What's a speech sound disorder? Specifically, what's a phonological disorder and how can I help?

Between 2.3-24.6% of school-aged children are estimated to have a speech sound disorder. In this post you’re going to learn about speech sound disorders, specifically phonological disorders. What’s a phonological disorder, you ask? Watch to the end of the video and read to the end to find out and to find out how you can help with phonological disorders! I got much of the organization of this information from the American Speech Language Hearing Association website practice portal on articulation and phonology https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/...​. What is a speech sound disorder? It’s an umbrella term— it can have to do with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds. What is phonology? It's a system of contrastive relationships among speech sounds that are the fundamental components of langage— it's systems of sounds. What are articulation disorders and phonological disorders? Articulation disorders focus on substitutions or distortion of INDIVIDUAL sounds. Phonological disorders focus on RULE-BASED errors that are predictable that affect more than one sound or classes of sounds. A phonological disorder is when someone has error patterns, phonological error patterns, that are systematic changes or simplifications that affect whole classes of sounds (classes could be "fricatives," or sounds that have friction like /s/, or "stops," sounds where the airstream is stopped and then released, like /t/), sound combinations (consonant clusters), or syllable structures. What is a phonological process? It's a pattern of sound errors that many children use to simplify speech as they learn to talk. Many phonological processes are outgrown by age 5. For example: the phonological process "stopping" is when a "stopped" sound like /t/ is substituted for a "fricative" sound like /s/— saying "tay" instead of "say." What causes phonological disorders? Often, we don’t know. But… some risk factors: Speech sound disorders including phonological disorders are more prevalent in males, those with pre- or peri-natal problems, a family history of speech language problems, or those with persistent ear infections. How are phonological disorders diagnosed? In assessment/diagnosis of phonological disorders, we can consider developmentally appropriate errors and patterns, utilize both standardized and nonstandardized measures, utilize both formal and informal tools, and make sure to take into account languages and dialects used by the speaker, realizing there may be patterns of transfer from one language to another. How can I improve phonological processes in children? There are many ways, but… I’ll focus on some phonological, or language-based approaches— these help children internalize phonological rules of adult-like language and generalize these rules. I’ll also focus on phonological contrast approaches— these emphasize the sound contrasts needed to differentiate words from each other. Some contrastive approaches are: minimal pairs (oppositions)— words that differ by only one phoneme (unit of sound): star tar maximal oppositions— use pairs of words with contrasting sounds to teach new sounds, one sound unknown tx of the empty set— use words with maximally different sounds to teach new sounds, both sounds unknown multiple oppositions— a variation on minimal pairs cycles approach— focus on targeting certain phonological patterns during cycles ranging from 5-16 weeks— includes perception training (auditory bombardment—identification tasks— child identifies correct and incorrect versions of a target) Want to know a few tools to help with speech sound disorders? Mirror— helps with visual feedback for placement and movement of articulators Gestural cues— maybe make a long sweeping gesture for the fricative /s/, or a short, chopping gesture for the stop /t/ Palatography— palatal device with electrodes, tongue contact on the palate can be viewed That’s about it for today. What questions do you have about speech sound disorders? Please post in the comments, Subscribe If you’re interested in learning more about speech, language, voice, and diction and let me know if there’s an aspect of speech sound disorders or another speech language disorder you’d like to learn about next. #speechpathology​ #articulationdisorders #phonological disorders