1. Phonological Analysis of Child Speech
Relational Analysis

2. Variables to Consider in Assessing Child Speech Disorders
Purpose of testing
Age of child
Severity of speech disorder
Type of test (sound inventory, pattern test, conversational sample)
Length of sample
Recording of child’s responses (What’s your PQ? Do you need to review the phonetics websites?)
PQ – phonetic quotent

3. Purpose of Testing

4. Different Purposes of Speech Testing
Screening
Standardized
Fluharty, Joliet 3-Minute Speech & Language Screen, Quick Screen of Phonology, Templin-Darley Screening Test
Non-standardized
Short answer and recitation
Deep Testing
C-PAC, CTA, McDonald Deep Test, Word Probes
Criterion or Norm-Referenced Testing
GFTA-2, BBTOP, PAT-3, Khan-Lewis, NPA, HAPP-3
Fluharty is most commonly used here.

5. Age of Child

6. Speech Assessment Battery for Infants/Toddlers
Case hx
Parent questionnaires
Hearing screening
Oral-mechanism examination
Samples (free play with caregiver and elicited sample)
Sound play (infants)
Songs (Old McDonald, Pop Goes the Weasel, Eensy, Wensy Spider, If You’re Happy and You Know It, etc.)
Receptive/expressive language (e.g., PLS-4; SICD-R)
Play – what level? early or symbolic?

7. Speech Assessment Battery for Preschool to School-Age
Case hx
Medical, educational, psychological reports
Hearing screening
Oral-mechanism examination
Single-word sound inventory test
Stimulability
Conversational language sample (phonological skills + morphosyntactic skills)
Phonological awareness testing (PAT, CTOPP)
Language testing (PPVT-III, TOLD-P:3, etc.)

8. Severity of Speech Disorder

9. Severity Considerations
Type of sample
Conversation ~ elicited single words
Conversation – recommended for all levels of severity, but will be more difficult to interpret for children with severe speech disorders
Elicited single words: recommended for all levels, especially moderate to severe
Sound inventory test ~ pattern test ~ systemic assessment
The more severe, want to look for patterns; preferrably systemic assessment
Length of sample
Short (~ 50 words) or long (~ 200 words)
Recommend longer samples for more severe disorders
Severity and intelligibility ratings
Recommended for all children
Conversational sample is to see how intelligible they are/

10. Severity Ratings: Quantitative or Perceptual ratings
Quantitative ratings
PCC or PDS
Also, PDI, PPK
ACI or RDI (for distortions)
Perceptual ratings
Bleile’s 4-Point Clinical Judgment Scale of Severity
No disorder – Mild disorder – Moderate disorder – Severe disorder
Generally an average score of 3.5 is required to provide clinical services
Panel of judges (familiar ~ unfamiliar) rate a segment of child’s recorded speech
Blind panel of raters
You can get a quantitative rating or perceptual rating for severity.

11. Intelligibility Ratings
Intelligibility often related to severity, but is a separate index
Generally measured using rating scales (Bleile’s 3-point or 5-point intelligibility scales)
Intelligible – Intelligible if topic is known – Unintelligible (3-point scale)
Completely intelligible – Mostly intelligible – Somewhat intelligible – Mostly unintelligible – Completely unintelligible (5-point scale)
Panel of listeners
19 different intelligibility measures (Kent, Miolo, & Bloedel, 1994)

12. Types (Categories) of Speech Tests

13. 4 Categories of Standardized Tests of Child Speech
Sound inventory tests
Pattern tests
Computerized tests
Tests of non-English phonology

14. Sound inventory tests
Generally assess production of all English consonants in each permissable word position
based on developmental norms (compare child’s score to normative sample to derive percentile rank)
based on articulation framework, HOWEVER, can complete non-standardized phonological analyses (e.g., PVM or phonological process analysis if complete whole-word transcriptions)

15. Pattern Tests
Rather than designed to assess all English sounds in each word position, created to sample particular patterns (e.g., FCD, CR, ST, FR, etc.)
must do whole-word transcriptions
ALL pattern tests based on construct of phonological processes
Determine percent occurrence of particular patterns, compare to process norms (compute a Deviancy Score)

16. Computerized tests
Most are based on construct of phonological processes (some are computerized versions of the pattern test, e.g., CAPP)
enter whole-word transcriptions
most give detailed information in addition to the pattern analysis (e.g., phonetic inventory, syllable structure, percent occurrence of each pattern/process)

17. Tests of non-English phonology
Only few non-English phonology tests -- all are Spanish
AAP-S (Hodson’s Spanish version)
CPAC-S (Contexual Probes of Articulation Competence-Spanish)
others are sound inventory tests
COMING SOON: International Speech Assessment (McLeod)

18. Dialectal Variations

19. Speech Difference ~ Speech Disorder?
Presence of a nonstandard dialect is a speech difference and does not necessarily imply a speech disorder
Speaker’s dialect is D1, but can often shift (or code switch) from D1 to D2
However, a child speaking a nonstandard dialect can also have a speech disorder

20. Speech Difference ~ Speech Disorder?
A speech disorder exists if the following 3 conditions are present (Proctor, 1994):
Child’s intelligibility is reduced to speakers within the child’s speech community
Child misarticulates sounds that are similar in both SAE and D1
Child produces idiosyncratic patterns that are not characteristic of D1, or SAE, or of the code switching processes

21. Characteristics of AAE Dialect
AAE Phonological Rules
Word Examples
Transcription
WF cluster reduction
“test” ~ “tes”
[tst] ~ [ts]
Stopping of WI interdentals
“they” ~ “dey”
[e] ~ [de]
Substitution of f/ and v/ intervocalically
“nothing” ~ “nofing”
“bathing” ~ “baving”
[n] ~ [nf]
[be] ~ [bev]
Substitution of f/ WF
“south” ~ “souf”
[s] ~ [sf]
Substitution of n/ WF
“swing” ~ “swin”
[sw] ~ [swn]
Vowelization of [ɚ]
“sister” ~ “siste”
[sstɚ] ~ [st]
Deletion of [l] in WF clusters
“help” ~ “hep”
[hlp] ~ [hp]
Deletion of nasals WF with nasalization of preceeding vowel
“moon” ~ “moo”
[mun] ~ [m˜u]
Devoicing of consonants WF
“bed” ~ “bet”
[bd] ~ [bt]

22. How do you select the appropriate test?
Decide if you want to do SODA or pattern assessment
although can do pattern analysis on sound inventory if do W/W transcription
artic vs phonology
Severity -- few errors (sound inventory); multiple errors (pattern/computerized)
Time and expertise -- limited time/expertise (computerized test)

23. What were similarities across different perspectives?
Clinical Forum on “Perspectives on the Assessment of Speech Disorders in Children” (AJSLP, 2002)
What were similarities across different perspectives?
Where did differences occur across the different perspectives?
Which perspective matches what you’ve done in your clinical training?
Which perspective makes most sense to you as a future SLP?

24. Standardized Tests: Lab 3
Assigned 2 tests to review
Evaluated on understanding and administration of test
Be familiar with test (and manual) BEFORE administration
Some tests have strict procedures for administration. If you don’t stick to the procedure, the test results will be invalid
Transcribe WHOLE word; NOT just target sounds
Think about semantic cues for eliciting words
See handouts for assignments and grading

25. Model of Speech Disorders
A speech disorder can be:
phonetic (articulatory -- AI),
phonemic (phonologic -- PI),
or both (mixed – PAD)
The broader term “speech disorder” encompasses all of these

26. Nature of Assessment
Phonological analysis includes the identification, description, and classification of sound differences in a child’s speech that signal meaning differences
3 key concepts in phonological analysis (Grunwell, 1997):
System
Structure
Stability

27. System
Includes a set (or inventory) of different sounds produced by the child
Adequate sound systems are symmetrical
Sounds are contrastive in place, voice, and manner and function to signal differences in meaning
Sounds function contrastively in all word positions (I, M, F)

28. Structure Refers to the rules and organization of the sound system
Specifies the distribution and combination of sounds in a language
Examples:
[ŋ] cannot occur # ___
[pl, bl, kl, gl] are permissable clusters WI, but not *[tl, dl]

29. Stability
Refers to the predictability of the speaker’s systemic and structural patterns (or organization) of their sound system
The inventory of sounds (SYSTEM) and the rules that govern the distribution and combination of sounds (STRUCTURE) provide the organization and therefore predictability of a “phonology”

30. Relational Analysis
Child’s speech compared to adult speech in a one-to-one comparison
Differences between the two productions can be described in terms of SODA, phonological processes, PVM error patterns
Only describes error sounds, therefore, often called an ERROR ANALYSIS
3rd phase of development is phonemic development.

31. Independent Analysis
Child’s speech is described as a unique, independent, self-contained sound system
NO comparisons made between child:adult systems
Describes what the child DOES rather than what the child does NOT do (as in error/relational analysis)

32. Issues in Completing a Phonological Analysis of Child Speech
Type and length of sample
Sound inventory ~ pattern test
Elicited single word ~ conversational
50 words ~ > 300 words
Phonetic transcription
Must complete whole-word transcription
Severity of disorder
Mild-moderate: relational analysis of sound inventory or pattern test may be sufficient
Severe-profound: independent + relational analyses with larger samples ( words)

33. Two Frameworks for Phonological Analysis
Relational Analysis
SODA
Distinctive feature analysis
Phonological process analysis
PVM analysis (place,voice,mannor)
Independent + Relational Analyses
PPK (Productive phonological knowledge)
Systemic phonological analysis of child speech (SPACS)

34. Phonological Process Analysis
Number of commercial tests available
Dunn (1982): APP identified most patterns
Non-standardized phonological process analyses
Dunn (1982): non-standardized analysis was better than APP
Relational analysis

35. List of Common Phonological Processes
Common to many commercial tests, but not tied to any one published test
Categorized according to:
syllable structure (deletion) processes and sound
simplification (substitution and assimilation) processes
See Table 3-1(d2l)

36. Choose the process that BEST describes error pattern
Considerations in completing non-standardized phonological process analysis
Choose the process that BEST describes error pattern
Ex: [ʃo] for [so] could be either BACKING or PALATALIZATION
PAL provides more precise description of what child is doing than broader label of BA
In general, each process only changes one aspect of PLACE, VOICE, or MANNER
Process ordering (Edwards, 1992)

37. Process Ordering
Sequential application of processes when one sound error involves more than one phonological process (PDI)
“unraveling” of child’s error productions relative to adult target
Example: /fɪʃ/ adult target
sɪʃ apicalization
tɪʃ stopping
dɪʃ prevocalic voicing
[dɪʃ] child’s pronunciation

38. Steps in completing a non-standardized phonological process analysis
Complete whole-word transcription of speech
Transcribe target word according to AT
Apply appropriate phonological processes in sequential manner until all aspects of sound change are accounted
Summarize results
Frequency of occurrence of predominant processes
Process limitation/application
Developmental information on processes
Select appropriate tx goals

39. Select tx targets 3 perspectives Intelligibility perspective
most frequently occurring process(es)
Developmental perspective
Select earliest process(es) that should have been suppressed
Combination

40. Advantages/Disadvantages of Phonological Process Analysis
Describes error patterns
Terms are “user friendly”
Disadvantage
Time needed to complete analysis
Selection of tx targets from summary sheet

41. Place-Voice-Manner Analysis
Describes error patterns in terms of 3 broad categories of consonant production (P-V-M)
Similar to phonological process analysis
Analysis is completed on PVM Analysis Form

42. Steps in completing a PVM analysis
Complete whole-word transcriptions
Use black/red markers to color code productions on PVM form
Mark each consonant with appropriate color in appropriate box on PVM form
List phonetic inventory
Summarize error patterns according to PVM (we’ll use PP)
Select tx targets

43. Advantages/Disadvantages of PVM Analysis
Relatively simple and quick to complete
Visual representation of error patterns
Selection of treatment targets is easier
Form useful to communicate with parents and others
Form useful to compare pre/post test results
Teachers like it
Disadvantage
does not identify assimilation errors