The phonological development of Putonghua-speaking children with and without speech sound disorders

Abstract

Research into the phonological development of Putonghua-speaking children is still in its infancy compared with the relatively extensive evidence on English-speaking populations. The primary research aim of the current study is to investigate the phonological development of Putonghua-speaking children with and without speech difficulties. First, studies from the past 45 years that described phonological development in Putonghua- or Mandarin-speaking children were reviewed to establish a basis of current available evidence in this area. After reviewing the abstracts of 798 studies – located through electronic databases, citation searches, keyword searches through online search engines, and manual searches of libraries – a total of 12 studies that met the inclusion criteria were retained. These studies were explored to examine the demographic background of participants, geographic regions, aspects of speech sounds measured, data collection tools, transcription systems used, reliability, and the main findings. Possible obstacles and strengths in the research design of these studies were identified for reference to the current study. As standardized phonological assessments for Putonghua-speaking children are unavailable, the normative patterns of speech intelligibility were explored in 1,025 Putonghua-speaking preschoolers by using the Intelligibility in Context Scale-Simplified Chinese (ICS-SC), and two cutoff dimensions for differentiating children with and without speech difficulties were proposed. The first dimension is the overall mean ICS-SC scores obtained in each age group. The second dimension is the cutoff scores for specific communication partners, which is essential for capturing children with disproportionate patterns of intelligibility ratings. Using the ICS-SC, 54 children with speech difficulties (SD) were identified and these children were matched with another 54 children with typical development (TD) according to their age, sex, and residential area. The parents of the children with speech difficulties reported that the speech ability of their children was lower than other children in the same age group. A picture-naming task that elicits all Putonghua phonemes and lexical tones was designed to explore the phoneme acquisition and phonological patterns. The role of articulatory complexity in consonant development was confirmed in the current study, which renewed our understanding of its relative influence among the three predictors (articulatory complexity, functional load, and phoneme frequency) in Putonghua phonological development. The findings also provided evidence for the different roles of each predictor in children with and without speech difficulties. Universal and language specific developmental patterns were observed. Dialectal influence on the children may account for some of these patterns. The TD group demonstrated significantly better performance in the production of initial consonants, glides, and vowels, while the production of final consonants were similarly challenging to both groups. Greater varibility in terms of atypical phonological patterns were oberved in the SD group. Future research in this area is needed to provide more evidence and support for clinical diagnosis and intervention given the rapid development of the speech-language pathology profession in Mainland China.