Kristin Dattoria MS, CCC-SLP

Kern Koegel, L., Koegel, R.L., Ashbaugh, K., & Bradshaw, J. (2014). The importance of early identification and intervention for children with or at risk for autism spectrum disorders.  International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 16 (1): 50-56. I am putting two articles in this post because I believe they are both clinically useful for talking to parents, teachers, and school districts with children with or at-risk for ASD. The first article, Kern Koegel et al. (2014), delineates several reasons why early identification and intervention by a speech-language pathologist or team of therapists for children at-risk for ASD is so important. This article can also be used as an update on information that still lingers--especially the idea that ASD can't be diagnosed till age 3. Researchers have found this is simply not true. Earlier diagnosis can lead to better outcomes for families and children. Furthermore, if you need another reason to support earlier diagnosis, the articl...

Masterson, J.J. & Kamhi, A.G. (1992). Linguistic trade-offs in school-aged children with and without language disorders.  Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35 : 1064-1075. This article is one that I think of often when I'm analyzing the profile of an individual child. It reminds me that the linguistic behavior of a child is not isolated, but rather part of a constellation of factors. Further, the reason for a linguistic behavior (such as stuttering on words, word retrieval, or incorrect grammar) may vary depending on the task, setting, conversation partner, cognitive abilities, or language abilities of the child. Just because one behavior of a child looks similar to the behavior of another child does not mean the underlying reason for that behavior is the same. As well, it reminds me that although typically developing children present with grammatical, phonemic, morphosyntactic, and fluency errors, children with language-learning disabilities are much more likely to hav...