Assessment and Intervention for Bilingual Children with Phonological Disorders

This collaborative study investigated phonological patterns in 12 typically developing 4-year-old bilingual (Spanish-English) children.

For many speech-language pathologists, the application of the concepts of phonology to the assessment and treatment of phonologically disordered children has produced more confusion than clinical assistance. At least part of this confusion seems to be due to the expectation that, since new terms are being used, new clinical techniques should differ radically from the old ones. The basic intent of this paper is to show that adopting a phonological approach to dealing with speech sound disorders does not necessitate a rejection of the well-established principles underlying traditional approaches to articulation disorders. To the contrary, articulation must be recognized as a critical aspect of speech sound development under any theory. Consequently, phonological principles should be viewed as adding new dimensions and a new perspective to an old problem, not simply as refuting established principles. These new principles have resulted in the development of several procedures that differ in many respects from old procedures, yet are highly similar in others. Whether phonological approaches are better than existing procedures remains an important, but unanswered question.

Little is known about the phonological development of children who acquire two languages sequentially in the preschool years. Some of these children will be referred for assessment of speech disorder. Distinguishing between delayed development due to the language learning environment and disorder is problematic in the absence of normative data on the typical phonological development of bilingual children. Another major issue concerns whether both languages require intervention, or only one because of generalisation to the other language. Treatment efficacy studies of 2 bilingual children are reported. The data indicate that different patterns of cross-language generalisation occur depending upon the deficit in the speech processing chain underlying the speech disorder.