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Using quality children's literature with portrayals of characters that have communication impairments can be an effective teaching tool. Storybook characters with communication disorders can provide positive role models and promote understanding of diverse populations. Eighteen children's books were selected based on the following criteria: publication dates between 1994 and 2001, reading levels between preschool and eighth grade, and main characters with speech, language, or hearing disorders. Curriculum topics were summarized for integration into state academic content areas.

This study investigates category goodness judgments of /r/ in adults and children with and without residual speech errors (RSEs) using natural speech stimuli. Thirty adults, 38 children with RSE (ages 7-16) and 35 age-matched typically developing (TD) children provided category goodness judgments on whole words, recorded from 27 child speakers, with /r/ in various phonetic environments. The salient acoustic property of /r/ - the lowered third formant (F3) - was normalized in two ways. A logistic mixed-effect model quantified the relationships between listeners' responses and the third formant frequency, vowel context and clinical group status. Goodness judgments from the adult group showed a statistically significant interaction with the F3 parameter when compared to both child groups (p < 0.001) using both normalization methods. The RSE group did not differ significantly from the TD group in judgments of /r/. All listeners were significantly more likely to judge /r/ as correct in a front-vowel context. Our results suggest that normalized /r/ F3 is a statistically significant predictor of category goodness judgments for both adults and children, but children do not appear to make adult-like judgments. Category goodness judgments do not have a clear relationship with /r/ production abilities in children with RSE. These findings may have implications for clinical activities that include category goodness judgments in natural speech, especially for recorded productions.

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DefinitionPhonology is a branch of linguistics. It is the study of the rules for combining phonemes (speech sounds) to create meaning. Phonology is also defined as the study of phonemes (or sounds) used in a language and the linguistic rules that specify how the phonemes are organized and put together into syllables, words, and sentences to create meaning. For example, in English, there are no lip-rounded vowels produced with the front of the tongue, no more than three consonants can begin a syllable, for example, str is permissible but stdr is not.Children must learn the phonemes and phonological rules of their language to communicate adequately. Failure to master the phonology of a language (an articulatory or phonological disorder) can result in unintelligible speech and difficulty in learning to read. Cross-References▶ Articulation Disorder ▶ Phonological Disorder ▶ Speech Sound Disorder References