CSCD3082 PHONOLOGY, LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
Contents:
Week 1: Psycholinguistic Perspective on Complex Speech-Sound Disorders Week 2: Psycholinguistics Part 2
Week 3: Constraint-Based Non-linear Phonology Week 4: Intervention Using Non-Linear Methods
Week 5: Collaborative Practice between Speech Pathologists and Educators Week 6/7: Supporting Language and Literacy
Week 8/9: Adolescent Language Impairment Week 10: Interventions for LI in Adolescents
Week 11/12: Acquired Language Disorders in Children Week 13: Brain Tumours in Children
Case Study – Maddie
Case History
Medical history:
o Mother experienced infections during pregnancy.
o Single umbilical artery.
o Born at full term.
Jaundice – required phototherapy.
o Diagnosed with epilepsy at 3 (petite mal – absence seizures), has since been medicated.
o Global developmental delay – met milestones 9 months later than expected.
o Premature arthritis.
o No feeding problems, hearing and vision WNL.
Educational/social history:
o Attends a special needs preschool 3 days a week.
Class size of 8 children.
o Has 2/3 close friends.
o Personality – resilient, compliant, happy and outgoing.
o Interests – craft, pretend play, cooking.
Family:
o Older sister does not have communication impairments (no family history).
o Lives with supportive mother, father and older sister.
o Mother has quit work to look after Maddie.
o English speakers.
Assessment Plan
Receptive/expressive language – CELF-P2.
Phonological awareness – SPAT-R.
Phonology – DEAP (single word sample).
Communication – connected speech sample.
Motor speech – OMA.
Hearing – screener to check for changes.
Results
Moderate-severe phonological impairment:
o Fronting.
o Nasalisation.
o Fricative simplification.
o Stopping ‘ch’ to /t/ and ‘j’ to /d/.
o Cluster reduction.
Receptive/expressive language:
o Average skills in sentence and word structure, recalling sentences.
o Moderate difficulties in expressive vocab, basic concepts and concepts and following directions.
Phonological awareness:
o Age appropriate rhyme awareness, phoneme isolation and phoneme segmentation.
o Moderate-severe difficulty in syllable segmentation, alliteration and letter knowledge.
Knew /m/ and /s/.
Strengths = Input
Hearing, phonological recognition.
Rhyming detection.
Weaknesses = Stored Representations, Output
Phonological representations.
Semantic representations.
Motor program and execution.
Memory (referral may be necessary – paediatrician).
Diagnoses
Phonological impairment.
Language disorder.
Phonological memory difficulties.
CAS (possibly mild dysarthria also).
Phonological awareness difficulties.
Intervention
Syllable structures are a strength, but memory difficulties with 3+ syllables, so use 2 syllable words.
Receptive/input tasks for concepts:
o Vocabulary with repetition.
o Worked on 2-3 at a time (due to memory issues).
o Established one concept before adding the opposite concept.
Speech:
o 2 syllable words maximum.
o Phonological contrast therapy – minimal pairs of nonstimulable, consistent error sounds.
Phonological awareness:
o Program based on minimal pairs and speech errors (Gillon, 2000).
Skills at 6;11
Speech – majority of errors have resolved.
Language – low average receptive language, word finding difficulties, slow to follow instructions.
Literacy – has all sound/letter links and is blending and segmenting, difficulty determining meaning of words and learning sight words.
Week 1: Psycholinguistic Perspective on Complex Speech-Sound Disorders
Psycholinguistic Model
Focuses on psychological (perceptual, cognitive and motor) processes and strategies involved in the perception, storage, planning and production of speech.
o Perceptual = input.
o Cognitive = stored representations.
o Motor = output.
Speech Processing Model (Stackhouse and Wells, 1997)
Conduct tests in order as each element affects the elements that follow after.
PERCEPTUAL (Input)
o Peripheral auditory processing = hearing sounds.
Does the child have adequate auditory perception?
Test: hearing screener, pitch detection.
o Speech/non-speech discrimination.
Can the child discriminate speech sounds without reference to lexical representations?
Test: play them a mix of environmental sounds/speech and get them to identify speech vs non-speech sounds (pointing to 1 of 2 pictures).
Test of Auditory Processing Skills (TAPS).
o Phonological recognition = identify the meaning of sounds (what words are being said).
Does the child have language specific representations of word structures?
Test: identifying real/non-words, legal vs illegal combinations.
Can the child discriminate between real words?
Test: if 2 words are the same/different (dog vs log).
o Phonological discrimination = detecting subtle articulatory differences (picking up accents, lisps etc).
COGNITIVE (Stored Representations) o Phonological representation.
Are the child’s phonological representations accurate?
Test: auditory detection of speech errors – if they know the difference between “wing” and “ring” despite saying both “wing”.
Is the child aware of the internal structure of phonological representations?
Test: blending, matching pictures for initial and final sounds.
o Semantic representation = accessing the meaning of the word.
o Motor program = a stored representation of how to say a particular word.
Can the child access accurate motor programs?
Test: standard articulation assessment, spoonerisms, onset and rhyme string production.
Can the child manipulate phonological units?
Test: blending words – “c… a… t” makes “cat”.
