The following article has
been accepted for publication. It is a part of Sarah Masso's PhD:
Masso, S., McLeod, S., Baker,
E., & McCormack, J. (2016, in press March). Polysyllable productions in
preschool children with speech sound disorders: Error categories and the Framework
of Polysyllable Maturity. International
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Here is the abstract
Purpose: Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) find polysyllables difficult; however, routine methods of sampling and measuring speech accuracy are insufficient to describe polysyllable accuracy and maturity. This study had two aims: (1) to compare two speech production tasks and, (2) to describe polysyllable errors within the Framework of Polysyllable Maturity. Method: Ninety-three preschool children with SSD from the Sound Start Study (4;0-5;5 years) completed the Polysyllable Preschool Test (POP; Baker, 2013) and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP-Phonology; Dodd et al., 2002). Result: Consonant accuracy was similar, but vowel accuracy was significantly different between the POP and the DEAP-Phonology. Production errors were analysed according to the seven error categories of the Word-level Analysis of Polysyllables (WAP): (1) substitution of consonants or vowels (97.8% of children demonstrated common use), (2) deletion of syllables, consonants or vowels (65.6%), (3) distortion of consonants or vowels (0.0%), (4) addition of consonants or vowels (0.0%), (5) alteration of phonotactics (77.4%), (6) alteration of timing (63.4%), and (7) alteration of sequence (0.0%). The Framework of Polysyllable Maturity described five levels of maturity based on children’s errors. Conclusions: Polysyllable productions of preschool children with SSD can be analysed and categorised using the WAP, and interpreted using the Framework of Polysyllable Maturity.
