Early Intervention Principles

This article describes the four principles that should be integrated into early intervention (EI) speech-language pathology services for infants and toddlers with communication disorders. The article stresses the importance of including the legal guardians of the child in all decisions regardless of their involvement in intervention. The four principles are founded on the ideas that EI services should be: (a) family oriented around culture and language, (b) developmentally appropriate and take place in a child’s natural environment, (c) comprehensive and organized by a team of specialists, and (d) founded on the most reputable evidence. Each principle is explained in great detail with reliable suggestions in difficult scenarios that a professional …show more content…
Two groups of twins participated in a three-year study: one group born prematurely, the other born at full term. The authors explain that in previous studies, comparisons were made through standardized test scores, which can yield a multitude of limitations ranging from short attention span to level of test anxiety. Therefore, the authors included both standardized test scores and spontaneous language samples for each group. The results indicate that premature children were outscored on measures in both the language sample and standardized tests with statistical significance present in standardized testing for the first two years, but never in the language sample. These results remain consistent with previous data, stating premature children yielded results in the lower end of the norms for language development. Breastfeeding and gender did not have an impact on development, but educating parents provided positive outcomes. By the time the children reached school age, there was no significant difference in cognition between a premature child and his …show more content…
Olswang and his colleagues created a “profile” of the typical child who needs to receive therapy, and those children who do not. The empirical review done by the authors reported that a child with delayed language will likely catch up to peers once they reach school age, however, children with a multitude of risk factors are more likely to continue to miss language milestones and fall behind. For example, if the child has a family history of ongoing language delays, or if the child has consistent, untreated middle ear infections, they are at a much greater risk for having a specific language impairment. The authors concluded that if the child does not demonstrate use of several change “predictors” and possess a large number of risk factors, the more concerned the clinician should be about language development. The predictors used in this study included: language production and comprehension, phonology, ability to imitate, play, gestures use, and social skills. Each predictor included “red flags” for development that would require therapy as well as positive outcomes that predict positive outcomes for children who would not necessarily require