Week 2: Key terminology and speech sound disorders

What is a speech sound disorder?

  • SSD refers to difficulties in the production and use of Speech sounds that affect intelligibility and speech development

  • articulation disorders: problems physically producing sounds

  • phonological disorders: patterns of sound errors governed by rules; the child can typically not always produce the sound in isolation, but when asked to produce it at the end of the word; doesn't understand the rules and doesn't understand how to use the sound.

  • SSD is going to impact intelligibility (how a person's speech can be understood); affects learning academic and social development

Vocabulary

  • phones: individual speech sounds that are physically produced in speech and not specific to any language (examples are /p/ /b/ and /t/

  • phonemes: smallest units of sounds in a language that distinguish words from each other; can change the meaning of a word (bat and cat)

  • phonotactics: the rules governing the permissible combinations of sounds in a given language; sounds that we are taught to use and sounds that we don't use (such as ng at the end of a word but not at the beginning of the word in English

  • phonetic variations: a phoneme is produced differently depending on the context such as accept, speech rate, etc. (t may be pronounced as a flap in butter and not hard like in tap)

  • minimal pairs: pairs of words that differ from only one sound, which changes the meaning of the word (such as the words pat and bat) important tools in therapy because they distinguish between correct and incorrect phoneme usage

Etiologies of speech sound disorders

  • speech delay: 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 (can be temporary or persist because of an underlying disorder

it is important to identify etiology to determine the course of treatment

  • differential diagnosis

    differential diagnosis: the process of distinguishing between different types of speech sounds disorder

example: an SLP needs to differential between speech delay, motor speech disorder, or Phonological disorder

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things to consider in diagnosis: age, typical speech development, neurological or physical conditions, patterns of sound errors, observation, and caregiver reports

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  • can be utilized in all areas of SLP

Articulation disorder

  • difficulty physically producing specific speech sounds; a person with this may substitute the sound, distort the sound (such as a lateralized lisp), or omit the sound altogether. examples include wabbit for rabbit or ar for car.

  • Usually due to physical motor challenges

phonetic inventory

  • the set of Speech sounds that a child can produce correctly (varies by age and development); in children with SSD may be limited; helps determine the sounds the child can produce and what they can work on in therapy

phonological disorder

  • difficulty with the rules and sound patterns, rather than the physical production of sounds;

example: ca for cat or bus for bust may be using a pattern of final consonant deletion and cluster reduction

  • related to how sounds are used and organized; there is a cognitive component and speech perception component and therefore treatment will be different from articulation disorder treatment

phonotactic constraints

  • phonotactic constraints refer to restrictions or limitations of where sounds can appear within words or syllables in a particular language

example: ng can appear at the end of syllables, not at the beginning

  • Important in diagnosing Phonological Disorders; children may struggle with sound combinations that are not allowed in their native language

  • constraints: refer to the limitations in the way speech sounds are produced or patterned; often based on developmental stages or language rules. constraints are not necessarily disorders.