Researchers: Sue Roulstone, Alan Emond, Tim J Peters, Yvonne Wren
Source of funding: Medical Research Council Grant
Start and end dates: Autumn 2006 - December 2008
Children with speech difficulties form the largest group of those referred to children’s
speech and language therapy departments. Though some children grow out of their
difficulties, others have persistent problems that can affect their educational progress and social development.
Previous research into children’s speech impairments has provided wide ranging estimates of prevalence. A number of factors such as intelligence and family factors have been found to be associated with speech impairment though there is no conclusive agreement on which factors are most important. Similarly, the degree to which educational and social development is affected is in dispute.
Some speech impairments are associated with anatomical or neurological impairments such as cleft palate or cerebral palsy, but for a large number of children, there is no identifiable cause. Research has suggested many possibilities and it is also thought that different subgroups may exist.
This project investigates the percentage of children aged 8 years who have speech impairments and what factors predict persistent problems within the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). It will identify outcomes for children with speech impairments and investigate the existence of any subgroups. The study is a collaboration between the Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit, the University of the West of England, Bristol and the University of Bristol.
When the children were assessed at the age of 8 years, the speech and language therapists and psychologists carrying out the assessment made a note of any child who had immature or nusual speech. At the start of this project, we trawled through those records to identify those children (~485); the speech samples gathered at the age of 8 years were then transcribed phonemically, that is, sound by sound. Mary Pears and the speech team at ALSPAC used Computerised Profiling for this purpose which then allows automatic coding of the children’s utterances along a wide number of phonemic and phonetic parameters. This component of the project is an extremely skillful and timeconsuming piece of work and we are grateful to the team at ALSPAC for their persistence and attention to detail.
This coding is now ready for the final analytical process. This will attempt to identify subgroups of children and factors which appear to be associated with their allocation to any particular subgroup.