The Effect of Phonological Analysis Procedure on the Selection of Potential Remediation Targets

Abstract

Clinicians electing to target phonological processes in remediation are faced with several choices of phonological analysis procedures. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that the phonological analysis procedure used will influence the selection of potential remediation targets even when the basis for selection of such targets is held constant. Speech samples from five phonologically disordered children, aged 3:5 (years:months) to 6:5, were analyzed using the Assessment of Phonological Processes, Natural Process Analysis, and a modified form of the Procedures for the Phonological Analysis of Children's Language. Potential first remediation targets for each child were generated from the results of each procedure using four criteria for target selection taken from recent literature. In general, the targets selected were similar regardless of the analysis used. However, some differences due to the type of sample analyzed suggest that a combination of spontaneous speech sampling and selected single words should probably be used for target selection.