LINGUISTIC INTERACTION - THE ACTIVE-ROLE OF PARENTS IN SPEECH-THERAPYFOR CLEFT-PALATE PATIENTS

As speech and language intervention becomes more naturalistic, it seem s obvious that language and other developmental competencies are, in a strong way, a function of the quality and quantity of relationships i n which the child evolves. This paper compares two different speech th erapy groups of cleft palate children. Children included in the first group received therapy alone with the speech pathologist, whereas chil dren from the second group received speech therapy accompanied by thei r mothers. The purpose was to evaluate and provide the mothers with in teraction modes for facilitating communication. Both groups were evalu ated before and after the therapy period in order to measure the advan ce of each group. The patients accompanied by their mothers showed a s ignificantly higher linguistic advance as compared to patients receivi ng therapy without their mothers. The results in this study support th e statement that linguistic development in the cleft palate child is s trongly related to adult-child mode of interaction.