Down syndrome - articulation test 2

Articulation evaluation - 4 years and 6 months.

In addition to the speech therapy offered by the public school, my son also gets private speech therapy once a week for 30 minutes. We started when he was 2 years old. These sessions focus exclusively on articulation and intelligibility.

Here the second report. You may also want to see the previous articulation evaluation at 4 years.

The Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation-2nd Edition (GFTA-2) was re-administered to assess the STUDENT's production of speech sounds in single words. He was initially administered the test in June 2012.

Standard scores between 85-115 are considered within normal limits for age. the STUDENT's standard score of 83 (previous score was 78), 14%ile rank (previous was 10%ile rank) indicates that his speech sound skills are below normal limits in single words, but that there has been improvement.

The STUDENT's speech intelligibility in single words and connected speech is reduced. This clinician understands him about 60% of the time when the context is shared. It was notable that many of his word approximations do not seem to vary as much as in the past with repeated attempts.

In general, the STUDENT's speech sound system has improved and matured; more of his speech-sound errors fall within typical and developmental errors versus atypical errors.

Some age typical differences speech-sound patterns include gliding (W/R, Y/L), palatal fronting (S for SH, TS/CH, D/J), deaffrication (TS/CH, D/J), consonant blend reduction (K/KW, T/ST, B/BR), fronting (N/NG), stopping (D/S) and D for voiced TH and F for voiceless TH.

The speech-sound differences that remain atypical are, N/V in vacuum (previous was M/V), H/F (initial and medial), and omitting syllables ("banna"/banana), but far fewer than the initial test.

Assimilation within words and across words appeared to be less of an influence on the variability of his sound production. He now says "duck" accurately and "hinger"/finger, as well as "pencil" which use to be "mencil".

Improvement seemed to be mostly within the consonant blend category, including, TL for SL (previous S/SL), KR (previous was K/KR), GR (previous was G/GR), PL/FL (previous was F/FL), F/FR (previous was W/FR), PL (previous was P/PL), SP (previous was P/SP), TL/TR (previous was T/TR), G/GL (previous was M/GL), D/DR (previous was S/DR), and SW (previous was Z/SW). The STUDENT now includes final F in "off" and "knife"; he now approximates initial TH with P (previously omitted TH).

The STUDENT's mother reported that he sometimes blocks when beginning sentences; this is intermittent and may be related to motor speech or language formulation issues.The STUDENT's utterance length has increased and his intelligibility is negatively impacted by impreciseness and poor pacing of talking in addition to multiple speech sound errors.The STUDENT's mother reported that he does not always generalize sounds from his speech practice to conversation. This will be monitored and addressed in therapy.

In summary, the STUDENT has made good progress over the last 6 months. It is recommended the STUDENT's speech and language therapy continue to address speech intelligibility difficulties. Therapy goals should use a cycles approach to remediate F, V, CH, SH, J, FR, and FL, in addition to pacing of sentences and spontaneous conversation.