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Stuttering is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, stretched sounds or silent pauses in which the person is unable to produce sounds and sound transitions. Treatment success is the highest if stuttering is treated before the age of 6 years, before it develops into "persistent" stuttering. Stuttering treatment programs that focus directly on the speech of the child, like the Lidcombe Program, have shown to be effective in this age group. Mini-KIDS is also a treatment that focuses directly on the speech of the child. It is possible that capturing the increased brain plasticity at this age in combination with creating optimal conditions for recovery underlie these treatments' success rate. A treatment focusing on the cognitions, emotions and behaviour of the child, the social cognitive behaviour treatment (SCBT), is also frequently delivered in Belgium. In this study we want to compare, and collect data on the effectiveness, of these three treatment programs: Mini-KIDS, SCBT and the Lidcombe Program (protocol registered under number NCT05185726). 249 children will be allocated to one of three treatment groups. Stuttering specialists will treat the child (and guide the parents) with Mini-KIDS, the SCBT or the Lidcombe Program. They will be trained to deliver the programs meticulously. At 18 months after randomisation, the speech fluency of the child and the attitude of the child and parent(s) towards speech will be measured. It is expected that the three programs will achieve the same (near) zero levels of stuttering in nearly all children and a positive attitude towards speech at 18 months after the start of treatment. The amount of treatment hours to reach the (near) zero levels of stuttering will be compared between the different programmes. For families as well as for the health system this could generate important information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this study, the authors assessed the hypothesis of a limitation in attentional allocation capacity as underlying poor sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Fifteen children with SLI, 15 age-matched controls, and 15 grammar-matched controls participated in the study. Sixty sentences were presented in isolation, and 60 sentences were presented with a concurrent choice reaction time task in which colored stimuli randomly appeared at the center of the computer screen. Results: Sentence comprehension was affected by the dual-task condition to a greater extent in children with SLI relative to age controls but not relative to grammatical controls. Conclusion: This study does not support limitations in attentional allocation capacity as representing a core deficit in SLI. Rather, the data show that these children show attentional allocation capacity comparable to that of younger children having similar language level, suggesting that SLI is characterized by a slowed development of both attentional and language domains.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) consistently show poor nonword repetition (NWR) performance. However, the reason for these difficulties remains a matter of intensive debate. Nonword repetition is a complex psycholinguistic task that heavily relies upon phonological segmentation and phonological knowledge, and even lexical knowledge. This study aims at investigating various linguistic factors that can be at the root of difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment when repeating nonwords, with the goal of achieving a better understanding of the linguistic processes supporting nonword processing. Linguistic complexity was assessed by manipulating lexicality, syllabic complexity, and perceptual difficulty in NWR tasks. Fifteen children with Specific Language Impairment, 15 typically developing controls matched on both age and performance IQ, and 15 typically developing children matched on lexical knowledge participated in this study. Children with Specific Language Impairment performed overall more poorly than age- and IQ-matched children and lexical age-matched children. Importantly, children with Specific Language Impairment showed lower lexicality and syllabic complexity effects in their NWR performances. These results are compatible with difficulties to retrieve lexical and sublexical phonological knowledge in the context of NWR tasks.

Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or item information were administered to kindergarten children aged 4 and 5. At age 4, age 5, and from age 4 to age 5, serial-order STM capacities, but not item STM capacities, were specifically associated with vocabulary development. Moreover, the increase of serial-order STM capacity from age 4 to age 5 predicted the increase of vocabulary knowledge over the same time period. These results support a theoretical position that assumes an important role for serial-order STM capacities in vocabulary acquisition. (Contains 1 footnote and 8 tables.)

Purpose: In this study, the authors assessed the hypothesis of a limitation in attentional allocation capacity as underlying poor sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Fifteen children with SLI, 15 age-matched controls, and 15 grammar-matched controls participated in the study. Sixty sentences were presented in isolation, and 60 sentences were presented with a concurrent choice reaction time task in which colored stimuli randomly appeared at the center of the computer screen. Results: Sentence comprehension was affected by the dual-task condition to a greater extent in children with SLI relative to age controls but not relative to grammatical controls. Conclusion: This study does not support limitations in attentional allocation capacity as representing a core deficit in SLI. Rather, the data show that these children show attentional allocation capacity comparable to that of younger children having similar language level, suggesting that SLI is characterized by a slowed development of both attentional and language domains. Key Words: syntax, specific language impairment, executive functions, Children with SLI are considered to show important morphosyntactic deficits. However, although grammatical production has been widely investigated, sentence comprehension in children with SLI has received only little research interest [...]

Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or item information were administered to kindergarten children aged 4 and 5. At age 4, age 5, and from age 4 to age 5, serial-order STM capacities, but not item STM capacities, were specifically associated with vocabulary development. Moreover, the increase of serialorder STM capacity from age 4 to age 5 predicted the increase of vocabulary knowledge over the same time period. These results support a theoretical position that assumes an important role for serial-order STM capacities in vocabulary acquisition. Keywords: verbal short-term memory, serial-order processing, vocabulary development DOI: 10.1037/a0018540

The aim of this study was to establish normative data on the speech disfluencies of normally fluent French-speaking children at age 4, an age at which stuttering has begun in 95% of children who stutter (Yairi & Ambrose, 2013). Fifty monolingual French-speaking children who do not stutter participated in the study. Analyses of a conversational speech sample comprising 250-550 words revealed an average of 10% total disfluencies, 2% stuttering-like disfluencies and around 8% non-stuttered disfluencies. Possible explanations for these high speech disfluency frequencies are discussed, including explanations linked to French in particular. The results shed light on the importance of normative data specific to each language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]