title: Auditory and visual sustained attention in children with speech sound disorder.
abstract: Although research has demonstrated that children with specific language impairment (SLI) and reading disorder (RD) exhibit sustained attention deficits, no study has investigated sustained attention in children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Given the overlap of symptoms, such as phonological memory deficits, between these different language disorders (i.e., SLI, SSD and RD) and the relationships between working memory, attention and language processing, it is worthwhile to investigate whether deficits in sustained attention also occur in children with SSD. A total of 55 children (18 diagnosed with SSD (8.11 ± 1.231) and 37 typically developing children (8.76 ± 1.461)) were invited to participate in this study. Auditory and visual sustained-attention tasks were applied. Children with SSD performed worse on these tasks; they committed a greater number of auditory false alarms and exhibited a significant decline in performance over the course of the auditory detection task. The extent to which performance is related to auditory perceptual difficulties and probable working memory deficits is discussed. Further studies are needed to better understand the specific nature of these deficits and their clinical implications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Cristina F B
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciana O
authors.initials: LO
authors.lastname: Pagan-Neves
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Haydée F
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Wertzner
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Eliane
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schochat
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D066229:Speech Sound Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*