Abstract
Young children with Pierre Robin sequence are at considerable risk to develop delayed or disordered communication development. This study investigated the effectiveness of early communication intervention with four young children with Pierre Robin sequence, aged 5 to 28 months. The Proportional Change Index (Wolery, 1983) was used to determine the amount of child progress that took place during the intervention period. The results indicated that regular early communication intervention sessions over an extended period of time produced positive results, especially for expressive language abilities. The presence of a slight hearing loss due to otitis media, seemed to have influenced the effectiveness of early communication intervention. One subject displayed an associated disorder and evidenced the slowest rate of development for receptive and expressive language abilities as well as a limited phonetic repertoire for consonants. All but one subject had limited phonetic repertoires possibly due to velopharyngeal incompetence. Early communication intervention services should be delivered regularly over an extended period of time and the hearing abilities and speech production skills of young children with Pierre Robin sequence should be followed closely during early communication intervention.
Highlights
Young children with Pierre Robin sequence are at considerable risk to develop delayed or disordered communication development
The medical care necessitated by these early medical complications and associated disorders often require that infants with Pierre Robin sequence are hospitalized for prolonged periods of time (Savage, 1997)
The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of early communication intervention with four young children with Pierre Robin sequence and the following subaims were formulated:
Summary
Young children with Pierre Robin sequence are at considerable risk to develop delayed or disordered communication development. Elliot et al (1995) list the following medical complications frequently occurring in young children with Pierre Robin sequence: airway obstruction, hypoxia, respiratory infections, otitis media and feeding problems like an insufficient sucking pattern and aspiration. In addition to these medical complications, children with Pierre Robin sequence may exhibit problems like cerebral palsy (Bull, Givan, Sadove, Bixler & Hearn, 1990), congenital heart problems, cognitive impairments and visual problems (Sadewitz, 1992). The communication development ofyoung children with Pierre Robin sequence is traditionally described as being characterised by the same impairments as that ofchildren with cleft lip and palate, namely: velopharyngeal incom-
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