Consonant Error Profiles and Short-Term Memory Deficits in Chinese School-Age Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Area of Science:

• Linguistics and Psychology
• Child Development and Communication Disorders

Background:

• Speech sound disorder (SSD) is prevalent in children, potentially impacting language, literacy, and social skills.
• Characterizing consonant errors and short-term memory (STM) in school-age children with SSD, especially non-English speakers, is crucial but underexplored.
• The link between STM and SSD severity in school-aged children requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To profile consonant errors and assess STM in Mandarin-speaking school-age children with SSD.
• To investigate the relationship between STM and SSD severity.
• To identify potential STM predictors of SSD severity for targeted intervention development.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 142 Mandarin-speaking school-age children with SSD and 70 typically developing controls for STM analysis.
• Assessed speech via a word-level picture-naming task to analyze consonant accuracy and error patterns.
• Measured STM using the WISC-IV Digit Span (forward and backward).

Main Results:

• Consonant errors, primarily substitutions, were observed across phonemes, often co-occurring.
• Children with SSD demonstrated significantly impaired STM compared to controls.
• Backward digit span positively correlated with consonant accuracy and independently predicted it.

Conclusions:

• Consonant error patterns in school-age Chinese children with SSD are identifiable and linked to STM deficits.
• Poorer STM, particularly backward digit span, is associated with reduced consonant accuracy in children with SSD.
• Interventions integrating speech therapy with cognitive training may improve outcomes for children with SSD.