Criteria for phonological process analysis

Investigators have proposed that children with functional articulation disorders should be relabelled phonologically disordered. To support this proposal, evidence has been presented in the literature demonstrating that children's error patterns reflect the operation of phonological processes. No quantitative or qualitative criteria have been offered to differentiate these processes from surface error patterns. The purpose of the present descriptive study was to determine if differences would be found when two kinds of process analyses were employed: a nonquantitative criteria analysis as conducted in the studies reported in the literature, and a quantitative criteria analysis. Speech samples were obtained from 13 children with functional articulation problems. Their errors were submitted to the two analysis procedures. Results indicated that the number of identified processes were reduced when minimum quantitative criteria were used from the number identified when no quantitative criteria were imposed. The decrease occurred in individual children's patterns as well as across the patterns of the 13 children. It is suggested that there is a need to establish reasonable quantitative and qualitative criteria for phonological process identification.