Processing deficits in children with phonological disorder and delay: A comparison of responses to a series of output tasks

AbstractThis study investigated output phonological processing in children with phonological disorder and delay. The purpose was to determine whether different processing deficits underlie different patterns of spontaneous output. The study compared the responses of two groups of children to a series of output tasks which tapped different levels of output processing. These tasks included naming, and repetition of words, non-words and sentences. Two trials were administered. The phonologically delayed group made significantly fewer errors than the disordered group and showed a consistent error pattern across tasks. The phonologically disordered group fell into two groups when consistency of responses was considered: one subgroup made significantly fewer errors on repetition tasks than on naming, while the other subgroup were consistent across tasks. The implications for the level of impairment in the different groups are discussed in terms of Hewlett's model (1990) and the implications for therapeutic intervention are considered.