Purpose: This study evaluates the initial efficacy of Chaining SPeech Lessons in Intensive Ten-minute Sessions (SPLITS), an alternative service delivery model for the Speech Motor Chaining treatment approach. We hypothesized that Chaining SPLITS would result in improvements in /[Voiced alveolar approximant]/ accuracy on syllables and untrained…

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to compare decoding and literacyrelated skills of children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech (sCAS) to children with reading disorders (RD) and no history of speech sound disorder (RD-no SSD) to determine if the groups differ in decoding and the endophenotypes that contribute to RD. We also…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of the Fluharty Preschool Speech and Language Screening Test--Second Edition (Fluharty-2; Fluharty, 2001) for mass screenings of language at age 3 years. Method: Participants were sixty-two 3-year-old children, 31 who had failed and 31 who had passed the Fluharty-2. Performance…

Background: This study evaluated the validity of the Intelligibility in Context Scale--Traditional Chinese (ICS-TC) and explored its potential as a screening tool for speech sound disorder (SSD) in Cantonese-speaking children in Hong Kong. Method: The parents of 789 Cantonese-speaking children aged between 2;4 (years;months) and 6;9 completed the…

Purpose: This clinical focus article provides readers with a description of the stimulus characteristics of 12 popular tests of speech sound production. Method: Using significance testing and descriptive analyses, stimulus items were compared in terms of the number of opportunities for production of all consonant singletons, clusters, and rhotic…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate, over 2 separate school years, the school-district-wide failure rate of kindergartners on a screener of grammatical tense marking--the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI) Screening Test (Rice & Wexler, 2001)--composed of past tense (PT) and third-person singular (3S)…

Purpose: This review evaluated whether 9 single-word tests of phonological error patterns provide adequate content coverage to accurately identify error patterns that are active in a child's speech. Method: Tests in the current study were considered to display sufficient opportunities to assess common phonological error patterns if they…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a shorter language sample elicited with fewer pictures (i.e., 7) would yield a percent grammatical utterances (PGU) score similar to that computed from a longer language sample elicited with 15 pictures for 3-year-old children. Method: Language samples were elicited by asking forty…

Purpose: There are a number of evidence-based treatments for preschool children with phonological disorders (Baker & McLeod, 2011). However, a recent survey by Brumbaugh and Smit (2013) suggests that speech-language pathologists are not equally familiar with all evidence-based treatment alternatives, particularly the complexity approach. The…

An identification procedure to distinguish between beginning stutterers and normally disfluent children, "A Protocol for Differentiating the Incipient Stutterer," is an appraisal tool that synthesizes existing knowledge into a unique format which guides clinical observations, data collection, and interpretation. The design, administration, and…

Scores on Whole Word Accuracy (WWA), a method for assessing articulation proficiency in conversation, and Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale (AAPS) scores were computed and correlated for 30 subjects in eight age groups (three-seven years). Developmental trends similar to those previously established for the AAPS were observed for WWA scores.…

Performance of three speech impaired students (four - seven years old) on three phonological process measures--Natural Process Analysis, The Assessment of Phonological Processes, and Procedures for Phonological Analysis of Children's Language--suggested that any of the measures would identify essentially the same phonological processes as…

Scores of elementary school students referred for special education on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Functions (CELF) were compared to rating of language specialists. CELF tests did not consistently identify children requiring therapeutic help nor those with language deficits. CELF scores also exhibited considerable variability. (Author/CL)

The screening version of the Photo Articulation Test elicited significantly more correct initial picture identifications than either the Fisher-Logemann Test of Articulation Competence or the Templin-Darley Test of Articulation. Significant relationships between diagnostic decision and clinical judgments were obtained for both normal and…

The article describes a method for assessing children's production of certain grammatical structures, including noun and verb markers, pronouns, negative forms, and interrogative inversion. (Author)