What are articulation and phonological disorders?
Articulation and phonological disorders are difficulties producing speech sounds or groups of speech sounds that persist beyond the typical period of speech development and/or result in difficulty understanding speech.
Articulation disorders usually include one or two speech sound errors such as
- lisps and ‘s’ and ‘z’ distortions
- substitution for ‘r’ and ‘er’
- substitutions for ‘th,’ ‘I,’ ‘sh,’ ‘ch’
Phonological disorders include multiple sound errors that typically cause problems with the intelligibility of the child’s speech and can include
- deleting final consonants from a word
- deleting consonants from a blend of two or three consonants (blow for bow)
- replacing “continuing” (f, s) with “stop” sounds (p, t)
- replacing “back” (k, g) with “front” sounds (t, d)
What is the evaluation procedure?
A comprehensive evaluation will be conducted to determine what aspects of communication have been affected. This evaluation is scheduled for two hours. In addition, all potential clients are asked to complete a case history form to assist in preparation of the UCF evaluation.
If you already have received a speech and language evaluation at another location within the past three months, please send us the report with your case history form. This will allow us to determine if or what additional diagnostics need to be completed.
In addition, we will need relevant medical reports from previous speech/language evaluations. We also will need radiological reports (e.g., swallow study reports or written results of brain scans).
What type of treatment do we provide?
Therapeutic programs are uniquely developed to help the child in his/her speech intelligibility. Therapy includes evidence-based approaches shown to change the speech sound production of preschool and school-age children. Therapy for these disorders may include the following:
- discrimination training
- traditional speech sounds production training
- auditory bombardment of target sounds in context
- cycles training
- minimal-pair training
A more intensive intervention program is sometimes needed to correct misarticulated sounds. The Communication Disorders Clinic is designed to provide more intensive and individualized treatment options. Frequency of therapeutic services range from once a week to multiple sessions a week.
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Hear from our clients and their families
Steven – A client with developmental disorders uses his communication skills in the community with success.
Note: “www.ucfspeechlanguagetherapy.com” has been changed to healthprofessions.ucf.edu/cdclinic/.
Steven – “I order a hamburger, french fries, fruit and two waters.”
