Outgrowing Speech Sound Disorders

Abstract

Clinicians are often asked whether a child will outgrow speech errors without intervention. There are two potential outcomes for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs): normalization or long-term, persistent SSD (Roulstone et al., 2009; Wren et al., 2016). Understanding whether children outgrow speech errors without intervention is of clinical importance because there are fewer speech-language pathologists (SLPs) than the number of children who need their services, and there are often long waiting lists. Access to speechlanguage pathology services can impact children, their families, and society (McGill et al., 2020). Some children who do not receive speech-language pathology services may be able to resolve their speech errors at a later time point, whereas other children continue to show a large number of errors even when they receive belated therapy. For these latter children, delays in services or insufficient intervention frequency may lead to poor speech outcomes affecting children’s education, social development, and occupational prospects (McLeod et al., 2019). This study investigated four consistently reported risk factors of SSD related to children’s speech and language profiles (low stimulability, intelligibility, presence of atypical errors, and expressive language difficulties) and how these factors related to children’s time to normalization. This article presents the findings of a naturalistic cohort study investigating speech normalization and normalization rates in Cantonesespeaking preschool children in Hong Kong, China, who may be at risk for SSD. The objectives of this study were to quantify speech normalization rates at 2.5-year follow-up and to investigate predictors of time to normalization. The researchers examined (a) children who resolved nonadult realizations of speech sounds (i.e., had normalized production of speech sounds) and (b) those who had persisting speech sound difficulties (did not normalize) over 2.5 years. Method