Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1994

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Speech Pathology

Major Professor

Gloriajean Wallace

Committee Members

Carl Asp, Harold Luper

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the communication performance of children with known prenatal exposure to cocaine. Performance scores of the six subjects on the SICD were compared to the performance scores of the test's standardized sample. It was of initial interest to determine whether a greater than expected number of substance-exposed children failed the language test as compared to the standardized sample of the SICD. Results of the proportion confidence interval analysis did not yield significance. Although statistically there did not appear to be a greater than expected number of substance exposed children failing the language test, the observation that five out of six of these children failed the test is of clinical interest. From a clinical perspective, a failure rate of 83% of the children is a much greater rate of failure than would be expected in a typical preschool population. Statistical non significance in this instance may have been due to the small sample size and between-subject variability. In fact, given the stringent nature of the test that was utilized for this analysis, it would have been necessary for all six of the children to have failed in order for statistical significance to have been achieved.It was also of interest to determine whether there was a significant difference in the number of months of expected performance versus actual performance for the substance exposed children on the SICD. Results of the t-test were that there was non statistical significance on the receptive portion of the SICD, but the gap on the expressive portion was statistically significant. Finally, it was of interest to determine if receptive communication skills or expressive communication skills were affected more significantly in the substance exposed to children. Results of a t-test did not indicate either area to be more significantly affected.Based on the results of this study, even though it was not statistically significant, 83% of the substance exposed children failed the SICD. The areas of weakness included motor imitation, verbal responding, vocal imitation, speech discrimination, sound discrimination, and word understanding. These results highlight the need for continued research in this area using larger sample sizes. From a clinical perspective the results also indicate the need for therapeutic intervention for substance exposed children who may be at risk for language impairment.

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