Assessment of Phonology

Phonetics & Phonology Phonetic investigation: Phonological analysis: is a narrow (i.e.detailed) phonetic auditory-articulatory transcription. Phonological analysis: describes the characteristics of the pronunciation disorders from a communicative perspective

Phonological analysis is used to assess: Developmental phonological disorders Organic phonological disorders (ex: cleft palate) It is a description of the speaker’s habitual pronunciation patterns

Criteria of a Clinical Phonological Assessment Linguistic criteria Exhaustive: capable of describing & classifying all the data examined by the assessment procedure Replicable: the procedures of analyzing and classifying the data must be explicitly and unambiguously stated (i.e. two analyses of the same data sample by two different analysts provide identical results) Predictive: Descriptions of the speaker’s habitual pronunciation patterns  i.e. analysis based on reliable, representative data sample (typical of the speaker) and large enough

Clinical Criteria Describes the patterns in the speaker’s pronunciation. Identifies the differences between the speaker’s disordered patterns and the expected normal patterns Examines the functional consequences of the disordered speech which helps in designing therapy targets In the case of children: the procedure should also provide an indication of the developmental status of the child’s speech

Traditional Pronunciation Error Categories Substitutions Omissions Additions Transpositions

Phonological Processes They are innate set of phonological tendencies towards simplification of the speech production process They may operate at any of three levels in the speech mechanism Perception Organization Production

How they may operate at any of the levels: Perception: a child’s knowledge of adult words may be restricted by an inability to process auditorily all of the information in the acoustic signal  this processing constraint may reflect restrictions on perceptual analysis Production: child has production strategies that constrain articulatory output Organization: Even when the child can produce an articulatory target, in certain contexts the child’s phonological rules impose patterns that prevent an accurate realisation

Phonological Processes Substitution processes Fronting: velar alveolar Stopping: fricative & affricate plosive Gliding: liquids /r l/ glides /w j/

Omission processes Weak syllable deletion Final consonant deletion Cluster reduction /s/ + plosives plosive /s/ + nasals nasal

Assimilation processes Consonant harmony dark /gak/ Context sensitive voicing bed /bet/ packet /badIt/

Phonological Assessment Procedures Phonological Assessment of Child Speech (PACS) (Grunwell, 1985) Based on phonological process analysis Categorizes processes according to whether they effect structural or systemic simplification Provides a checklist of the diagnostic characteristics of developmental phonological disorder s (next slide) Contains a large number of different types of analytical procedures:- Phonetic Inventory and Distr ibution, Contrastive Assessment, Phonotactic Analysis and Assessment…..etc) The Profile of Phonology (PROPH) (Crystal, 1982; 1992)

Diagnostic Characteristics of Developmental Phonological Disorders Persisting normal processes Normal processes which remain in the child’s pronunciation patterns long after the age at which they would have normally disappeared i.e. delayed development Chronological mismatch Co-occurence of some of the earliest patterns characteristic of later stages in phonological development i.e.uneven development

Diagnostic Characteristics Cont’d: Idiosyncratic processes Occurrence of patterns rarely/never attested in normal speech development i.e. abnormal development Systematic sound preference One type of consonant is used for a large range of different target types e.g: /k g s l/  /d/ i.e. invloves persisting processes and unusual processes and results in a massive loss of ability to signal phonological contrasts Variable use of processes more than one simplifying process routinely operates with the same type of target segments or structures (i.e. children’s speech patterns are variable during the their developmental period)

Steps to phonological assessment Recognize productions that do not reflect phonological deviations. Perform an articulation testing and transcribe the child’s production of the whole word. If the speech of the child is unintelligible add the adult translation to your transcription of the child’s utterance. Produce a listing of transcripts for each sound found to be in error.

Examine the errors in the listing transcripts for substitutions, syllable structure patterns or idiosyncratic forms. Produce a phonemic inventory chart. Perform deep testing to confirm suspected patterns. For intervention purposes, determine the effect of phonological patterns on intelligibility and perform a phonological repair analysis.

The impact of the phonological problem on communication Depend on a number of factors: Number of misarticualtions Number of homonyms Types of misarticualtions Familiarity of the listener with the child and whether the listener has an idea of what the child is talking about  See Lund & Duchan p. 130-132 onwards. For the factors that determine intelligibility of children’s speech and its measures.

Articulation Testing Sound position in the word Modes of assessment Initial - Medial - Final Modes of assessment Spontaneous production Prompting Repetition

Steps for Articulation Testing and Training The target sound in... Isolation CV & VC syllables Nonsense words Real words Sentences Reading Spontaneous speech