Week 2: Key terminology and speech sound disorders

Speech Sound Disorder (SSD)

Difficulties in the production and use of speech sounds, affecting intelligibility and speech development.

Articulation Disorders

Problems physically producing speech sounds; individuals may substitute, distort, or omit sounds.

Phonological Disorders

Patterns of sound errors governed by rules; individuals may struggle to produce sounds in isolation and use them correctly.

Intelligibility

How a person's speech can be understood, which can impact learning, academic, and social development.

Phones

Individual speech sounds that are physically produced in speech and are not specific to any language (e.g., /p/, /b/, /t/).

Phonemes

Smallest units of sound in a language that distinguish words from each other; can change the meaning of a word (e.g., 'bat' and 'cat').

Phonotactics

The rules governing the permissible combinations of sounds in a given language, such as limits on where certain sounds can appear in words.

Phonetic Variations

A phoneme is produced differently depending on the context, such as speaking rate or surrounding sounds.

Minimal Pairs

Pairs of words that differ by only one sound, changing the meaning (e.g., 'pat' and 'bat') and are important in therapy.

Etiology of Speech Sound Disorders

Identifying the underlying cause of speech sound disorders, such as speech delay or motor speech disorder.

Speech Delay

A delay in speech sounds without an underlying medical cause.

Motor Speech Disorder

Difficulty with motor planning or execution of speech sounds due to neurological or muscular issues.

Speech Errors

Mistakes in sound production that can be temporary or persist due to an underlying disorder.

Differential Diagnosis

The process of distinguishing between different types of speech sound disorders.

Phonetic Inventory

The set of speech sounds that a child can produce correctly, which varies by age and development.

Phonological Constraints

The restrictions or limitations on where sounds can appear within words or syllables in a language.

Articulation Disorder Example

Examples include 'wabbit' for 'rabbit' or 'ar' for 'car', resulting from difficulty physically producing specific speech sounds.

Phonological Disorder Example

Examples include 'ca' for 'cat' or 'bus' for 'bust', used in patterns such as final consonant deletion and cluster reduction.