Speech-language development as proceduralization and skill learning: Implications for assessment and intervention

This article considers how speech-language development can be viewed as proceduralization and skill learning. Viewing speech-language development in this way has important implications for the assessment and treatment of individuals with speech-language disorders.

Topics discussed are Ullman's (2016) distinction between the procedural and declarative memory systems, speech-language development as proceduralization and skill learning, and implications for assessment and intervention.

Norm-referenced measures provide a good measure of deliberative speech-language processes whereas social conversations and discourses about familiar topics with familiar listeners provide the best indication of proceduralized speech-language processes. Intervention goals and planning need to consider which speech-language operations should be proceduralized and which ones will primarily require deliberative processing. Additional research and clinical application of these ideas are clearly needed to develop more precise criteria to define the line of demarcation between deliberative and proceduralized speech-language processes.