Jefferson Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute is excited to announce that Marja-Liisa Mailend, PhD, has been awarded funding from the Estonian Research Council to conduct new research examining how Estonian-speaking children acquire knowledge of speech sounds and articulation. A native of Estonia, Dr. Mailend completed her postdoctoral fellowship at our Institute, and she is currently Institute Faculty, Director of the Speech & Language Recovery Laboratory, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, and also an Associate Professor of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Tartu in Estonia.
This three-year research project titled “Articulatory and phonological development of Estonian-speaking children” will fill a critical gap in establishing language-specific speech acquisition norms. Speech sound disorders are the most common speech disorders among children, making them an important target for further research.
As part of this study, Dr. Mailend will characterize the acquisition of Estonian speech sounds, syllable structures, and phonemic quantities (differences in sound length and pitch contour) in participants aged three to five years old. She will examine the speech sound profiles in participants at age three to determine which can predict speech sound disorders in children at five years of age. The long-term goal of this work is to develop a comprehensive assessment battery that can be used for research or clinical purposes to characterize speech sound development in Estonian.
Dr. Mailend’s research will produce valuable information that will facilitate timely diagnosis of speech sound disorders in children, allowing for earlier intervention. This, in turn, can help reduce or prevent further speech and language problems in school-aged children.