Phonological disorders focus on predictable, rule-based errors (e.g., fronting, stopping, and final consonant deletion) that affect more than one sound. Articulation disorders focus on errors (e.g., distortions and substitutions) in production of individual speech sounds. Historically, these disorders are referred to as articulation disorders and phonological disorders, respectively. Functional Speech Sound Disordersįunctional speech sound disorders include those related to the motor production of speech sounds and those related to the linguistic aspects of speech production. Organic speech sound disorders include those resulting from motor/neurological disorders (e.g., childhood apraxia of speech and dysarthria), structural abnormalities (e.g., cleft lip/palate and other structural deficits or anomalies), and sensory/perceptual disorders (e.g., hearing loss). Functional speech sound disorders are idiopathic-they have no known cause. Organic speech sound disorders result from an underlying motor/neurological, structural, or sensory/perceptual cause.

Speech sound disorders can be organic or functional in nature.

Speech sound disorders is an umbrella term referring to any difficulty or combination of difficulties with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds and speech segments-including phonotactic rules governing permissible speech sound sequences in a language. A Practice Portal page on dysarthria in children will be developed in the future. See ASHA's Practice Portal pages on Childhood Apraxia of Speech and Cleft Lip and Palate for information about speech sound problems associated with these two disorders. Information about speech sound problems related to motor/neurological disorders, structural abnormalities, and sensory/perceptual disorders (e.g., hearing loss) is not addressed in this page. The scope of this page is speech sound disorders with no known cause-historically called articulation and phonological disorders-in preschool and school-age children (ages 3–21). All rights reserved.See the Speech Sound Disorders Evidence Map for summaries of the available research on this topic. The findings indicate that it is important for clinicians to consider phonological assessment in pre-school CWHL and the use of evidence-based speech therapy in order to reduce non-developmental and non-age-appropriate developmental processes, thereby enhancing their speech intelligibility.Ĭhildren with normal hearing Cochlear implant Hearing aid Hearing loss Phonological processes Speech production.Ĭopyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc.

Final consonant deletion, weak syllable deletion, backing, and glottal replacement were present in the speech of HA users, affecting their overall speech intelligibility.ĭevelopmental and non-developmental phonological processes persist in the speech of children with mild to profound hearing loss compared to their peers with typical hearing. Children with HAs and CIs produced similar phonological processes.

CWHL showed a similar trend of age of elimination to CWNH, but at a slower rate. Speech samples obtained from a list of 88 words, derived from three standardized speech tests, were analyzed using the CASALA (Computer Aided Speech and Language Analysis) program to evaluate participants' phonological systems, based on lax (a process appeared at least twice in the speech of at least two children) and strict (a process appeared at least five times in the speech of at least two children) counting criteria.ĭevelopmental phonological processes were eliminated in the speech of younger and older CWNH while eleven developmental phonological processes persisted in the speech of both age groups of CWHL.

A second aim was to compare phonological processes of HA and CI users.Ĭhildren with hearing loss (CWHL, N = 25) were compared to children with normal hearing (CWNH, N = 30) with similar age, gender, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

In this descriptive study, phonological processes were examined in the speech of children aged 5 0-7 6 (years months) with mild to profound hearing loss using hearing aids (HAs) and cochlear implants (CIs), in comparison to their peers.

Age of phonological processes