1/108. Use of technology in phonological intervention. microcomputers can support phonological intervention in a variety of ways. software and hardware can assist clinicians in identifying errors and establishing appropriate treatment targets. technology can also help to determine the nature of errors so that optimal intervention methods are used. Specific technology tools for addressing phonological errors due to problems with articulation, phonemic identification, and phonetic mapping are discussed. The use of technology to document and analyze treatment performance is also addressed. ( info) |
2/108. Effect of bilateral subthalamic nucleus stimulation and dopatherapy on oral control in Parkinson's disease. This study focuses on the speech organs of a parkinsonian patient who initially had been treated with levodopa for 13 years, and had become severely disabled by motor fluctuations. This patient has been treated with bilateral chronic stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) for the last 2 years. Upper lip, lower lip and tongue force production were examined before surgery under off and on medication conditions, and 2 years after surgery under off and on stimulation conditions. We compared the effect of stimulation and dopatherapy on the speech organs. L-Dopa had a poor effect whereas bilateral stimulation improved oral control and speech intelligibility. These results suggest that STN stimulation influences speech organs in a different way from the dopaminergic system and similarly affects oral and limb motor systems. ( info) |
3/108. A comparison of three therapy methods for children with different types of developmental phonological disorder. Treatment case studies of three children whose speech was characterized by non-developmental errors are described. Three therapy methods were trialed with each child: phonological contrast; core vocabulary and PROMPT. The accuracy and intelligibility of the children's connected speech improved throughout the course of the programme. Intervention that focused on teaching a rule about the contrastive use of phonemes was most successful for a child who consistently made non-developmental errors. Children making inconsistent errors received most benefit from the core vocabulary approach that markedly enhanced consistency of production. However, once consistency was established, one child benefited from phonological contrast therapy. While the results of the study should be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size and the cumulative effects of intervention, the findings suggest that different parts of a child's phonological and phonetic system may respond to various types of treatment approaches that target different aspects of speech production. The implication drawn is that just as no single treatment approach is appropriate for all children with disordered phonology, management of some children may involve selecting and sequencing a range of different approaches. ( info) |
4/108. Phonological systems of a set of Putonghua-speaking twins. Impaired phonology is reported to be the most salient characteristic of the communication profiles of twin children. However, little is known about the phonological development of twins speaking languages other than English. This case study described the phonological systems of a set of Putonghua-speaking twins, using quantitative and qualitative measures. The analyses indicated that the phonological systems of the co-twins were not identical, though both evidenced characteristics of delayed or disordered phonological development and shared some error patterns. They comprehended both adult and their sibling's phonological forms, suggesting a dual phonological representation in their mental lexicon for some words. These results confirmed Dodd and McEvoy's (1994) research findings for English-speaking twins. ( info) |
5/108. Speech patterns in Kabuki make-up syndrome: a case report. The case of a girl aged 3 years and 8 months with Kabuki make-up syndrome is reported. At presentation, she had normal cognitive functioning, and she also had a history of otitis media, a submucous cleft palate, and some hypotonia. language testing showed normal receptive skills and good expressive vocabulary but poor morphosyntactic abilities. Speech analysis showed that she was capable of producing most of the sounds of her native language but demonstrated high variability in production of the sounds. In addition, she inconsistently simplified words by application of several phonologic processes. Possible explanations for the communication problems demonstrated are discussed. ( info) |
6/108. Comparison of cross-language generalisation following speech therapy. Little is known about the phonological development of children who acquire two languages sequentially in the preschool years. Some of these children will be referred for assessment of speech disorder. Distinguishing between delayed development due to the language learning environment and disorder is problematic in the absence of normative data on the typical phonological development of bilingual children. Another major issue concerns whether both languages require intervention, or only one because of generalisation to the other language. Treatment efficacy studies of 2 bilingual children are reported. The data indicate that different patterns of cross-language generalisation occur depending upon the deficit in the speech processing chain underlying the speech disorder. ( info) |
7/108. Speech patterns in children with velo-cardio-facial syndrome. Two case studies. The purpose of this study was to document the articulation patterns in children with velo-cardio-facial syndrome. The subjects were 2 children with this syndrome, aged 6 years 6 months and 3 years 11 months. Phonetically transcribed speech samples collected by means of a picture naming test formed the basis for this study. The speech samples were subjected to two types of analyses: independent analyses describing the children's sound productions regardless of their relation to the adult targets and relational analyses comparing the children's productions with the adult standard form. It was found that the articulatory problems in velo-cardio-facial syndrome are not simply due to a delay in speech sound acquisition. Articulation errors found in this syndrome are uncharacteristic of normal speech development. Whether errors are syndrome-specific awaits further investigation. ( info) |
8/108. dysarthria as the isolated clinical symptom of borreliosis--a case report. This report presents a case of dysarthria due to hypoglossal nerve mono-neuropathy as the only consequence of neuroborreliosis. The 65-year-old man with a seven-months history of articulation disturbances was examined. The speech of the patient was slow and laboured. A slight weakness of the muscles of the tongue (left-side) was observed. The patient suffered from meningitis due to borrelia burgdorferi infection in 1999 and initially underwent a successful antibiotic treatment. Detailed radiological investigation and psychological tests were performed and co-existing neurological diseases were excluded. To describe profile of speech abnormalities the dysarthria scale was designed based on S. J. Robertson dysarthria Profile. There were a few disturbances found in self-assessment of speech, intelligibility, articulation, and prosody but especially in the morphology of the articulation muscles, diadochokinesis, the reflexes (in the mouth, larynx and pharynx). Needle EMG examination confirmed the diagnosis of mono-neuropathy of left hypoglossal nerve. The study confirms the fact that neuroborreliosis may evoke chronic consequences. ( info) |
9/108. The structure of /s/-sequences: evidence from a disordered system. This study considers the much-debated markedness and structural status of word-initial /s/-sequences in English by examining the development of KR (male, age 3;6) who has a phonological disorder. Three points in time are discussed: (1) when all initial consonant sequences are reduced to singletons; (2) when only initial /s/-sequences surface correctly; and (3) when all initial consonant sequences surface correctly. While these production patterns are common across developing systems, few accounts have addressed them in terms of structure or markedness. Toward that end, it is argued that KR's /s/-sequences surface as adjuncts, rather than complex onsets. This is explained within optimality theory, whereby high-ranking markedness constraints prevent complex onsets but not adjuncts. The account offers an explanation for consonant sequence asymmetries within and across grammars, allowing for differing representations for /s/-sequences across speakers and for variation exhibited in children's productions. A typology of possible grammars is therefore offered, and clinical implications are considered. ( info) |
10/108. Refractory dyslexia: evidence of multiple task-specific phonological output stores. We investigated the case of a patient whose reading was characterized by multiple phonemic paraphasic errors. An error analysis of a large corpus of reading responses (758 words, 86 non-words) highlighted the preponderance of phonological errors which did not occur in his naming, repetition or spontaneous speech. His comprehension of the written word was relatively preserved, even for words he was unable to read aloud. We suggest that his impairment lies at the level of the phonological output store. We also demonstrate that his reading performance was facilitated by increasing the response-stimulus delay. The strong influence of temporal factors is shown to be task-specific. Two main points are drawn from our results. First, we argue that our patient can be characterized as having a refractory access type of deficit; to our knowledge, no previous case of a refractory deficit affecting word reading has been reported. Secondly, the task specificity of both the phonological error pattern and the sensitivity to temporal factors is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a unitary phonological output store. Contrary to orthodox neuropsychological models, we propose that there are independent stores specific for reading and spoken output. ( info) |