This Article Full Text (PDF) Free References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Pennington, L. Articles by Farrier, F. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Intensive dysarthria therapy for older children with cerebral palsy: findings from six cases

Clinical Medical Sciences, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK, lindsay.pennington{at}ncl.ac.uk

Claire Smallman

Clinical Medical Sciences, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK

Faith Farrier

Clinical Medical Sciences, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK, Sedgefield Primary Care Trust, Clinical Medical Sciences (Child Health)

Children with cerebral palsy often have speech, language and communication difficulties that affect their access to social and educational activities. Speech and language therapy to improve the intelligibility of the speech of children with cerebral palsy has long been advocated, but there is a dearth of research investigating therapy effectiveness. To begin to explore the possible effectiveness of therapy focussing on speech production, six students aged 10-18 years, were given intensive individual therapy to increase breath support for speech, maintain breath support and volume across utterances and hence maximise their background effort for speech. Intelligibility of single words and connected speech was measured immediately before and after the block of therapy and again seven weeks later. Gains in intelligibility were observed at the single word level, but not for continuous speech. Implications for therapy and future research are discussed.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?