A comparison of two phonological assessment tools for monolingual Spanish-speaking children

This study compared two phonological assessment tools for use with young Spanish-speaking children in the American Southwest, FON and STAR. Each was administered to 27 1-, 2- and 3-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking children in the greater Phoenix area. Analyses compared the children's rate of response, complexity of the children's productions, as measured by the Phonological Mean Length of Utterance (pMLU), and the proximities of the child's productions to the adult target words, as measured by the Proportion of Whole-Word Proximity (Proximity). Response rates increased with age, and were similar for both FON and STAR. Two-year-olds had higher pMLU scores on the STAR than the FON, but no difference was found for 3-year-olds. The children overall had significantly higher Proximity scores on the STAR words. Positive correlations between vocabulary size and phonological whole-word measures on both the FON and the STAR were found. Recommendations are that language sampling be used for children under age 2, the STAR word list for 2-year-olds, and either word list for 3-year-olds.