Which preschool children's speech difficulties persist?

What is it about?

Some children’s early speech errors spontaneously resolves. Others have persistent problems affecting school achievement and social development. The research described searched for a way of identifying those children at risk for ongoing speech difficulties, examining the types of speech errors made. More than two thirds of children making speech errors at four years that were typical of younger children (e.g., 'poon' for spoon) resolved by seven years. Only a third of children whose speech errors were inconsistent (e.g., 'kart', 'sa', 'chub' for shark) or atypical of normal development (e.g., starting all words with /h/ - 'hop', 'hair', 'hoon' for pop, chair, moon) resolved by seven years. Children making few atypical errors were more likely to resolve, irrespective of total number of errors or whether they received intervention.

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Why is it important?

Speech pathology services have limited resources and need to give higher priority for intervention for children at greater risk for persistent speech difficulties, particularly since these children also often literacy difficulties. Our findings evaluated a way to identify children at greatest risk.

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