Abstract
Procedures were designed to test for the effects of working-memory training on children at risk of fluency difficulty that apply to English and to many of the languages spoken by children with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in UK schools. Working-memory training should: (1) improve speech fluency in high-risk children; (2) enhance non-word repetition (NWR) (phonological) skills for all children; (3) not affect word-finding abilities. Children starting general education (N = 232) were screened to identify those at risk of fluency difficulty. Children were selected who were at high-risk (12), or low-risk (27) of fluency difficulty. For the low-risk children 10 received, and 17 did not receive, the working-memory training. All children in the treatment groups received working-memory training over a 2-week period. For the high-risk group, fluency improved and lasted for at least a week after the end of the study. Phonological skills improved in this group and in the low-risk group who received the training and the improvements continued for at least a week. The low-risk group who did not receive working-memory training showed no improvements, and no group improved word-finding ability.
Highlights
It is widely agreed that children who have speech and language communication needs (SLCN) should receive attention as early as possible (Bercow, 2008)
The pairs compared were: (1) high-risk with WM training versus low-risk no WM training to assess whether the performance of the high-risk group became like that of a low-risk group who were not subject to the training; (2) high-risk with WM training versus low-risk with WM training to assess whether the training affected the high-risk group more than the low-risk group; and (3) lowrisk with WM training versus low-risk no WM training to assess whether the training affected low-risk groups at all
The interaction arose because the UNWR scores of the low-risk no WM training group did not improve over phases whereas those of the high-risk with WM training group improved
Summary
It is widely agreed that children who have speech and language communication needs (SLCN) should receive attention as early as possible (Bercow, 2008). This article examined the effects of working-memory (WM) training for school-entry age children who have one form of SLCN (fluency difficulty). The way children with fluency difficulty can be identified, issues associated with testing in schools, and how to provide information about children in useful ways for schools, and for Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs), to use are reviewed. Working-Memory Training for Fluency Difficulty are identified (Howell, 2013; Howell et al, 2017a). Pediatric fluency problems such as stuttering have usually started by this age but have not persisted for so long that they become resistant to remediation (Howell, 2010a). Full clinical assessments cannot be conducted in schools because it is sometimes difficult to collect family history and other information for several reasons such as poor response rate or when a child only has one parent
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