Programming for the Language Component in Developmental Phonogical Disorders

Since 1975 we have been collecting continuous speech samples from children with delayed phonological development. Most samples are from children referred to a phonology clinic for evaluation of their delayed speech. The children were between two and one-half and nine years old at the time of their initial assessment. Approximately 70 percent are fourto six-year-old males with mild-moderate to moderate-severe speech delay (as defined later in this paper). Although none of the children had gross mechanism, cognitivelinguistic or psychosocial involvement at the time of testing, many have sub­ sequently received special education ser­ vices. As assessment protocols have been modified, different data sets are available for subsamples within the approximately 100 children. However, continuous speech samples have been obtained for all chil­ dren under essentially similar conditions, including, for most children, the same ex­ aminer. Sampling and phonological analysis procedures are described in Shriberg and Kwiatkowski (1980) and Shriberg and Kwiatkowski (in press, a). T h e goal here is to assemble, in one paper, assorted data obtained from these continuous speech samples and from some of our other studies that touch on language-speech issues. Consistent with the focus of this issue of Seminars, emphasis is less on methodological and statistical de­ tail and more on applied matters. After a presentation of definitions, some lan­ guage-phonology findings are assembled in three sections: structural, syntacticsemantic, and pragmatic data. The article concludes with a discussion of manage­ ment issues, including a provisional framework for a speech-language man­ agement program.