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Background: The conversational speech of most children can be understood by people outside the family by the time they reach 4 years. However, for some children, speech sound disorders (SSDs) persist into their early school years, and beyond, despite adequate hearing, oromotor function, and language learning opportunities. One explanation for children's SSDs are domain-general cognitive-linguistic deficits that impair the child's ability to correctly derive rules governing how speech sounds legally combine to form words in a specific language. Aims: To explore whether there are differences in performance on executive function tasks between children who make speech errors characteristic of phonological delay and those who make speech errors characteristic of phonological disorder. Methods & Procedures: Twenty-six children aged from 3;6 to 5;2 (13 with phonological delay and 13 with phonological disorder), matched pairwise for age and sex (nine males), were assessed on tasks measuring cognitive flexibility (rule abstraction and cognitive shift) and phonological working memory. Outcome & Results: For the cognitive flexibility tasks, the performance of children with phonological delay was significantly better than that for children with phonological disorder, but there were no group differences for the phonological working memory task. Conclusions & Implications: Children with phonological disorders might benefit from intervention programmes that incorporate training in cognitive flexibility.

Emerging evidence suggests domain-general processes, including working memory, may contribute to reduced speech production skills in young children. This study compared the phonological short-term (pSTM) and phonological working memory (pWM) abilities of 50 monolingual English-speaking children between 3;6 and 5;11 with typical speech production skills and percentage consonant correct (PCC) standard scores of 12 and above (n = 22) and typical speech production skills and PCC standard scores of between 8 and 11 (n = 28). A multiple hierarchical regression was also conducted to determine whether pSTM and/or pWM could predict PCC. Children with typical speech production skills and PCC standard scores of 12 and above had better pWM abilities than children with typical speech production skills and PCC standard scores of between 8 and 11. pSTM ability was similar in both groups. pWM accounted for 5.3% variance in overall phonological accuracy. Implications of phonological working memory in speech development are discussed.

While little is known about why children make speech errors, it has been hypothesized that cognitive-linguistic factors may underlie phonological speech sound disorders. This study compared the phonological short-term and phonological working memory abilities (using immediate memory tasks) and receptive vocabulary size of 14 monolingual preschool children with phonological delay with individually matched peers with typical speech development. The immediate memory tasks examined forward recall of familiar words (pointing response), reverse recall of familiar words (pointing response), and reverse recall of digits (spoken response). The results indicated that children with typical speech development had larger receptive vocabularies and performed significantly better than children with phonological delay on all immediate memory tasks. Qualitative error analyses revealed that while the two groups made similar errors on the forward memory task, children with phonological delayed performed differently on reverse recall of spoken digits. These findings suggest a link between immediate memory and delayed phonological development.

Previous research indicates that children with speech sound disorders (SSD) have underlying phonological memory deficits. The SSD population, however, is diverse. While children who make consistent atypical speech errors (phonological disorder/PhDis) are known to have executive function deficits in rule abstraction and cognitive flexibility, little is known about their memory profile. Sixteen monolingual preschool children with atypical speech errors (PhDis) were matched individually to age-and-gender peers with typically developing speech (TDS). The two groups were compared on forward recall of familiar words (pointing response), reverse recall of familiar words (pointing response), and reverse recall of digits (spoken response) and a receptive vocabulary task. There were no differences between children with TDS and children with PhDis on forward recall or vocabulary tasks. However, children with TDS significantly outperformed children with PhDis on the two reverse recall tasks. Findings suggest that atypical speech errors are associated with impaired phonological working memory, implicating executive function impairment in specific subtypes of SSD. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines the efficacy of a parent-implemented early language intervention based on collaborative consultation. Advantages of teaching parents to implement the language intervention to children; Use of a multiple baseline design in determining the effectiveness of the treatment; Indications of the descriptive analysis of communicative behaviors of mothers.