One of the largest work areas for speech and language pathologists is intervention for children with speech and language disorders. The purpose of the present study was to describe and analyze the clinical management of language impairment in children by studying and comparing medical records and literature from the years 2000 and 2009. The present study is a sequel to two previously published papers by Christina Samuelsson (1997; 1999), in which medical records and literature from the 1920-, 60- and 70?s were studied and a paper by Helén Sämfors (2001), in which the years 1985 and 1995 were studied. The medical records used in the present study came from a medical ward for speech and language pathology at a university hospital in Sweden. The results showed that significantly more children were referred to the clinic for speech and language problems in 2009 than in 2000, and more children were treated for their impairments.

In speech and language intervention, the ability to interact is seldom evaluated; rather intervention is evaluated in terms of improved testresults.  If goal-setting in intervention also is based on everyday communicative needs, the relevance of the treatment may be increased and intervention outcome may be implemented in the patient?s natural environment.The present study, as part of a research-project, is based on analyses of interaction and interviews to examine everyday conversations and speech and language intervention. The aim was to explore if there is a relation between everyday communication needs and goal-setting in speech and language intervention for people with aphasia. A further aim was to investigate if there are everyday communicative needs that may form goals for speech and language intervention.Two individuals with aphasia and one individual with both dysarhtria and aphasia participated in the study. Three speech and language pathologists and two relatives also participated in the study.

A historical study of intervention for aphasia may provide information on how speech and language pathologists work with people with aphasia. Aphasia is seen as an umbrella term for symptoms of language disorders caused by aquired brain injury. The overall aim of the present study was to describe and analyze the development of intervention for aphasia during the periods 1990-1999 and 2000-2010.The study was conducted by analysis of 83 medical records from two hospitals in Sweden during a period of 20 years. These decades were compared to each other and yo current litteraturein search for differences and trends in aphasia intervention.The Results of the present study revealed that intervention mainly focused on recovering the linguistic ability in both the 1990s and 2000s. Intervention and literature focusing on communication seem to increase during the 2000s.

Background: The speech- and language deficit aphasia affects 12 000 persons annually in Sweden. Aphasia is caused by injury in the brain and the most common etiology is stroke. According to the tool for describing and assessing aphasia, A-FROM (Kagan et al., 2008), the four following aspects of aphasia need to be considered: severity of aphasia, participation in life situations, communication and language environment and personal factors. Several different interventions and treatments can be performed in every domain. There is scientific evidence for interventions performed by speech and language pathologists; however, the question is yet being discussed since results are unambiguous.Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to investigate which aphasia interventions performed by speech and language pathologists that are supported by evidence.

Speech intervention for children with language impairment aims to both strengthen specific language skills and to reinforce the ability to participate in interactional contexts. Children with language impairment often have problems in interaction; therefore the contributions of the conversational partner are of great importance. Thus, the demands are high on the speech and language pathologist (SLP) for sense and cohesion in intervention. The aim of the present study was to examine how SLPs and children with language impairment interact in language intervention. An approach influenced by Conversation Analysis was used in order to identify various phenomena that occurred, and their effect on the structure of the interaction was analyzed.Four SLPs, two men and two women, were enrolled in the study.  They participated in intervention with two children with language impairment each, i.e.

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

Sweden has a growing proportion of children living in a multilingual environment. It is thus highly important that caretakers as well as professionals who meet these children have knowledge of multilingualism and its impact on language development. Also, an increase of referrals of multilingual children with suspected language impairment to speech and language pathology clinics is seen.The objective of this study was to investigate the linguistic ability in both Swedish and Arabic in a four year old child with suspected language impairment. A further aim was to implement an intensive intervention and evaluate the efficacy of it. Language testing in both languages showed that the boy?s greatest need was in the lexical domain.

Samtalsanalys har tidigare använts som ett komplement till traditionellt använda standardiserade tester för att undersöka mer funktionella aspekter av kommunikation (Wells & Local, 1992; Yont, Hewitt & Miccio, 2002; Samuelsson 2009). Syftet med föreliggande studie är att utifrån sytematiska analyser av vardagliga samtal och logopedisk intervention utforska relationen mellan kommunikativa behov i vardagen och mål med intervention för barn med språkstörning.Tre barn med språkstörning filmades i vardagliga samtal hemma och på förskolan samt vid ett behandlingsbesök hos logopeden. Materialet transkriberades och analyserades enligt samtalsanalytiska principer. Intervjuer och retrospektioner genomfördes med föräldrar, förskolepersonal samt behandlande logoped för att ytterligare belysa barnens kommunikativa situation.I föreliggande studie framkommer att de kommunikativa behov barnen har relaterar till de mål som sätts upp i logopedisk behandling. På grund av deras fonologiska svårigheter påverkas barnens kommunikation då det ofta uppstår problemkällor, deras yttranden ignoreras och deras talutrymme inskränks.

Velopharyngeal insufficiency may affect resonance, articulation and thus how speech is perceived by other listeners. Velopharyngeal insufficiency is frequently found in the cleft palate population due to structural abnormalities of the palate. The pharyngeal flap is the most commonly used operation designed to improve velopharyngeal function. The aim of the present study was to compare speech before and after pharyngeal flap surgery by perceptual evaluation regarding nasality, articulation and deviant speech. The study includes preoperative and postoperative speech samples of 28 patients who underwent pharyngeal flap surgery at the University Hospital in Linköping between 2002 and 2007.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate Komm-A, a model for usingcommunication books in clinical practice for people with aphasia. The studyconsisted of two group studies and one case study. One of the group studies had apretest-posttest design and consisted of nine couples; a person with aphasia andhis/her communication partner. The material used was Quality of communicationlife scale (QCL), Communicative effectiveness index (CETI), Goal attainmentscaling (GAS), and a questionnaire to the communication partner. The other groupstudy consisted of seven speech-language pathologists who worked with thecouples according to the Komm-A model.

There are several different methods of assessment of functional communication in individuals with aphasia. However, these are not very established in Sweden. A number of assessment methods are not translated and adapted to Swedish. The views about what functional communication means are scattered. The purpose of this study was to, with the help of a questionnaire survey, identify how Swedish speech and language therapists assess functional communication, to what extent and what they want that an assessment method should contain to be clinically useful.The study involved 54 clinically active speech and language therapists in the area of aphasia.

The purpose of the present pilot study was to evaluate the parentalintervention ComAlong at the Division of Child Language, for parents ofchildren with severe language impairment. ComAlong is one of the parentalinterventions developed in the AKKTIV project. AKKTIV stands foraugmentative and alternative communication ?early intervention. Thepresent study consists of a case study, a compilation of course evaluationsand an interview with the two leaders of the course.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how young adults withunilateral cleft lip and palate assess their own speech and communication,and to let speech and language pathologists make a perceptual analysis ofthese individuals? speech at the age of 19 years. An additional aim was toexamine the relationship between these two different ways of evaluation.Data was collected through perceptual analysis from audio recordings and byusing a self-report questionnaire based on the ICF-structure (InternationalClassification of Function, disability and health). Altogether, 33 peopleparticipated. One third of the participants had no speech deficiencies.

In this study the speech of adolescents with unilateral cleft lip andpalate (UCLP) and delayed closure of the hard palate was evaluated.Evaluations were made with experienced speech-language pathologists(SLP:s) and lay listeners. The SLP evaluation consisted of typical cleft palatespeech variables and some of them were adapted for lay listeners. Attitudestowards the speech of the adolescents were investigated by asking laylisteners if the speech constituted any hindrance to vocational performance.The SLP:s mainly found nasal escape and velopharyngeal impairment (VPI),although to a small degree and extent. The lay listeners mainly foundresonance deviations and indistinct speech. The latter was associated withhindrance to vocational performance.

A speech-based material that early can assess a child's hearing is needed to provide an indication of a hearing impaired child's language development. Being able to identify and discriminate between different sounds is a requirement for interpreting speech. Hearing assessments that examine speech perception can therefore, unlike, for example, pure tone audiometry, examine a hearing impaired child's perceptual language skills and provide a basis for intervention.The purpose of this work is to evaluate a new auditory material on 3-year-old children. The auditory material is based on the Ling-6-sounds and the main question was which of the sounds in the test were adequate for test of discrimination. Furthermore, it was investigated how the test works with children aged 3:0?3:11 years and how age and gender affect the result.Twenty-four children aged 3:0?3:11 years were tested using a computer based test.