(Press-News.org) (Edmonton) Researchers from the University of Alberta are helping children with Down syndrome who stutter find their voice and speak with ease.
Stuttering is a common problem that affects almost half of all children with Down syndrome, yet despite the scope of the problem, little research exists about preferred treatment options—or even whether to treat at all. Researchers with the U of A's Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research (ISTAR) point to a new case study that shows fluency shaping can indeed improve a child's speech.
"People who stutter, whether they have a developmental delay or not, can do very well with treatment," said study co-author Jessica Harasym, a speech-language pathologist and Elks clinician with ISTAR in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. "There is no difference between the way the child in our case study responded compared with other children and families we've worked with who don't have Down syndrome."
Co-author Marilyn Langevin, ISTAR's director of research, said there is little consensus in the speech-language pathology community about treating stuttering for kids with co-existing disorders like Down syndrome. Their descriptive case study directly challenges the notion that children with Down syndrome should not be taught fluency skills for fear that failure could lead to frustration and damaged self-esteem.
"The difference in treating a child with Down syndrome might be using more simplified terms and slight modifications in how skills are explained, more modelling of skills—the more you show, the better," Langevin says.
In the study, Harasym and Langevin worked with an eight-year-old girl, "Sarah," whose stuttering had affected her scholastic performance and ability to speak with friends and teachers at school. Four months of treatment, including the practice of prolongation—speaking at an exaggeratedly slow rate—plus breathing techniques and voice management skills inside the clinic and at home, helped Sarah improve her fluency by 98.6 per cent.
"This is front-line clinical research and it is making a difference in people's lives," Langevin says, explaining that stuttering can lead to social isolation, teasing and bullying. She says treatment helped Sarah find a way to get her words out, and helped with school work as well as interacting and making new friends.
"When there is less interference with communication, a child like Sarah can function that much better. She's functioning better with friends, she's functioning better with family, and she's able to reach her potential in a more robust way."
Langevin and colleagues at ISTAR plan to publish studies that report on treating young adults with Down syndrome who stutter, as well as those with Prader–Willi syndrome and other co-existing disorders.
###The research was funded by an anonymous donor and a grant from the Alberta and National Elks and Royal Purple. It was published in the December 2012 issue of Journal of Fluency Disorders.
Giving a voice to kids with Down syndrome
2013-02-25
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Memory strategy may help depressed people remember the good times
2013-02-25
New research highlights a memory strategy that may help people who suffer from depression in recalling positive day-to-day experiences. The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Previous research has shown that being able to call up concrete, detailed memories that are positive or self-affirming can help to boost positive mood for people with a history of depression. But it's this kind of vivid memory for everyday events that seems to be dampened for people who suffer from depression.
Researcher ...
Putting malaria on the SHELPH
2013-02-25
Experts have disabled a unique member of the signalling proteins which are essential for the development of the malaria parasite. They have produced a mutant lacking the ancient bacterial Shewanella-like protein phosphatase known as SHLP1 (pronounced shelph). This mutant is unable to complete its complex life cycle and is arrested in its development in the mosquito. The discovery could help in the design of new drugs to arrest the spread of this killer disease.
SHLP1is critical to the cellular development of the malaria parasite. It can be found at every stage in the ...
Nottingham technology in heart development breakthrough
2013-02-25
Technology developed at The University of Nottingham has been used in a breakthrough study aimed at developing the first comprehensive model of a fully functioning fetal heart.
The abdominal fetal ECG device, designed originally by academics in the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and on commercial sale throughout the world since 2008 through the University spin-out company Monica Healthcare Ltd, has been used to observe living fetal hearts of babies in their mothers' wombs.
The collaborative study led by experts at The University of ...
Promoting poultry health through diet
2013-02-25
URBANA -- Developing strategies to increase the amount of saleable product while reducing dietary inputs is a priority for animal scientists. University of Illinois researchers have been looking at how dietary components affect gut health and disease resistance in chickens.
"An important nutritional outcome is how well an animal is able to digest and metabolize its diet," said Ryan Dilger.
Poultry and swine nutritionists are concerned about dietary fiber in alternative dietary ingredients, particularly the by-products of biofuel production. Fiber concentrations are ...
Scientists create new maps depicting potential worldwide coral bleaching by 2056
2013-02-25
MIAMI – February 25, 2013 -- In a study published today in Nature Climate Change researchers used the latest emissions scenarios and climate models to show how varying levels of carbon emissions are likely to result in more frequent and severe coral bleaching events.
Large-scale 'mass' bleaching events on coral reefs are caused by higher-than-normal sea temperatures. High temperatures make light toxic to the algae that reside within the corals. The algae, called 'zooxanthellae', provide food and give corals their bright colors. When the algae are expelled or retained ...
Rethinking wind power
2013-02-25
Cambridge, Mass. – February 25, 2013 – "People have often thought there's no upper bound for wind power—that it's one of the most scalable power sources," says Harvard applied physicist David Keith. After all, gusts and breezes don't seem likely to "run out" on a global scale in the way oil wells might run dry.
Yet the latest research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the generating capacity of large-scale wind farms has been overestimated.
Each wind turbine creates behind it a "wind shadow" ...
Future evidence for extraterrestrial life might come from dying stars
2013-02-25
Even dying stars could host planets with life - and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. Researchers found that we could detect oxygen in the atmosphere of a white dwarf's planet much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star.
"In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," said Avi Loeb, theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics ...
Breast cancer patients' fear of developing lymphedema far exceeds risk
2013-02-25
Chicago (February 25, 2013): Women who have had the lymph nodes under their arm surgically removed during breast cancer treatment are warned to avoid certain practices that can cause lymphedema—a condition that causes chronic, painless swelling in the arm. Now, a new study published in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons suggests that the vast majority of women who undergo breast cancer operations worry about developing this complication and that this fear far exceeds their actual risk of getting lymphedema. In fact, most women adopt four ...
WCS Adirondack Park study shows exurban residences impact bird communities up to 200 meters away
2013-02-25
As part of the study, scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park. Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences, they determined that "human-adapted" species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests, and that "human-sensitive" species were 26 percent less likely. Beyond 200 meters, occupancy rates were similar to the surrounding forest.
The report appears in the current online edition of the Journal of ...
Extremely high estrogen levels may underlie complications of single-birth IVF pregnancies
2013-02-25
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified what may be a major factor behind the increased risk of two adverse outcomes in pregnancies conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Two papers published in the journal Fertility and Sterility support the hypothesis that extremely high estrogen levels at the time of embryo transfer increase the risk that infants will be born small for their gestational age and the risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous condition that can threaten the lives of both mother and child. They also outline a protocol that reduced ...