The present study aims to investigate the phonological development of typically developing monolingual Swedish speaking children aged three to four years. The result could be used in the standardization of a new phonological test material for clinical speech and language pathology assessments. One-hundred and thirty four children aged three and four years (73 girls and 61 boys) were assessed with the new material. The children were tested in kindergartens in three communities in southeastern Sweden. Their assessments were audio recorded, transcribed phonetically and analyzed with Percentage Phonemes Correct (PPC) and Percentage of Words Correct (PWC). An analysis of speech error patterns of substitutions of phonemes, reduction of consonant clusters and word structural deviations was conducted. The data recorded from the children were divided and analyzed in four semi-annual intervals and two annual intervals. The result shows a clear developmental trend with children in the older age group having a higher PPC and PWC than the younger children. Significant differences were found between the groups in annual intervals. Significant differences could only be demonstrated between the youngest age group and the other groups at semi-annual intervals. No significant gender differences were observed. Most of the errors of individual phonemes and consonant clusters among children in all age groups were distortions rather than substitutions, but the younger children simplified consonant clusters more often.

The aim of the present study was to examine students' text comprehension in grades 4 and 6. Participants were 61 students without documented or suspected reading and writing difficulties, in grades 4 and 6. The focus was on texts designed by Bishop and Adams (1992), containing two types of questions: literal and inference questions, and three different ways of presenting the text; listening, silent reading and silent reading with the text available when responding to the questions. The texts have been previously used in research and as a tool for clinical, qualitative estimate of reading comprehension in speech and language pathologists’ assessments. Investigation was also conducted for working memory, vocabulary, and phonological and orthographical decoding. The results show that students have a significantly higher score in terms of literal questions when the text is available in responding to the questions, versus listening and silent reading. The results also show that literal and inference questions do not differ. No differences between gender and grades were encountered. Conclusions are drawn that students with typical reading development in grades 4 and 6 do not have any difficulty in answering neither literal nor inference questions, concerning the three texts in this study.

This diploma thesis is devoted to the possibility of using materials for crash test dummy construction. The thesis describes how crash test dummies evolved, what crash test dummies are currently available for crash test and what they are made of. The main aim of the diploma thesis is to design materials and process for production of a crash test dummy with human-like biofidelity. The thesis describes the way which the dummy will be manufactured using duralumin, rubber, alder wood and silicone polymer or agar.