Purpose: Our purpose was to start examining clinical swallowing and motor speech skills of school-age children with unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) compared to typically developing children (TDC), how these skills relate to each other, and whether they are predicted by clinical/demographic data (age, birth history, lesion type, etc.). Method:…

Purpose: The current study examines the pattern of misidentified vowels produced by individuals with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method: Twenty-three individuals with ALS and 22 typical individuals produced 10 monophthongs in an /h/-vowel-/d/ context. One hundred thirty-five listeners completed a forced-choice…

Purpose: Accurate measurement of speech intelligibility is essential for children with speech production deficits, but wide variability exists in the measures and protocols used. The current study sought to examine relationships among measures of speech intelligibility and the capacity of different measures to capture change over time. Method:…

Purpose: The present clinical focus draws on an intrinsic case study to provide a thick description of the communication profile of John, a 9-year-old minimally verbal autistic student. Method: Specifically, traditional behavioral assessments, classroom video observations, and semistructured interviews were used to gather information regarding…

Purpose: Children with a cleft palate (± cleft lip; CP±L) can have difficulties communicating and participating in daily life, yet speech-language pathologists typically focus on speech production during routine assessments. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY; World Health…

The majority of patients with neurological impairment like Parkinson's Disease (PD) or stroke are affected by dysarthria. Dysarthria is a motor speech impairment which negatively affects speech dimensions such as articulation and loudness. This leads to reduced intelligibility, often hindering daily life communication. Intensive and prolonged…

Children with a clinical description of cerebral palsy (CP) commonly experience cognitive and sensory difficulties that co-occur with motor impairment, and for some children this can include impairments in social communication. While research has begun to examine theory of mind abilities in children with CP, relatively little is known about social…

The aim of the study was to investigate and compare the ability to make inferences in three groups of children ranging from 5;2 to 10;9 years: 10 children with cerebral palsy (CP), 10 children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH) and 10 children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI). The relationship between inferential and literal…

This study combines various aspects of previous research on attitudes and behavioral intentions toward children with a disability. It extends previous research in the attempts to evaluate attitudes and behavioral intentions toward intellectual and physical disability separately in addition to examining "general" disability. Study design also…

Background & Aims: We tested the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) hypothesis that so-called specific developmental disorders are marked by a pattern of specific discrepant achievement, and an alternative hypothesis that children with these disorders show a pattern of relatively pervasive low achievement. Methods…

Three spina bifida children (mean age 66 months) were studied to illustrate the comprehension deficit and to demonstrate how evaluations can be structured. Available from Eterna Press, P.O. Box 19, Bolingbrook, Illinois 60439. (Author/PHR)

This research study was designed to examine the attitudes of preschool children toward the disabled, evaluate the children's awareness and understanding of physical impairment, and examine the possibility of modifying preschool children's attitudes towards disabled children. Subjects were 102 children, 3-5 years of age, enrolled in preschools or…

The purposes of this study were to assess the attitudes of preschoolers toward two types of handicapping conditions (mental retardation and physical disabilities), and to explore the underlying social reasoning used by young children to formulate/support their perceptions. Sixteen 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls were presented with two…

This study explores children's understanding of the causal origins of disabilities. Using a forced-choice explanation task, children's understanding of social-psychological, physical, and biological causal explanations of disabilities was considered. We presented 79 children (26 4- to 5-year-olds, 26 6- to 7-year-olds, and 27 10- to 11-year-olds)…