Original Research

Early Communication Intervention with Young Children with Pierre Robin Sequence

Lisl Fair, Brenda Louw
South African Journal of Communication Disorders | Vol 45, No 1 | a718 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v45i1.718 | © 2020 Lisl Fair, Brenda Louw | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 16 April 2020 | Published: 31 December 1998

About the author(s)

Lisl Fair, Centre for Early Intervention in Communication Pathology, Department of Communication Pathology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Brenda Louw, Centre for Early Intervention in Communication Pathology, Department of Communication Pathology, University of Pretoria, South Africa

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Abstract

Young children with Pierre Robin sequence are at considerable risk to develop delayed or disordered communication development. This study investigated the effectiveness of early communication intervention with four young children with Pierre Robin sequence, aged 5 to 28 months. The Proportional Change Index (Wolery, 1983) was used to determine the amount of child progress that took place during the intervention period. The results indicated that regular early communication intervention sessions over an extended period of time produced positive results, especially for expressive language abilities. The presence of a slight hearing loss due to otitis media, seemed to have influenced the effectiveness of early communication intervention. One subject displayed an associated disorder and evidenced the slowest rate of development for receptive and expressive language abilities as well as a limited phonetic repertoire for consonants. All but one subject had limited phonetic repertoires possibly due to velopharyngeal incompetence. Early communication intervention services should be delivered regularly over an extended period of time and the hearing abilities and speech production skills of young children with Pierre Robin sequence should be followed closely during early communication intervention.

Keywords

Pierre Robin sequence; early communication intervention; effectiveness

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