Timely development-focused diagnostics and stimulation of articulatory skills in children at the start and during pre-school age. The development of articulation in children and the question of a timely start of effective stimulation in the Czech Republic

• Main Author: Karel Neubauer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wydawnictwo LIBRON 2016-12-01
• Series: Konteksty Pedagogiczne
• Subjects: articulation disorders; speech therapy diagnostics; timely preventive stimulation; phonological differentiation of phones; dyslalia
• Online Access: https://kontekstypedagogiczne.pl/kp/article/view/118

Development-focused diagnostics and therapy of articulatory skills de-viations in children of pre-school age and at the start of school attendance shows a significant preventive and stimulatory potential in this area, which has long been marked by persistent obsolete and unfounded claims and methods. This fact is in ac-cordance with the requirement for qualified speech therapy care to develop effective focus of preventive and intervention measures, depending on the development of the field, as well as the conditions and environment in current society. In the Czech Republic, a stable number of children, slightly rising rather than decreasing (around 40%) enter elementary school with persisting deviations of articulation develop-ment.21 These conclusions are not in agreement with the aforementioned claim about the necessity (and practical implementation) of articulatory deviation adjustments before the beginning of compulsory school attendance. The above mentioned fact is surprisingly linked with a limited development of findings on the ideal intervention tactic for adjusting articulation deviations in children at the start of their school years, even though in practice this is a very frequent phenomenon, including the issue of linking the phoneme to the grapheme with a specific phone and an adequate level of cooperation with the school programme. This fact can be, without exaggeration, called an indicator of a limited efficiency of care about children’s articulation and a trigger mechanism producing lasting deviations of pronunciation, and therefore it is necessary to support this fact by presenting results of research studies. The studies presented prove the above stated conclusions and point to the current deficiency of expert speech therapy care in preschools, and especially in elementary schools. The solution is to apply a targeted preventive programme of children’s articulation skills development and to support those forms of speech therapy intervention that build on the establishment of a long-term, responsible therapeutic relationship between the therapist, the child and its family. The fact that in the period of what we call physi-ological articulatory deviations mechanisms appear and become fixed, which lead to the production of deviations from intact articulation, leads to criticisms of using the term “physiological dyslalia” and to underscoring the need for timely preventive stimulation already since the child is 2,5–3 years old.