I’ve been asked by a parent to briefly cover this topic and so here goes…
When we think about Speech, Language and Communication (SLC) unless you’ve been asked to attend parent / career training by your local SLT team then the terminology us clinicians take for granted can be a somewhat misleading.
Considering how SLC skills typically develop the absolute basic pyramid (there is a more detail I could go into) would have:
1) Attention & Listening skills – at the base
2) Receptive Language skills (what language we understand, what instructions we can follow) – the next level up
3) Expressive Language skills (the language we use i.e. the single words and sentences we use to communication, be that verbally uttered or via PECS / IPad / Communication Board)
4) Speech Intelligibility – the tip of ze iceberg (ie what strangers tend to notice, with verbal children, first)
[5) Social interaction skills develop at each stage]
As there are a number of assessments, some more robust that others, that look a child’s receptive and expressive language skills there are also a number of assessments that look at a child’s speech intelligibility.
I’ll admit here that speech intelligibility ain’t my bag. Some SLTs choose to specialise in this area but it’s not an area that has attracted me personally however when I assess a child I will always consider their speech intelligibility and the possible impact of difficulties in intelligibility.
From the most basic level a speech intelligibility assessment looks at how a child produces a range of words and whether the child is producing the phonemes (sounds) that make up the word appropriately for a child of their age.
Research tells us that we typically acquire speech sounds in a particular order and as such by analysing a speech sound at the initial (start of word); medial (middle of word) and final (end of word) positions we can see whether a child’s speech sounds are appropriately developing.
Throw in how when words are said in sentences and the impact of ‘connected speech’ and you have an assessment that looks at a range of simple pictures plus a more detailed picture where you can get the child to produce sentences to see if the speech sound difficulties/strengths persist.
I have a couple of ‘go to’ speech intelligibility assessments and one of my favourites is one that’s iPad based as it records the audio for me to go back and transcribe (writing down the exact speech sounds produced): http://littlebeespeech.com/articulation_test_center.php.
Once the SLT has identified whether a child’s speech intelligibility is age appropriate they can then identify the errors being made (e.g my son Tom always added a “b” to the beginning of some words when he was 3 “we’re going on a Babenture”) and if these errors are typical (errors seen in usual speech development) or atypical (errors seen less commonly) and set a direct / indirect therapy plan accordingly.
There is a hell-of-a-lot more detail that could be added to this post so please comment below if you want more info and I’ll call in a favour of a Speech Intelligibility specialist who can add to the above ?.