language evaluation :: essays research papers

Speech and Language Evaluation Background History Sally A. S., a three year, two month old female was seen on September 15, 2004 for a speech and language evaluation at the University of Washington Speech and Hearing Clinic. It was requested that Sally be seen by the Snowside County Children’s Services because of her speech and language delay. Mary Doe was the caseworker. She was taken into a foster home at the age of eighteen months. At that time, she was said to be non-communicative. It took several weeks for the foster parents to get her to smile and at 23 months of age she said â€Å"mommy†. Up until the age of 18 months, it was noted that Sally hadn’t received the proper nutrition for a developing child. Her mother passed away, from the cause of a stroke when she was 13 months old. Informally, it has been ascertained that the mother’s health was quite poor during pregnancy. The cause of death was a stroke so we might get some hint of some of the problems that she had from this. Evidently the home situation was terrible. She has been seen at Snowside Medical Center and they have stated that she has delayed bone age. However, according to the foster mother, she has been progressing nicely as of late. The foster mother seems to be quite quick to explain Sally’s slowness as functional and is quite adamant about the fact that she is not retarded. At present, she is beginning to put words together. Her intelligibility is quite poor. Therefore, I could not obtain much in the way of an articulation sample. I was able to obtain a raw score of 25 on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test- Third Edition (PPVT-III) (Form B). She obtained a standard score of 75 and a percentile rank of 5 which converted to a language age of 18 months. It is felt that Sally can hear well since no history of ear infections has been reported. The hearing screening that we did was essentially normal. Certainly, from the history that we obtained, it seems as though we are dealing with a case of delayed speech and language acquisition that may certainly be explained in part or in its entirety by the very poor situation in which this child found herself for the first 18 months of her life during which the linguistic foundation should have been built.