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Follow-Up Of College Students With A History Of Developmental Speech Disorders, Christine Buchheit

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined 16 college students with a childhood history of an articulation disorder involving isolated "residual" phoneme errors (RE) and 16 control subjects. Subjects were administered an experimental battery designed to tax the phonological system. Measures included conventional and pseudo-word spelling, syllabification, nonsense word repetition, and expository writing. Subjects also responded to questions assessing student adjustment and academic performance. Results revealed that the RE subjects performed comparably to controls on all of the experimental and academic/adjustment measures (p < .05). Two subjects in the RE group were still producing noticeable articulation distortions as adults. One of these subjects had highly favorable outcomes, whereas the other subject performed relatively poorly on several of the experimental and student adjustment measures. These findings suggest that some individuals who make persistent articulation distortion errors as adults may display subtle phonological and or social deficits that should be explored in future research.