Background: Classification systems in healthcare support shared understanding of conditions for clinical communication, service monitoring and development, and research. Children born with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP+/-L) are at high risk of developing cleft-related speech sound disorder (SSD). The way cleft-related SSD is…

Background & Aim: To assess consonant proficiency and velopharyngeal function in 10-year-old children born with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) within the Scandcleft project. Methods & Procedures: Three parallel group, randomized, clinical trials were undertaken as an international multicentre study by nine cleft teams in five…

Background: It is important to capture a comprehensive language profile from speakers with aphasia. One way to do this is to evaluate spoken discourse, which is language beyond a single simple clause used for a specific purpose. While the historical trend in aphasiology has been to capture performance during isolated language tasks, such as…

Background: For many people with Parkinson's disease (PWPD), the long-term maintenance of speech following intensive treatment remains elusive. PD Check-In, a model for supported self-managed maintenance of speech following LSVT LOUD®, was developed and evaluated. Aims: To evaluate the impact of PD Check-In on vocal intensity and level of…

Background: Many speakers with non-fluent aphasia (NFA) are able to produce some well-formed word combinations such as 'I like it' or 'I don't know', although they may not use variations such as 'He likes it' or 'I don't know that person'. This suggests that these utterances represent fixed forms. Aims: This case series investigation explored the…

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental conditions. Due to variable rates of language growth in children under 5 years, the early identification of children with DLD is challenging. Early indicators are often outlined by speech pathology regulatory bodies and other developmental services as…

Background: Despite the public health implications of language difficulties associated with social disadvantage, there is a dearth of effectiveness studies investigating the effects of targeted speech and language programmes in this area. Aims: To determine the effects of a targeted selective community-based child language intervention programme…

Background: Speech and language acquisition can be a challenge for young children with Down syndrome (DS), and while early intervention is important, we do not know what early interventions exist and how effective they may be. Aims: To systematically review existing early speech, language and communication interventions for young children with DS…

Background: Assessing the speech production of multilingual children is challenging for speech-language therapists (SLTs) around the world. Scientific recommendations to improve clinical practice are available, but their implementation has mostly been described in studies from English-speaking countries. Aims: This survey aimed to describe the…

Background: Treatment fidelity (TF), that is, the degree to which the treatment delivery has adhered to protocol, is an important aspect of establishing treatment validity and reliability. Research has shown that establishing TF is only done in a small percentage of aphasia treatment studies. Aims: This project supports the work of the CommuniCATE…

Background: Rapid Syllable Transitions (ReST) treatment uses pseudo-word targets with varying lexical stress to target simultaneously articulation, prosodic accuracy and coarticulatory transitions in childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). The treatment is efficacious for the acquisition of imitated pseudo-words, and generalization of skill to…

Background: In recent years, analyses of cleft palate speech based on phonetic transcriptions have become common. However, the results vary considerably among different studies. It cannot be excluded that differences in assessment methodology, including the recording medium, influence the results. Aims: To compare phonetic transcriptions from…

Background: Submucous cleft palate (SMCP) has a heterogeneous presentation and is often identified late or misdiagnosed. Diagnosis is prompted by speech, resonance or feeding symptoms associated with velopharyngeal insufficiency. However, the broader impacts of SMCP on communication have rarely been examined and therefore are poorly understood.…

Background: Several studies have suggested that practitioners hold speech and language therapy (SLT) practice as tacit and consequently it is difficult for the therapist to describe. The current study uses a range of knowledge elicitation (KE) approaches, a technique not used before in SLT, as a way of accessing this tacit knowledge. There is…

Background: In 2012 the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) was published as a parent-report screening assessment that considers parents' perceptions of their children's functional intelligibility with a range of communication partners that differ in levels of authority and familiarity in real-life situations. To date, the ICS has been…