Jennifer Firth

• Speech Sound Disorders in children with Hearing Impairments: A Scoping Review
• Master of Speech and Language Sciences

This scoping review collated evidence from research across different hearing loss in childhood and established patterns of speech errors in this diverse group of children. Speech sound disorder (SSD) is an umbrella term for any difficulty with production or use of sounds of speech in a child’s native language(s). Although it might seem obvious that a child with limited access to the sounds of their native language would have difficulties producing them, children with hearing impairments often have no difficulties with speech sounds, and for those who do have difficulties, the nature of those difficulties is not well understood. The review found that although many studies described the sounds these children did have, many did not detail the phonological processes, which are patterns of sound errors. However, of those that described phonological processes, the most common were stopping (e.g. ‘s’ -> ‘d’), final consonant deletion and gliding (r -> w).

Funded by: National Institute for Health and Care Research

Project Supervisors: Dr Vic Knowland and Dr Stephanie Van Eeden