Evaluating Children's Speech Development

¶ … 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 production. 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 fronting, stopping of affricates and cluster reduction in the data was similar to that of children from the normative group, there was less palato-alveolar fronting, stopping of fricatives and obstruent cluster reduction than research would lead to believe should be expected (Cohen & Anderson 2011: 484). The research had a number of limitations.

First, the population selected was extremely small. Secondly, all children had the same dialect and differences in speech production based upon this consideration might be a factor given that the normative group was not necessarily the norm for children of Scottish descent. The groups were also drawn from a relatively narrow segment even within the Scottish population, socio-economically speaking. And the researchers themselves admitted there was an uneven distribution between the age groups (Cohen & Anderson 2011: 488). Finally, the focus on single word units was an additional limit on the study.

Still, the findings indicate caution in terms of evaluating students. I selected this article because it highlights the.