Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children (Communication and Language Intervention)

Stephen M. Camarata, Ph.D. is a professor of hearing and speech sciences at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an investigator at the John F. Kennedy Center on Development and Disabilities. His expertise includes speech and language intervention in children with disabilities, including autism, Down syndrome, hearing loss, and developmental language disorders (DLD), and he has published more than 100 articles on these topics. He is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and Editor for Language of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Dr. Camarata’s research has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Institute of Educational Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, and/or private foundations since 1986, and he is the past chair of the NIH study sections on Child Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities (CPDD) and Communication Disorders Research (CDRC).

Amy Clark, M.S. is a treatment clinician at Children’s Minnesota. She has more than 20 years of extensive experience working with children with developmental delays, motor speech disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and language disorders in a variety of settings. Amy is a nationally recognized speaker who works for the PROMPT Institute, which entails teaching PROMPT classes to speech-language pathologists worldwide, developing online courses, and contributing to PROMPT publications. She views PROMPT as an integral part of her daily practice that helps a wide variety of patients reach their full potential.

Joanne Cleland, Ph.D. is a speech and language therapist and senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Her research focuses on using instrumental techniques to diagnose and treat speech disorders in children. She is particularly interested in develop-ing ultrasound tongue imaging into a clinical tool.

Sharon Crosbie, Ph.D. is a senior lecturer in speech pathology at the Australian Catholic University. Her research has focused on speech, language, and literacy development in childhood.

Barbara Dodd, Ph.D. is officially retired, but still active in research and teaching and writing. She worked in departments of psychology, linguistics, and speech-language pathology at universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. Her research focuses on the nature, differential diagnosis, and treatment of spoken and written developmental phonological disorders.

Jennifer Eigen, M.S. owns a private practice in Brooklyn, New York, where she and her therapists provide speech-language services to toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children with a wide range of issues, including motor speech, language, and autism spectrum disorders. Jennifer also works for the PROMPT Institute, teaching PROMPT classes to speech-language pathologists worldwide, helping the institute develop online courses, and contributing to PROMPT publications. Additionally, Jennifer teaches a course in speech sound disorders to graduate students in New York University’s online graduate program.

Jennifer R. Frey, Ph.D. is an associate professor of special education and disability studies at the George Washington University. Her research explores factors that influence early social communication development and predictors of response to treatment in order to adapt interventions to meet the unique needs of individual children with disabilities and their families. She has published in the fields of special education, pediatrics, psychology, and speech-language pathology.

Gail T. Gillon, Ph.D. is Director of the Child Well-being Research Institute at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and is Co-director of A Better Start National Science Challenge, a 10-year program of research focused on ensuring all children’s learning success and well- being. She has an extensive publication record in children’s speech-language and literacy development.

Allison M. Haskill, Ph.D. is a professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at Augustana College where she teaches child language development and disorders courses and also serves as Director for the Center for Speech, Language, and Hearing. Her areas of research include narratives of children on the autism spectrum and morphosyntax skills of children with speech-language impairments.

Deborah A. Hayden, M.A. is the developer and founder of the PROMPT Institute. Currently, she is the research director of the PROMPT Institute and continues to work with col- leagues around the world to promote and develop clinical and brain-related research for the identification, assessment, and treatment of expressive speech disorders across the life span.

Megan M. Hodge, Ph.D.’s clinical and research work have focused on linking theory with practice for serving children with motor speech disorders with the goal of maximizing these children’s acquisition of intelligible speech.

Barbara Hodson, Ph.D. is a professor at Wichita State University and has been directly involved with phonology clients for more than 30 years. Her major professional goal has been to develop more effective assessment and remediation procedures for children with highly unintelligible speech. In 2004, she received the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation’s Frank R. Kleffner Lifetime Clinical Career Award, and in 2009, she received the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Honors of the Association.

Alison Holm, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist and academic at the Nathan campus of Griffith University in Brisbane. Her research interests include assessment and intervention for multilingual and monolingual children with speech sound disorders and multilingual children’s language development and disorder.

Ann Kaiser, Ph.D. is the Susan W. Gray Professor of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of more than 175 articles on early intervention for children with autism and other development communication disabilities. Her research focuses on therapist- and parent-implemented naturalistic interventions.

Megan C. Leece, M.A. is a speech-language pathologist at the Speech Production Laboratory at Syracuse University. She specializes in working with children with speech sound disorders. She participates in research on the diagnosis and treatment of speech sound disorders.

Jennifer Thompson Mackovjak, M.A. is a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences program at Western Michigan University and holds a master of arts degree from Central Michigan University. She has served as a field preceptor, clinical instructor, and adjunct instructor and has provided speech and language therapy across the life span. Ms. Thompson Mackovjak specializes in autism, behavioral therapy, and augmentative and alternative communication. Currently, she is a pediatric therapist for a rural Critical Access Hospital in Colorado.

Adele W. Miccio, Ph.D. died in March 2009. Having completed her Ph.D. in speech and hearing sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington, she was a distinguished professor at the Pennsylvania State University since 1995. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Education, focused on interventions for children with speech sound disorders and phonological development of bilingual children and children with chronic middle-ear infections. In 2002, she was a visiting scholar and guest lecturer at Harvard University, and in 2006, she was named Director of the Penn State Center for Language Science. A beloved and cherished colleague, Adele is greatly missed by all of us who had the privilege of knowing her.

Michele L. Morrisette, Ph.D. holds a lecturer position in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research, clinical, and teaching interests focus on phonological acquisition and disorders in children.

Aravind K. Namasivayam, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist with expertise in working with clinical and developmental populations with speech disorders. He is a research associate in the Oral Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Speech-Language Pathology, at the University of Toronto.

Michelle Pascoe, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Division of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a speech-language therapist. She is director of Child Language Africa ( https://www.childlanguageafrica.com), a research unit focused on speech and language development in the languages of Southern Africa, multilingualism, and ways to support clinicians when working with families from a range of language and cultural backgrounds.

Lindsay Pennington, Ph.D.’s research and clinical practice focus on the speech and communication development of children and young people with motor disorders. Her current and recent work includes the development of classification scales to describe speech and eating and drinking and trials of parent training programs to promote early communication development, interventions to improve speech intelligibility for children and young people with dysarthria, and the comparative effects of medications to reduce drooling.

Jonathan L. Preston, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist and an associate professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at Syracuse University. His clinical research focuses on neurolinguistically motivated and evidence-based treatments for children with speech sound disorders, including children with residual speech errors and childhood apraxia of speech. He also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to speech sound disorders in children.

Rauúl Francisco Prezas is an associate professor in the Department of Human Services at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He has several years of clinical experience in the university, public school, and home health settings, particularly working with culturally and linguistically diverse populations and their families. His interests include speech disorders, phonological development, bilingual/multicultural assessment and treatment, working with children with highly unintelligible speech, phonological treatment models/outcomes, school-based issues, working with underrepresented students, and epistemological beliefs. In addition to publications in several journals, including the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Dr. Prezas has written book chapters and articles related to interest areas, including monolingual and bilingual phonological acquisition, selective mutism, autism, fluency disorders, and culturally and linguistically diverse children.

Donald A. Robin, Ph.D.’s teaching and research are in the area of motor speech disorders and the neu- ral control of speech. He has studied childhood apraxia of speech for more than 35 years. His research focuses on clinical trials and using brain imaging to understand how treatments such as Treatment for Establishment of Motor Program Organization induce experience-dependent neural plasticity.

Susan Rvachew, Ph.D. is a professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University. Her research focuses on the development of more effective interventions to treat speech sound disorders in children and prevent reading disability in this population. She is the author of more than 80 papers and two books on phonological development and disorders.

Nancy J. Scherer, Ph.D. is a professor of speech and hearing science at Arizona State University. She conducts research on assessment and intervention efficacy for young children with craniofacial conditions. She focuses on assessing effectiveness of early intervention service delivery models (telehealth, parent training, hybrid) for application in the United States and international contexts.

Joy Stackhouse, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield and a Fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. In collaboration with Bill Wells and Michelle Pascoe, she has developed a psycholinguistic framework for the assessment and management of children and young adults with spoken and written language difficulties.

Dr. Edythe Strand is Emeritus Speech Pathologist, Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, and Emeritus Professor, Mayo College of Medicine. Dr. Strand's research has focused on developmental, acquired and progressive apraxia of speech, and issues related to intelligibility and comprehensibility in degenerative dysarthria. She is an experienced clinician who has worked in the public schools, private practice, and hospital and clinic settings. Her primary clinical and research interests include assessment and treatment of children and adults with neurologic speech and language disorders. Dr. Strand's publications include many articles and book chapters related to motor speech disorders. She frequently gives lectures on the assessment and treatment of apraxia of speech in children and adults, management of dysarthria in degenerative neurologic disease, and neuroanatomy. She is known for developing a dynamic assessment tool (Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skills in Children—[DEMSS]). She has also developed a treatment program for children with severe childhood apraxia of speech (Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing—or DTTC) for which research has demonstrated treatment efficacy. She is the co-author of the books: Management of Speech and Swallowing in Degenerative Disease; Clinical Management of Motor Speech Disorders in Children and Adults; and is co-editor of the book, Clinical Management of Motor Speech Disorders in Children. She is an ASHA fellow and has been awarded Honors of the Association of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, as well as Honors of the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences.

Eleanor Sugden, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist and postdoctoral researcher working at the University of Strathclyde. She is interested in the everyday clinical management of childhood speech sound disorders, instrumental analysis and treatment of speech sound disorders, and how to support speech-language pathologists’ application of evidence into their clinical practice.

Ann A. Tyler, Ph.D. is Associate Dean in the College of Health and Human Services and Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Western Michigan University. She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She has presented and published extensively in childhood speech sound disorders. Her research in the area of treatment efficacy has been supported by a variety of external funding sponsors. Dr. Tyler has served on numerous editorial boards and has served ASHA in a variety of roles.

Roslyn Ward, Ph.D. is a senior research fellow in the School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Speech Pathology at Curtin University/Perth Children’s Hospital. She is also a certified practicing speech-language pathologist. Her research interests include conducting clinical trials in infants/children with communication impairment associated with cerebral palsy.

Pam Williams, Ph.D. worked as a speech and language therapist at the Nuffield Hearing and Speech Centre for more than 30 years before retiring from her clinical role in December 2017. She was involved in the creation of the original Nuffield Centre Dyspraxia Programme (1985) and has been responsible for its development since 1993. She continues to run training courses for speech and language professionals on the subject of childhood apraxia of speech and the Nuffield Centre Dyspraxia Programme (third edition). Dr. Williams was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in 2013 in recognition of having carried out work of special value to the profession. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, in 2016, and her thesis investigated the diadochokinetic skills of children with speech sound disorders. She continues to be a member of the Child Speech Disorder Research Network for the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Lesley C. Magnus, Ph.D. is a professor at Minot State University, specializing in phonology, clefting, and assessment in speech-language pathology. She has been involved in clinical work for more than 30 years in both Canada and the United States.

Sarah Masso, Ph.D is a certified practicing speech pathologist, a research fellow at Thet University of Sydney, Australia, and an adjunct research fellow at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She developed the Word-Level Analysis of Polysyllables and is currently investigating the relationship between polysyllable speech accuracy and literacy development with funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Awards (DECRA).

Brigid C. McNeill, Ph.D. is a speech-language therapist and Professor and Deputy Head of School of Teacher Education in the College of Education, Health and Human Development at the University of Canterbury. Dr. McNeill is an international expert on literacy development in children with childhood apraxia of speech. Her research also focuses on developing and evaluating methods to better prepare teachers to support children’s early literacy development.

Elise Baker, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist, clinical researcher, and an associate professor of Allied Health, with Western Sydney University and South Western Sydney Local Health District, Australia. Her research focuses of assessment and intervention for children with speech sound disorders. She is passionate about supporting speech-language pathologists’ implementation of high-quality clinical research into everyday clinical practice.

Barbara May Bernhardt, Ph.D. was a professor at the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences at the University of British Columbia (1990–2017). Her primary focus is phonological development, assessment, and intervention, including an ongoing crosslinguistic project ( http://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca). Other areas of focus include ultrasound in speech therapy; language development, assessment, and intervention; and approaches to service delivery to Indigenous people in Canada.

Françoise Brosseau-Lapré, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University. Her research is funded through the National Institutes of Health. Her research as director of the Purdue Child Phonology Lab focuses on how speech perception impacts speech production and interacts with language factors in children with speech sound disorder with or without concomitant language disorder.

A. Lynn Williams, Ph.D. is Associate Dean in the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences and a professor in the Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology at East Tennessee State University. Most of her research has involved clinical investigations of models of phonological treatment for children with severe to profound speech sound disorders. She developed a new model of phonological intervention called multiple oppositions that has been the basis of federally funded intervention studies by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and she developed a phonological intervention software program, Sound Contrasts in Phonology (SCIP), that was funded by NIH. Dr. Williams served as associate editor of Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools and most recently served as the associate editor of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Dr. Williams is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and served as ASHA Vice President for Academic Affairs in Speech-Language Pathology (2016–2018). She currently serves as ASHA’s 2020 President-Elect (2021 ASHA President).

Sharynne McLeod, Ph.D. is a speech-language pathologist and professor of speech and language acquisition at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She is an elected Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia. She was named Australia’s Research Field Leader in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology (2018, 2019, 2020) and has won Editors’ Awards from Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing: Speech (2018) and American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (2019). She was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, previous editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, and has coauthored 11 books and over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters focusing on children’s speech acquisition, speech sound disorders, and multilingualism.

Rebecca J. McCauley, Ph.D.is a professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at The Ohio State University. Her research and writing have focused on assessment and treatment of pediatric communication disorders, with a special focus on speech sound disorders, including childhood apraxia of speech. She has authored or edited seven books on these topics and co-authored a test designed to aid in the differential diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech. Dr. McCauley is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, has received Honors of the Association, and has served two terms as an associate editor of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.