Journal article
Four Cases of Children With Phonological Impairment and Precocious Vocabulary: Making Sense of a Clinical Conundrum
American journal of speech-language pathology, Vol.33(5), pp.2230-2248
19/07/2024
PMID: 39028570
Appears in Recent Faculty of Health Publications
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Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the speech production, speech perception, vocabulary, and word learning abilities of lexically precocious 4-year-old children with phonological impairment, in an effort to better understand the underlying nature of phonological impairment in children.
Method: Using a case series approach, we identified four children with phonological impairment and precocious vocabulary abilities. Each child completed routine speech production and vocabulary assessments, as well as experimental speech perception and word learning tasks. The results from these tasks were then used to create profiles of each child's individual strengths and needs across the abilities assessed.
Results: Although all four children presented with phonological impairment and lexically precocious receptive and expressive vocabulary, they differed in their specific speech errors. One child presented with phonological speech errors only, while the other three children presented with an interdental lisp alongside their phonological errors. Three children presented with average speech perception abilities, and one child presented with poorer speech perception. The same three children also showed some learning of novel nonwords 1 week post–initial exposure, while the other child showed no evidence of word learning 1 week post–initial exposure.
Conclusions: The clinical profiles of lexically precocious children with phonological impairment offered different insights into the nature of the problem. Although one child appeared to present with underspecified underlying representations of words, the other three children appeared to present with well-specified underlying representations. Of the three children with well-specified underlying representations, two appeared to have difficulty abstracting particular rules of the ambient phonological system. Further research is needed to improve our understanding of the underlying nature of phonological impairment.
Details
- Title
- Four Cases of Children With Phonological Impairment and Precocious Vocabulary: Making Sense of a Clinical Conundrum
- Creators
- Stephanie Hearnshaw - University of SydneyElise Baker - Western Sydney UniversityRon Pomper - Boys Town National Research HospitalKarla K McGregor - Boys Town National Research HospitalJan Edwards - University of Maryland, College ParkNatalie Munro - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- American journal of speech-language pathology, Vol.33(5), pp.2230-2248
- Publisher
- American Speech - Language - Hearing Association
- Number of pages
- 19
- Grant note
Stephanie Hearnshaw received an Australian Gov-ernment Research Training Program Scholarship to sup-port her doctoral candidature. This research was not sup-ported by any additional grant funding. The authors would like to thank the four children and their families who participated in this study.
- Identifiers
- 991013209902202368
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2024 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Health
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article