Pseudowords to phonological therapy validated by expert judges

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Phonological therapy often utilizes pseudowords to target specific speech sound errors.
• Developing a standardized, validated list of pseudowords is crucial for effective intervention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create and validate a pseudoword list suitable for phonological therapy.
• To base pseudoword generation on the phonotactic probabilities of Brazilian Portuguese.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of phoneme environments in Brazilian Portuguese.
• Generation of pseudowords based on phoneme favoring levels.
• Expert panel review in two stages.
• Content Validity Ratio used for concordance analysis.

Main Results:

• Initial list of 4000 pseudowords reduced to 1547 after expert review.
• Further reduction to a small, content-valid list based on expert judgment.
• Simplicity of pseudoword structure emerged as a key selection criterion.

Conclusions:

• Expert judgment yielded a concise, content-valid pseudoword list.
• The validated list is suitable for use in phonological therapy.
• The study provides a refined tool for speech sound disorder interventions.