Preventive measures in speech and language therapy

Polona Slokar (2014) Preventive measures in speech and language therapy. Diploma thesis.

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Abstract

Preventive care plays an important role in speech and language therapy. Through training, a speech and language therapist informs the expert and the general public about his efforts in the field of feeding, speech and language development, as well as about the missing elements that may appear in relation to communication and feeding. A speech and language therapist is also responsible for early detection of irregularities and of those factors which affect speech and language development. To achieve these goals, a speech and language therapist must possess appropriate diagnostic means, which enable detection of risk and consequently timely intervention and better results. There is currently one language screening test available in Slovenia, applied by experts on five-year-old children. However, as some of the communication problems appear earlier than at the age of five, these could be detected and eliminated earlier. There is a general tendency in the expert community to introduce such a screening test earlier; on three-year-old children. In view of this, this thesis combines the latest existing literature and the currently existing screening tests into an instrument, which will enable data collection on the development of communication of a three-year-old child and which will cover the main communication areas. As such, it will enable identification of the ‘risky’ three-year-old children, who could exhibit disadvantages in the speech-language development field. The designed instrument has been tested on 47 children in kindergarten child-care. In parallel, the parents’ answers on their children’s communication skills were collected together with the general profiling information. The literature and the collected data review showed that the instrument is applicable for an assessment of a child’s language development and as such comprises all important areas of language development. Correlation calculations pointed out to a statistically important correlation of the grade of the speech-therapist and of the parent’s. Correlation of the predictor – mother’s education – and the number of points, was not proven to be statistically significant.

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