Developmental Phonological Disorders. A Practical Guide for Families and Teachers.

A new newspaper on the consonant repertoires of toddlers confirms the close relationship betwixt early voice communication and language development: Sotto, C. D., Redle, E., Bandaranayake, D., Neils-Strunjas, J., & Creaghead, N. A. (2014). Fricatives at eighteen months equally a mensurate for predicting vocabulary and grammar at 24 and 30 months. Journal of Communication Disorders, 49, i-12. Specifically these authors examined the relationship between consonant repertoires at 18 months and functioning on the MacArthur-Bates Chatty Evolution Inventories: Words & Sentences (MBCDI: WS) at 18, 24 and thirty months. Although inventory size was non significantly correlated with vocabulary size and use of grammatical markers at 24 and xxx months, the presence of fricatives in the inventory at 18 months was associated with higher mean scores on the 24 and 30 calendar month linguistic communication tests in comparison to language test functioning for toddlers who did not produce fricatives at the earlier age. The word nicely covers the many intervening variables that might account for this relationship. (Clarification added in response to reader questions: the children in the written report were usually developing).

I was pleasantly surprised to notice that all the raw data is presented in the paper so that the consonant repertoires for each of the 37 toddlers at 18 months could be examined directly. This allowed me to bank check whether these repertoires conformed to the expectations of the implicational hierarchy equally described by Dinnsen et al in an older paper (the hierarchy is derived from before work by Jacobson I believe): Dinnsen, D. A., Chin, South. B., Elbert, K., & Powell, T. Due west. (1990). Some constraints on functionally disordered phonologies: Phonetic inventories and phonotactics. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 33(i), 28-37. The hierarchy takes a structural approach assigning the kid to different levels on the ground of the phonetic feature "contrasts" that are present in the phonetic repertoire every bit shown in the table below, keeping in mind that the child does not have to utilize the phones contrastively; there need exist only representatives of the opposing feature classes present in the repertoire. The hierarchy is said to be implicational because if a kid produces the feature attributed to one level of the bureaucracy information technology is theoretically impossible for the characteristic contrasts at any lower level to non be present. Therefore the presence of voiced and voiceless phones (Level B) implies the presence of labial and coronal place as well as obstruent, glide and nasal manner features (Level A). I examined each of the repertoires in the Sotto et al newspaper and adamant the highest level represented for each child and noted any violations of the expectation of the implicational bureaucracy. The results are shown in the tabular array below.

I find it to exist very interesting that one third of the toddlers in this study practise not see the assumptions of the implicational hierarchy. For example if nosotros consider the children who produced a Level C phonetic repertoire, in other words, the 24 22/37 toddlers who produced fricatives and or affricates, we find that 6 of these did and then despite lacking glides (4 children) or nasals (two children) in the inventory. In Dinnsen et al, twoscore preschoolers with speech communication sound disorders were described and the one kid that failed to encounter the implicational assumptions of the hierarchy was causeless to have a "deviant" phonology. However, (as I accept suggested for Dodd's so-called "deviant" categories likewise), deviant behaviors have a funny way of showing upwards in very early language development.

What are the implications of these information and my re-analysis for speech and language therapy? To be honest I am not certain. One thing that I am quite sure of is that the findings do not support the "complexity" approach to target choice – the idea proposed in Dinnsen et al is that treating Level Eastward telephone contrasts will cause the lower level contrasts to appear is if past magic because of the internally specified implicational relationship between the contrasts as if they were all linked together like Christmas tree lights. I have shown that this approach does not in fact work (see Rvachew & Bernhard, 2010). This is not to say that ane should take the reverse approach by structuring your treatment approach to introduce features in the opposite direction, working your way upwards the levels from A to B (and contrary to some myths in circulation I have never recommended this). I think that the important thing to keep in mind is that children at this phase of phonological development are developing their phonology and their lexicons so every bit to heighten lexical contrast  rather than phonological contrasts and therefore one needs to take a linguistic communication based cadre vocabulary approach in any case.

The trouble that I take is that I have never been comfortable with the idea of picking any words that are "functional" and pedagogy them even if the child hasn't a hope of approximating the discussion (those poor children with speech problems named Clarence are fortunately few!). I prefer to accept a systematic approach introducing new phones to maximize the probability of success and the implicational bureaucracy shown to a higher place is maybe not a bad start if you have a child with no consonant repertoire at all (this does happen sometimes). Another possibility is Daniel Ling's arroyo (teach all style classes at once at one place of articulation then movement to the next place, leaving phonation contrasts to the terminate). On the other mitt, given the broad variety of strategies evidenced by the children in the Sotto et al study peradventure the notion of taking whatever words that are of import in the child'southward environment is both ecologically and theoretically defensible. I volition come back with some summaries of Dodd's work on the core vocabulary approach another fourth dimension but I retrieve that this is a trouble worthy of more rigorous and empirical study with larger samples!

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Source: https://developmentalphonologicaldisorders.wordpress.com/tag/phonetic-repertoire/

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