A noncontrastive model for assessment of phonology

The contrastive/noncontrastive model developed by Seymour and Seymour (1977) can be applied to the development of a dialect-sensitive phonological assessment that uses a single scoring and test format, regardless of a child's dialect. Through extensive field research, stimulus items were found that respect the phonotactics of African American English (AAE) (i.e., no targets are final consonants or final consonant clusters), yet are sufficiently demanding to show development in the age range from 4 to 9 years. Consonant clusters of varying levels of phonological difficulty are shown to discriminate between typically developing and phonologically impaired children of different dialect groups, Mainstream American English (MAE) and non-MAE. Implications for further diagnosis and remediation are presented.