Comprehensive Speech and Phonology: Terminology, Development, and Disorders

Articulation

how you form your mouth to produce sound

Phonology

sound system of language, how sounds go together to make words

Communication

The exchange of information/ideas between two or more people using a language.

Language

A shared, rule governed system of symbols/code used for communicating.

Speech

Verbal communication of language.

Vocalization

Sounds that can carry meaning but do not carry language.

Verbal

Language, could include sign language.

Nonverbal

No language, gestures that aren't signs, facial expressions, vocalizations.

Speech Approximation

Child's attempt at a target sound/word that carries meaning.

Phoneme

Smallest meaningful unit of sound within a language.

Morpheme

Smallest unit of meaning in language.

Allophone

small variations of a speech sound; different ways you say the same phoneme

Sibilants

Alveolar and palatal fricatives (hiss sounding sounds).

Sonorants

Nasals, liquids, and glides with continuous airflow.

Obstruents

Stops, fricatives, and affricates with full obstruction of airflow.

The vocal tract

A tube from the lips to the vocal folds. Shaping airflow through the tube changes sound.

Articulators

Oral cavity, teeth, velum, lips, nasal cavity, alveolar ridge, hard/soft palate.

What is the power of speech

The lungs provide the power of speech.

The tongue

The most important structure responsible for making different points of constriction.

Pacing

A technique for breath support.

What are the first three manners that emerge

Stops, Nasals, Glides

What are the final 3 manners that emerge

Fricatives, Affricates, and Liquids

what are the 7 stages of speech sound development

-Referral

Are they delayed or not? Should you assess or not? Doctors, therapist, teachers etc. can all refer.

-Assessment

formal tests will test at the word level, just taking down all data

-Analysis

What does data from assessment mean? Scoring interpretation, ect.

-Diagnosis

Disorder or absence of disorder.

-Selecting the Intervention targets

Can go in developmental sequence. some research suggest that starting with the complexity approach (starting with harder sounds first) will get a kid out of therapy faster.

-Intervention approach

What are you going to do in therapy

-Dismissal/Discharge

Are they ready to leave therapy.

Stops

Airflow is completely stopped/blocked and then released.

Nasals

Air travels primarily through the nasal cavity.

Glides

The articulators move/glide from one position toward another.

Fricatives

Air passes through a narrow constriction, producing friction.

Affricates

Starts like a stop and releases into a fricative.

Liquids

Produced with relatively open airflow but with tongue positioning.

What are the 3 ways a consonant cluster can be reduced

-Delete one consonant — spoon → poon

-Substitute one consonant — spoon → foon (one sound in the cluster changes)

Delete AND substitute — spoon → poon, with the remaining consonant also produced as a different sound in other examples

Behaviorist Model Theory

Speech is learned through operant conditioning and reinforcement.

Therapy application: Reinforce correct/target speech productions.

Behaviorist model strengths and weaknesses

Strength: Explains how reinforcement can increase desired speech behaviors.

Weakness: Cannot explain all speech acquisition/errors; assumes children are relatively passive learners.

Generative Phonology Theory

Children have an underlying representation (UR) and may apply phonological rules that result in a surface representation (SR).

Therapy application: Identify and target phonological rules/processes, such as gliding.

Generative Phonology strengths and weaknesses

S: Recognizes that children actively use rules/patterns rather than making random errors.

W: UR is an assumption because we cannot know exactly what is happening in the child's brain; model was mathematically complicated.

Natural Phonology

Children naturally use phonological processes during development and suppress them as speech develops.

Therapy application: Identify and target phonological processes such as FCD, fronting, stopping, and cluster reduction

Strengths and weaknesses of natural phonology

S: Identifies patterns across multiple errors; child is viewed as an active problem-solver.

W: Does not explain every error, especially distortions such as a lateralized /s/.

Early emerging sounds (early 13)

Age: 2;0-3;11

/p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, ŋ, w, j, f, h/

Middle emerging sounds (middle 7)

Age: 4;0-4;11

/v, s, z, ʃ, l, tʃ, dʒ/

Late emerging sounds (late 4)

Age range: 5;0-6;11

/θ, ð, r, ʒ/

Percent Consonants Correct (PCC)

Percentage of consonants a child produces correctly.

-Formula: (# consonants correct ÷ total # consonants produced) × 100

-Type of analysis: Relational analysis — compares child's production to the target.

Why use it: Indicator of severity and prognosis.

Intelligibility

Whether the listener can understand the child's speech.

-The listener: prefer unfamiliar/untrained listener

-Kind of conversation: most natural because it gives connected/ running speech

What percentage should indelibility be to an unfamiliar listener at ages 4, 5, and 7

4= 50%

5= 75%

7= 90%

compare intelligibility and PCC

PCC measures accuracy; intelligibility measures whether speech can be understood

What processes should be gone by 3

- weak/unstressed syllable deletion

-final consonant deletion

-Consonant assimilation

-reduplication

-fronting

-voicing

Processes gone around 7

-CCR

-epenthesis

-gliding

-vocalization

-stopping

-depalatalization

-devoicing

What does place mean

Where is the sound produced

What does Voice mean

Are the vocal folds vibrating

What does manner mean

How is the airflow modified

Functional Speech Sound Disorders

-No known cause for speech issues.

-Can involve articulation (Motor based difficulty producing speech sounds) or phonology (language based difficulty involving sounds system)

-Examples include articulation disorders or phonological disorders

Organic Speech Sound Disorders

-Known/identifiable underlying cause for speech issues.

-Can involve motor/neurological, structural, or sensory/perceptual factors

-can be developmental/congenital or acquired.

-examples include dysarthria, apraxia, down syndrome, cleft, hearing impairment

Neuromotor disorder

-Type of organic disorder

-Speech movement, execution or motor planning programing is impaired

-Examples: dysarthria, apraxia

Structural Disorders

-Type of organic disorder

-physical structure affects speech production

-Example: Cleft, glossectomy, VPI, trauma/surgery

Sensory/ Perceptual Disorder

-Type of organic disorder.

-Sensory input affects speech development/production

-Example: Hearing impairment

Velopharyngeal Insufficiency (VPI) can result in

Hypernasality, Nasal emission, reduced intraoral pressure, glottal stops

Speech sounds disorders can occur with

Comorbid disorders

-Language disorders

-Stuttering

-Voice disorders

-Emotional/ psychiatric disorders

What is the prevalence of speech-sound disorders in children?

Around 2.3% to 24.6%

What happens during respiration?

inhale - diaphragm flattens out and pushes down, rib cage expands, air gets sucked into lungs

exhale - the diaphragm gets brought back up, rib cage contracts and speech is produced as air rushed out of vocal tract

advantages of diary studies

following kid over time, is very detailed

disadvantages of diary studies

not a good representative of normative population, cannot replicate these studies

advantages of large cross-sectional group studies

large sample size, can divide into small age groups so you get a snapshot of each group

disadvantages of large cross-sectional group studies

maybe it was a bad day for the kids, looking at the average child which is not always indicative of what people are always doing

advantages of longitudinal studies

can follow kids for a long period of time, very detailed on how they develop

disadvantages of longitudinal studies

small sample size, people tend to leave the study after a while

4 phases of sound development

1 - laying foundations for speech (birth to 1 year)

2 - transition focus from words to speech (1-2 years)

3 - growth of Inventory (2-5 years)

4 - mastery of Speech and Literacy (5+ years)

cluster reduction

deletion of a consonant from a consonant cluster

example: "pane" for "plane"

epenthesis

the addition of a phoneme to the production of a word.

example: "buread" for "bread"

gliding

When /r/ becomes a /w/, and /l/ becomes a /w/ or y sound

example: "wabbit" for "rabbit" or "yeyo" for "yellow"

vocalization

substitution of a vowel for a postvocalic /r/ or /l/

example: "cah" for "car" or "laduh" for "ladder"

stopping

When a fricative (like /f/ or /s/) or affricate (ch,j) is substituted
with a stop consonant like /p/ or /d/

example: "pan" for "fan" or "dump" for "jump"

depalatalization

When a palatal sound is substituted with a nonpalatal sound

example: "fit" for "fish"

final devoicing

When a voiced consonant at the end of a word like /b/ or /d/ is substituted with a voiceless consonant like /p/ or /t/

example: "pick" for "pig"

backing

When alveolar sounds like /t/ and /d/ are substituted with velar sounds like /k/ and /g/

example: "gog" for "dog"

unstressed syllable deletion

Omission of one or more syllables from a polysyllabic word

example: "bella" for "umbrella"

final consonant deletion

deletion of the final consonant in a word

example: "dah" for "dog"

consonant assimilation

changing a phoneme so it takes on a characteristic of another sound in a word

example: "bub" for "bus"