Glossary terms:

Articulation:“Articulation can be described as the motoric production of speech sounds…Generally described at the phonetic level, articulation of speech sounds has been delineated according to ‘place of articulation’ and ‘manner of articulation’.” (Joffe & Serry, 2004, p. 260).

Articulation Disorders: Articulation disorders occur when a child cannot make particular speech sounds. An articulation disorder is one that encompasses terminology such as substitutions, omissions and distortions (Joffe & Serry, 2004). Some articulation disorders have a known etiology (organic in nature) (Roth & Worthington, 2005). These may include problems in facial structures such as the nose, mouth or tongue. It may also be related to abnormalities in the function of muscles or nerves. Other articulation disorders have no known etiology (functional in nature), for example an interdental lisp.

Auditory Bombardment: Auditory Bombardment has also been referred to as “focussed auditory stimulation”. It is often used with children who display phonological delays, to assist them in improving auditory discrimination and production of a target pattern. It involves isolating the target pattern in a list of approximately ten words which is then read out to the child, ideally with slight amplification (Hodson & Paden, 1983).

Automaticity: A functional core vocabulary (words that have become established in the child's repertoires as memorised forms, however, the activity has not addressed the planning problem).

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS): A type of apraxia/dyspraxia in the paediatric population. CAS encompasses both acquired and developmental childhood apraxia disorders. CAS usually presents as impairment in the ability to adequately plan and program the fine, rapid, and voluntary movements for speech production, despite normal neuromuscular function for non speech movements of the same structures. It is also known as Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (DVD), Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS), and other terms. On this website the more recent term CAS is used.

Childhood dysarthria: A group of motor speech disorders caused by damage to the central or peripheral nervous system that can be congenital or acquired and may result in disruptions to respiration, phonation, resonation, articulation and prosody.

Cloze prompt : Originally a technique used to test reading comprehension in which the person (child) is asked to supply a word that has been systematically deleted from a text (or verbal phrase). In speech pathology used as another method of prompting and makes use of well known, routine phrases to trigger target word or structure e.g. knife and _____.

Communication Efficacy: The ability to get one's message across clearly to others.

Cue: A verbal/ nonverbal behaviour used to indicate to the client when to initiate production of language/speech target.

Developmental Age: The age in which the child currently presents at in relation to other children.

Direct Imitation: Where the child produces the word immediately after the therapist has provided an example of the word (at a slowed rate).

Discourse: The exchange of ideas within an orderly way; speech and/or writing that is connected; individual expression of ideas on a topic. (Shames & Anderson, 2002).

Distributed Practice: Repetitions of more targets that have a common gestural basis.

Dyslexia: Inability to achieve age appropriate reading skills. It is a specific learning disability. (Shames & Anderson, 2002).

Early Childhood Educator : A person whose occupation involves educating young children e.g. teacher, preschool or kindergarten staff member.

Emergent Literacy Skills: Literacy skills beginning to emerge prior to mature literacy forms.

Evidence based Best Practice: “ A framework for clinical decision making that entails the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values” (Johnson, 2006).

Evidence-Based Strategy: A strategy in which research/evidence has been successfully gathered showing that the strategy is effective in achieving its goals.

Fading: An operant procedure which means to gradually reduce cuing/prompting or support when eliciting a new behaviour (e.g. language structure).

Flaccid dysarthria: Motor speech disorder that is caused by damage to Lower Motor Neuron's resulting in muscle weakness and reduced muscle tone which affects speed, range and accuracy of speech movements (Duffy, 2005).

Flexibility: The ability to plan and carry out novel speech sequences.

Generalisation: The use of target (language/speech) forms outside of the therapy situation without support from the clinician.

Gestural Cues: Cues that are produced using one or more body part. For CAS it is the use of the hand.

Glass manometer: A pressure measuring device that when fitted with a mouthpiece and exhaled into displays the amount of respiratory pressure generated.

Graphemes: Letters (one or a group) that form the basis for phonemes. The grapheme will represent the phoneme.

Grapho-phonic: The relationship between sounds in speech and letters.

High Frequency Words: More familiar, commonly occurring words.

Hyperkinetic dysarthria: Motor speech disorder that is caused by damage to the Basal Ganglia resulting in involuntary movements that are abnormal, rapid or slow, rhythmic or unpredictable and irregular (Duffy, 2005).

Hypertonicity: Excess muscle tone that results in spasticity during movement. (Hodge & Wellman, 1999).

Hypokinetic dysarthira: Motor speech disorder that is caused by damage to the Basal Ganglia resulting in rigidity, reduced force and range of movement and slow individual movements but fast repetitive speech movements (Duffy, 2005).

Imitation: Client copies the clinician/ model verbatim following presentation.

Intervention: A planned, formalised program designed to bring change to a client's (language) behaviour.

Linguistic Approaches: Methods that focus on the dimensions of the language system, relating to the structure, meaning, and use of language.

Mass Practice: Many repetitions of a few targets.

Morphemes: The smallest, indivisible unit of meaning in a language; can be free standing words e.g. dog, big, happy, or grammatical markers such as inflections (bound morphemes, such as plurals /s/ or past tense –ed), prefixes (re-, un-), or suffixes (-ly, -ness).

Morphology: Language component concerned with rules governing change in meaning at the intra-word level.

Motor Approaches: Concentrating on movement of the oral structures to gain more intelligible speech in children with CAS.

Motor Impairment: A problem affecting the ability to control muscle movement.

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound.

Phonology: Phonology is one of the five components of language along with morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics (Hodson & Paden, 1983). “Phonology is associated with a sound system and with rules for combining sounds to form words so as to create different meanings” (Joffe & Serry, 2004, p. 261).

Phonological Awareness: Individual awareness into sounds, words and their structure.

Phonological Disorders: “Children with phonologically based problems demonstrate difficulty in acquiring a phonological system, not necessarily in production of the speech sounds” (Roth & Worthington, 2005, p. 113).

Preschool: An educational institution for young children (3-5 yrs) prior to their commencing primary school.

Principle: A fundamental rule or truth from which others are derived or on which other developments/ initiatives/programs are founded.

Prompt: An indirect, basic clue to direct productions of speech/language target (can be physical/ verbal).

Prosodic cues: Cues that indicate to the child features of speech, such as intonation, stress, rate, and rhythm.

Reinforcement: An item, verbal comment or activity which encourages the client to repeat target behaviour and increases the likelihood of further accurate productions.

Relational Analysis: This involves taking a sample of the child’s speech and comparing it with the speech of same-aged children and normal adults. This analysis helps identify errors of substitution, omission, distortion and/or phonological processes (either typical or atypical) which may be present in the child’s speech.

Semantics: The aspect of language that deals with meaning, concepts, and vocabulary.

Simultaneous Productions: Where the child and therapist produce the word together (at a slowed rate).

Shaping: An operant conditioning procedure that uses positive reinforcement of increasingly closer approximations of a new (target) behaviour to eventually lead to the production of that behaviour (e.g. language target).

Spastic dysarthria : Motor speech disorder that is caused by damage to Upper Motor Neuron's resulting in excessive muscle tone which causes slowness of movement and reduces range of force (Duffy, 2005).

Specific Language Impairment (SLI): A developmental language disorder that can affect both expressive and receptive language. A “pure” language impairment i.e. not related to or caused by other developmental disorders.

Speech Pathologist: A health care professional who specialises in the evaluation and treatment of disorders in communication and/or swallowing.

Stimulability: This refers to the ability to reproduce/imitate a modelled sound (Hodson & Paden, 1983).

Supplementary Approaches: Approaches that are used in combination with at least one other therapy approach to improve therapy outcomes.

Syntax: Rules that govern the internal structure of language including grammar and word order in a phrases/sentences and overall sentence organisation and word relationships.

Tactile Cues: Generation of a response via the sense of touch.

Technique: A specific/ formalised style, mode or method utilised when conducting therapy/ clinical program of intervention. E.g. Indirect language stimulation.

Trajectories: An imagined trace of positions followed by an object moving through space.

Vital capacity : Is the total volume of air a person is able to exhale after a maximum inhalation.

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