonwords (p<0.05). No group differences were observed on the judgment of correctly pronounced real and nonword stimuli. Significant group differences on speech production and phoneme segmentation tasks were identified at each assessment trial. Moderate to high correlations (i.e., r = 0.40 to 0.70) were also observed between performance on the phonological representation tasks and performance on phonological awareness and speech production measures at each trial across the study. Although no significant group differences were observed on the nonword decoding task, 4 of the 9 children with speech impairment could not decode any letters in nonwords (compared to only 1 child without speech impairment) at the final assessment trial when children were 6-years-old. Two children with speech impairment showed superior nonword decoding ability at trial 3 and 4. The within-group variability observed on the nonword decoding task highlighted the heterogeneity of children with speech impairment. The performances of four children with speech impairment with differing types of speech error patterns were analysed to investigate the role of phonological representations in their speech and phonological awareness development. The child with delayed speech development and excellent phonological awareness at trial 1, demonstrated superior phonological awareness and word decoding skills at age 6 years, although his performance on phonological representation tasks was inconsistent across trials. In contrast, a child with delayed development and poor early phonological awareness demonstrated weak performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness, and decoding at each successive assessment trial. The child with a high percentage of inconsistent speech error patterns generally demonstrated poor performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness and decoding measures at each of the 4 assessment trials. The child with consistent and unusual speech error patterns showed increasingly stronger performance on the phonological representation tasks and average performance on phonological awareness but limited word decoding ability at age 6. The 11-year-old girl with CCN, whose speech attempts were limited and unintelligible, demonstrated below average performance on phonological representation tasks, suggesting that an absence of articulatory feedback may negatively influence the development of well-specified phonological representations. This thesis provides evidence for the use of receptive tasks to identify differences in the phonological representations of children with and without speech impairment. The findings also provide support for the link between the representation of phonological information in long-term memory and children's speech production accuracy, phonological awareness and print decoding ability. The variable performance of some children with speech impairment and the child with cerebral palsy demonstrate the need to consider individual characteristics to develop an understanding of how children store and access speech sound information to assist their acquisition of early reading skills.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the experiences of emerging adults with idiopathic CAS, as they reflected on their transitions through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. SPECIFIC AIMS: Describe the experiences of emerging adults with idiopathic CAS as they reflect on developmental stages of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, including the situational experiences of transition occurring between elementary, middle, high school, and post-secondary education, training, or work. Identify strategies and the effectiveness of the strategies utilized by emerging adults with idiopathic CAS to manage experiences during different developmental stages and situational experiences of transition occurring between elementary, middle, high school, and post-secondary education, training, or work. FRAMEWORK: Meleis’ Transitions Theory. DESIGN: A qualitative descriptive design with purposive sampling was used. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Findings support the use of Transitions Theory. Three major themes were identified: The Child’s Environment, Implications of CAS, and Strategies. The school environment contributed to many implications for children. Older children were able to develop strategies to overcome challenges. In the school setting, children did not access nurses for concerns related to their CAS. CONCLUSIONS: CAS creates many challenges for children. Emerging adults with CAS report that environments in which people are knowledgeable, patient, understanding, accepting, and supportive help them express themselves freely despite their speech impairment. The nurse’s role in supporting children with CAS during grade school is untapped as they were largely invisible to the children as a potential resource for anything other than an injury or illness. To better facilitate supportive environments in which children with CAS can flourish, nursing assessment and interventions are needed.

Children with cleft lip and/or palate show early delays in speech and vocabulary development that may have an impact on later communication and social development. While delays in the complexity of babbling may put children at risk for later delays in speech and language development, there is considerable variability in development. This study focused on the rate of children's communication acts, canonical vocalizations, and word use as they made the transition from the pre-linguistic to linguistic development. The study included 15 children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palatewho were seen at three time points between 17–34 months age. Communication rates were calculated from parent–child language samples collected during play activities. Assignment to linguistic stages was based on the children's expressive vocabulary, as reported on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. From the pre-linguistic to linguistic level, the children's average rate per minute of: communicative acts overall increased significantly from 1.49 to 3.07 per minute; canonical vocalizations from 0.21 to 0.90 per minute; and word usefrom 0.16 to 3.61 per minute. Rates of communicative acts were associated with later word use. It appears that children with clefts rely on non-verbal communicative acts when verbal development is delayed.

Avhandlingens övergripande syfte var att undersöka fonologisk medvetenhet och skriftspråklig förmåga hos talande eller icke-talande barn, med lässvårigheter eller motoriska talsvårigheter. De huvudsakliga fynden i denna avhandling var: (1) För barn med lässvårigheter som befinner sig på en tidig nivå i sin läsutveckling bör intervention kring läs- och skrivförmågor fokusera på barnets svaghet snarare än styrkan vad gäller ordavkodning. (2) För barn med lässvårigheter hade såväl fonologisk som ortografisk intervention effekt på förmågan att läsa och skriva. Fonologisk intervention hade effekt även på barnen med lägst läsförmåga. (3) För barn med motoriska talsvårigheter var det signifikanta skillnader mellan de bästa och de sämsta läsarna vad gäller auditiv fonemdiskrimination och generella språkförmågor. (4) För barn med motoriska talsvårigheter hade fonologisk intervention effekt på förmågan att stava ord men inte på läsförmågan. (5) I en analys av nonsensord undersöktes stavfel hos en flicka med anartri. Fler stavfel återfanns i längre ord och en högre grad av fel återfanns i mitten av ord, vilket tyder på svårigheter med arbetsminne och med att segmentera ord. Fynden diskuteras i relation till fonologisk informationsbearbetning inom fyra delområden: fonologiska representationer, fonologisk produktion, fonologiskt minne och fonologisk medvetenhet. Talets betydelse för läs- och skrivförmågan är komplex. Även ett gravt avvikande tal kan ge fonologisk återkoppling och för barn med anartri tycks bristen på tal spela en viss roll. Denna avhandling har ett handikappvetenskapligt synsätt och bidrar till den övergripande förståelsen av fonologisk medvetenhet och skriftspråklig förmåga. Flera av fynden är direkt applicerbara i kliniska sammanhang. / The general aim of this thesis was to explore phonological awareness and written language in the presence and absence of speech in children with reading impairments and children with motor speech impairments. The main findings of the present thesis were: (1) For children with reading impairments who are at an early stage of reading development, interventions targeting reading and spelling should focus on their weakness rather than their strength in word decoding. (2) For children with reading impairments, phonological as well as orthographic intervention had effects on reading and spelling. The children with the lowest reading performance also showed effects of phonological intervention. (3) For children with motor speech impairments, significant differences were shown between low level readers and high level readers in the areas of auditory phoneme discrimination skills and general language skills. (4) For children with motor speech impairments, phonological intervention had effect on word spelling skills but not on reading skills. (5) In an analysis of non-word spelling errors of a girl with anarthria, more spelling errors were found on longer words, and a higher proportion of spelling errors were found in medial letter positions, implying deficit in segmentation of spoken words and working memory. The findings were discussed in relation to four subfields of phonological processing: phonological representations, phonological production, phonological memory and phonological awareness. The contributions of speech to reading and spelling are complex. Even a severely distorted speech can serve as a phonological feedback and for children with anarthria, the lack of speech does seem to play a role. The present thesis has a disability research approach and is a contribution to the overall understanding of phonological awareness and written language. Many of the findings are directly applicable to the clinical context.

Данная работа посвящена исследованию речевых нарушений. Основное содержание работы составляет подсчет и интерпретация ошибок у детей с речевыми расстройствами в возрасте 5–6 лет. В ходе работы были исследованы причины возникновения нарушений речи, была рассмотрена нозология, проведен корреляционный анализ. Для выявления статистически важных различий был использован U-критерий Манна – Уитни. Ввиду недостаточной изученности данного феномена проведенные исследования могут быть в дальнейшем использованы для организации диагностической и коррекционной работы. Полученные результаты могут заинтересовать дефектологов, логопедов, психиатров, неврологов, коррекционных педагогов. / Данная работа посвящена исследованию речевых нарушений. Основное содержание работы составляет подсчет и интерпретация ошибок у детей с речевыми расстройствами в возрасте 5–6 лет. В ходе работы были исследованы причины возникновения нарушений речи, была рассмотрена нозология, проведен корреляционный анализ. Для выявления статистически важных различий был использован U-критерий Манна – Уитни. Ввиду недостаточной изученности данного феномена проведенные исследования могут быть в дальнейшем использованы для организации диагностической и коррекционной работы. Полученные результаты могут заинтересовать дефектологов, логопедов, психиатров, неврологов, коррекционных педагогов.