THE PRELIMINARY STUDY OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE
DISORDERS IN CHILDREN
Zhao J, Jin X-M, Zhang Y-W
Shanghai
Children’s Medical Center, Shanghai, China
Objective:
In China, speech and
language disorders in children have been gaining more attention and recognition
by pediatrician, psychologists, and educators. The Child Health and
Development Department of Shanghai Children’s Medical Center established
the first speech and language disorders clinic in Shanghai in Nov. 1998. In
order to show the actuality, the progress, and the limits in this field, we
analyzed the whole clinical cases in 1999.
Methods: There were 225 outpatients randomly
went to our clinic in 1999, 183 male whereas 42 female, from 19 month to
fifteen years old. Main complain are lack of language expression,
inarticulate, or stuttering. Among them, 40 children were given the speech
and language therapy. The assessment methods are as following: (1) Collect
the child’s history including birth, development, family, medical, and
language environment; (2) Take notes of the child’s expression and behavior
ways in the clinic and other living places; (3) Give them developmental
tests or intelligent tests; (4) Have the hearing tests; (5) Assess the
speech and language level: Use PPVT to evaluate the child’s language
receptive ability; Use WPPSI or WISC-R to differentiate the verbal and
non-verbal intelligence; Use phonological test to estimate the speech
problem. We apply different strategies to different disorders. Parents
education and environment modification for preschool stuttering children.
Use special techniques to decrease the frequency of stuttering and
psychological consulting to change the attitude of school age stutterer.
Oral motor function strengthening and target phoneme learning for articulation
disorders. For the language disorders children, we set up language and
development goal, modify the behavior, enhance them language comprehension,
and induce their expression in play.
Results: That the speech and language disorder
cases account for 6.5% of the total cases in 1999 shows the great demand in
this area. Among the speech and language disorders cases, 27.1% children’s
age is above 5 years old when they first went to our clinic, missed the
best time for treatment. Language disorder, articulation problem and
stuttering are the three main problems in this area. We explode an
effective therapy model, which band behavior modification, speech and
language therapy, and family treatment together during clinical experience.
Every child made great improvement after the therapy.
Conclusions: Speech and language disorder area is
still in the primary stage in China. People are still lack of knowledge
about it. We need to improve our assessment and therapy in the future.