Radford N T, Gentry B
Department of Communication Disorders, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau 63701, USA.
Percept Mot Skills. 1997 Dec;85(3 Pt 1):1067-72. doi: 10.2466/pms.1997.85.3.1067.
By the age of 8 years, children who are developing normally show almost adult speech skills. Children with serious phonological disorders, however, may exhibit significant differences in development well beyond the age of 8 years with little or no improvement in speech if therapy is not provided. This is a descriptive study of seven siblings, ranging in age from 6 to 14 years of age who had never attended school or received speech therapy until these ages. All of the children exhibited moderate to severe speech disorder with no evidence of predisposing genetic factors, hearing loss, physical abuse, or prenatal drug exposure. These cases, which would obviously be impossible to duplicate in a controlled study, provide strong support for the efficacy of speech therapy. Children with serious speech delays will not improve appreciably without direct intervention.
到8岁时，发育正常的儿童几乎具备了成人的语言技能。然而，患有严重语音障碍的儿童在8岁以后可能仍表现出明显的发育差异，如果不接受治疗，其语言能力几乎没有改善或完全没有改善。这是一项针对7名兄弟姐妹的描述性研究，他们的年龄在6至14岁之间，直到这些年龄之前从未上学或接受过言语治疗。所有儿童均表现出中度至重度言语障碍，没有易患遗传因素、听力损失、身体虐待或产前药物暴露的证据。这些案例显然不可能在对照研究中重复出现，它们为言语治疗的有效性提供了有力支持。没有直接干预，严重语言发育迟缓的儿童不会有明显改善。
