Good communication skills important for academic progress 01/04/2012 0 Comments   A study published in the January 2012 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research reports that children who are identified with speech and communication problems at 4-5 years old have lower scores on tests of academic performance at ages 7-9. The effect of early childhood communication impairment is strong. The study looked at the effect of communication impairment across a number of life activities, and found the following: Children with communication impairments have difficulty acquiring new information and skills. They have difficulty putting communication skills, including listening, paying attention, and learning letter and number sounds and writing, into practice. Children with communication impairment often experience communication breakdowns in their interactions with others. They may have difficulty negotiating and resolving issues due to their impairment. Communication impairment may persist into the school years and may be associated with a range of problems producing and understanding language, including difficulties with speech sound production, syntactic (grammar/sentence structure) development, and speech processing. Communication impairment may affect conversation and discussion, sometimes due to lack of coherence and context Individuals identified with communication impairment in early childhood may experience difficulty with social interactions with peers at school and report poorer friendship quality than do children without communication impairment. In addition, they may be perceived more negatively than are typically developing children by peers at school and may experience more bullying. Communication impairment in early childhood has also reportedly been associated with changes in the type and/or quality of relationships between children and parents, children and siblings, and children and teachers. Children with childhood communication impairment require more remedial assistance at school. They may complete fewer years of formal education than do their peers, they have been found to be at risk for dropping out of school (because they feel less connected to school, choose vocational/employment training instead of remaining in the mainstream school system, and undertake less skilled employment than do their typically developing peers. The report concludes that, "Results from the present study extend the findings reported by Harrison et al. (2009) to show that difficulties associated with school achievement continue beyond the early school years for children with a history of communication impairment. Previous longitudinal studies of individuals with communication impairment have indicated that communication impairment may be associated with lower grades and the need for remedial assistance as individuals progress through high school (Felsenfeld et al., 1994) and with a higher likelihood of vocational and employment training than completion of higher years of schooling (Snowling et al., 2001). In the present study, children who were identified with communication concerns in early childhood reported less enjoyment of school than did their peers . . . it is possible that less enjoyment of school was related to their poorer academic performance and/or less effective relationships with peers and teachers (Ladd, 1990). The findings suggest the need to improve school experiences for children with communication impairment." Reference McCormack, J., Harrison, L.J., McLeod, S., McAllister, L. (2011). A Nationally Representative Study of the Association Between Communication Impairment at 4-5 Years and Children's Life Activities at 7-9 Years. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 5, 1328-1348. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0155). Retrieved from http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/content/abstract/54/5/1328.   What is Specific Language Impairment? 12/30/2011 0 Comments   Many children seen by the Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) in the schools are classified as Specific Language Impaired (SLI). We don't yet understate the cause of this deficit. It is explained as difficulty learning spoken words and sentences in the absence of other neurodevelopmental, neurological, hearing, emotional, or nonverbal intellectual impairments. Children with SLI are usually those who begin talking late. When compared to other children their age, they know fewer words. Tests of preschoolers will show that they have a small vocabulary and produce fewer words when encouraged to talk for a language sample. _ Children with SLI also process words slowly. They are slower to recognize words and name pictures. They also make frequent phonological or word letter sound errors when asked to say words. Slow to learn new words, children with SLI need to hear a new word as many as two to three times more that other children their age in order to learn it. In addition, they are less likely to remember a new word after a few days have passed. When it comes to learning a new word, their processing skills are challenged by a variety of external factors such as the fast speech of parents, teachers, or their peers. Children with SLI also show that they have a poor understanding of the meaning of many words and will make errors such as saying foot when they mean shoe. A recent study has shown that the child's ability to delay a response is a strong predictor of his ability to connect words and their meanings. During the delay, he is shutting out distractions and paying attention to the current task. Not surprisingly, extra time and attention yield better results since children with SLI have a more difficult time learning to shut out other sounds, images, and meanings that pop into their heads while listening and formulating answers. Research suggests to us that learning word meaning is the result of a learning environment that is rich in sound learning. Learning a word meaning category is related to learning sound types. Early experience with learning letters and sounds can facilitate the understanding of word meaning. Several experiments have shown that awareness of word sound categories helps children learn new meaning categories. Eventually, word clues become more important that other cues in learning the meaning of new words. Reference: Mainela-Arnold, E., Evans, J.L., Coady, J.A. (2010) Explaining Lexical-Semantic Deficits in Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Phonological Similarity, Phonological Working Memory, and Lexical Competition. Journal of Speech Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1742-1756 More on SLI: Teachers Need Greater Awareness of Language Disorders, Research Finds   First Post! 10/19/2011 0 Comments   Start blogging by creating a new post. You can edit or delete me by clicking under the comments. You can also customize your sidebar by dragging in elements from the top bar.

Sara E. Lewis In addition to teaching part time at T.C. Walker Elementary School, I  work as a freelance writer and marketing consultant. I'll be blogging about speech and language topics . . . and I may use this spot from time to time to tell you a little more about the things I'm doing! Archives January 2012 December 2011 October 2011

---