The contribution of motor impairment in speech disordered children: A retrospective review

By E.A. Strand and R. McCauley

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the degree to which motor impairment is judged to be a contributing factor to the delay or deviance in speech acquisition in a large group of children referred to a major medical setting for speech-language evaluation.  In addition to diagnostic data for these children, specific data concerning their performances on motor speech and structural functional examinations as well as other speech and language testing are examined.  A retrospective design will be used to look at the issue of motor involvement at the time of initial evaluation, at re-evaluation for selected cases, and cross-sectionally by age in order to determine whether motor contributions to child speech disorder change with age.  Implications for clinical practice and future research on  more diverse clinical populations will be drawn from this preliminary study.