What is it about?

This is a descriptive follow-up study of seven children, ages 7 to 14 years, who had not attended school. When finally enrolled, they all exhibited significant delay in speech production. Their speech was unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners outside the family. The follow-up study documents the children's speech outcomes years later as young adults.

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Why is it important?

The study demonstrates that some children with unintelligible speech will not develop speech comparable to the speech community standard without intervention. Maturation alone did not result in typical speech for this family of seven children; thus the study provides evidence of the efficacy of speech intervention.

Perspectives

This experience as a doctoral student fueled the author's increased interest in and respect for speech development and it's relationship to language development. Moreover, the school district in which the children resided were overwhelmed with this family of children who presented with complex challenges beyond the speech problems which were the focus of the current study.

Dr. Nola T. Radford
University of TN Health Science Center

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This page is a summary of: A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF SEVEN SIBLINGS WITH UNUSUAL SOUND PREFERENCES, Perceptual and Motor Skills, December 1999, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.2466/pms.1999.89.3f.1215.
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