¶ … Phonological Processes in Preschool Children's Single-word Productions
The topic and overall purpose of the study by Cohen & Anderson (2011) "Identification of phonological processes in preschool children's single-word productions" was to determine the degree of differentiation in which children acquire single words. In general, in the field of linguistics, there is an accepted rate and pattern by which such words are acquired. The researchers hypothesized that there might be differentiation based upon population subsets, however. To achieve this objective, the study authors compared various phonological processes of speech production that were present in the single-word acquisitions of 94 West of Scotland preschool children with normative data of general language acquisition based upon age (Cohen & Anderson 2011: 481).
The research was critical given that such normative data is used when making interventions to improve children's speech...
Thus, based upon the results this could mean changes in the way children are evaluated for developmental speech delays. Children were identified in the study in terms of the patterns of phonological processes they exhibited including fronting, stopping and cluster reduction. (Cohen & Anderson 2011: 484). The children were solicited from three separate nursery schools, one area of which was classified as deprived although socio-economic information was not assessed for all students. Two students were already receiving speech therapy (Cohen & Anderson 2011: 484). Children were shown pictures and their responses were transcribed to see if students were able to speak the intended word with or without prompting. Responses were both transcribed and recorded.
After being coded, the researchers observed that there were greater differences between the test population and the normative population in terms of specific speech patterns. Although velar…
