Evolution

Initially, the Handbook of Speech Pathology defined a speech disorder as "any deviation of speech outside of the range of acceptable variation in a given environment" (Travis, 1957, 1971, as cited in Prutting, 1982).

As the profession grew, so did the definition of a speech disorder. As stated previously, the idea of the social impact of a communication disorder became more and more important. In 1957, Backus (as cited in Prutting, 1982) "therapy should be conceived of as including the use of speech in social situations." She felt therapy should include psychological concerns in addition to traditional therapy methods.

Over time, "speech disorder" changed to reflect a more inclusive idea of communicative disorders and difficulties. This also brought about new ideas of assessment. One of the landmark applications was the use of mean length of utterance (MLU) in describing typical language development (Brown, 1973). This measure continues to be a useful description of language development in young children.

The initially somewhat narrowly focused field of "speech correction" grew to include a broad range of communication disorders. The effects of this expansion were evident in university curriculum that drew from psychology, neurology, medical science, genetics, physics, psychology, and education.

Today, the definition of communication disorder has been expanded to include the ability to comprehend or express ideas due to physical, neurological, developmental, and motoric concerns.

References:
www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/history.html

Prutting, C (1982). Scientific inquiry and communicative disorders: An emerging paradigm across six decades. In T. Gallagher & C. Prutting (Eds.), Pragmatic assessment and intervention issues in language. San Diego: College-Hill Press, 1983.

Additional resources on the history of speech-language pathology can be found through the American Speech-Language Hearing Association at www.asha.org.

back | next

Center on Human Development and Disability, Clinical Training Unit, University of Washington,
Box 357920, Seattle, WA 98195-7920 lend@u.washington.edu