I know you've been busy but, if I could get a moment of your time when you get a chance, I would really like your help with a few problems that my ds is having. He just had a speech evaluation and the report says "Many of Seth's errors were readily grouped into processes of simplification, termed phonological precess. These included: cluster reduction, gliding, and dentalization of many alveolar sounds." I have no idea what this means or how to work on whatever these issues are! He scored in the average to superior range on the TOLD-P:3 but his articulation is at a 3y1m equivalent on the GFTA-2 (a raw score of 29, 8th percentile). His therapists and I have been working on his articulation but I'd love to have this explained to me. I can't speak with his therapists about this for 2 1/2 weeks and I'm afraid I'm just not that patient. Any help you could be when you have the time would be great. TIA

By Pamt on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 02:55 pm:

Phonological processes are the normal ways that kids simplify adult speech. For example, w/r like "the wabbit wan weally fast" is a typical error because /r/ is a later developing sound. Others would be things like f/th (fum/thumb), (dop/stop), etc. These phon. processes all begin to drop off at various ages. Your son is still hanging on to three phon. processes:

Cluster reduction--reducing consonant clusters (like st, tr, pl) into only one consonant such as peas/please, tain/train

Gliding--this is substitution of a gliding sound ("w" or "y") for a liquid sound ("r" or "l") Gliding errors would be things like yike/like, wabbit/rabbit

Dentalization of alveolars--Alveolar sounds are any sounds made with your tongue placed on that bumpy ridge (the alveolar ridge) behind your top teeth. Alveolars include "l, t, d, n" and sometimes "s, z." The term dentalization means that your son is putting his tongue more on his teeth when he says this sound instead of on the alveolar ridge. This can cause a lisp or a sound distortion rather than a true substitution of one sound for another.

The TOLD-P:3 is the Test of Language Development-Primary, 3rd edition and it is a general language test that evaluates receptive and expressive language skills. The GFTA-2 is the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation, 2nd edition and it tests the articulation of all English speech sounds, except vowels, in all word positions. Age equivalencies are statistically poor scores to use to gauge anything. I never even report those to the parent because they are psychometrically irrelevant. Similarly, the raw score tells me nothing (only how many errors he made). You need to have the ST give you the standard score, which she looks up on a chart by age and gender according to his raw score. On the GFTA the standard scores are based on a mean of 100, which means that a score of 100 would be considered average. Anything from 85-115 would be in the range of average. 8th percentile means that out of 100 children sample (same age and gender), your son had better articulation than 8 of them.

Basically your DS just needs to work on producing consonant clusters, /l/ and/or /r/, and pulling his tongue back a little with alveolar sounds. Although his percentile rank is low, these are all pretty minor and common speech sounds. They just occur frequently enough to really lower his score. HTH!

By Tink on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 03:37 pm:

Thanks so much! I have all of his standard scores but I thought that I was making things easier by reducing all of his report to the age equivalents and raw scores. I'm not the least bit worried about his scores on the TOLD-P:3. Most of his standard scores were from 11-16. I am more concerned with his GFTA-2 score. I'll try to help him keep his tongue back. It sounds like we have already made some progress because his tongue always used to be between his teeth. We've been working on /l/, /r/ and /s/ a lot lately, especially /l/ and /s/. Apparently, /r/ is more difficult. Thank you, thank you. It's nice to understand the paperwork they hand you!