Morphosyntactic profiles among preschoolers with and without speech sound disorders.
Elizabeth Roepke, Françoise Brosseau-Lapré
PMID 38044123WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers with speech sound disorders but normal language made more errors on subject pronouns, irregular past tense verbs, and yes/no questions than typical peers.
Irregular past tense errors were linked to poor phonological awareness. Other morphosyntactic areas showed no group differences.
Key findings
01Children with speech sound disorders outperformed typical peers on overall morphosyntax, with specific difficulties in subject pronouns, irregular past tense verbs, and yes/no question formation.
02Performance on irregular past tense verbs was significantly related to phonological awareness scores, but subject pronoun and yes/no question errors were not.
03No significant differences were found between groups for plurals, auxiliaries, participles, possessives, regular past tense, copulas, third person singular -s, negation, conjunctions, infinitives, wh-questions, or dependent clauses.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The groups were not perfectly matched for language ability; the typical speech group scored higher on language tests than the speech sound disorder group, meaning observed differences in specific structures may partly reflect this overall language gap. Only 53 of the 80 children completed the phonological awareness test, reducing the sample size for that analysis. The study used a standardized test (SPELT-P2) rather than a language sample for the primary comparison, and the authors note that standardized test results should be validated with language samples in clinical practice. Group assignment was binary (SSD vs. TD), ignoring the heterogeneity within SSD subtypes, such as inconsistent phonological disorder. Scoring was not blinded to group assignment, although independent scorers and author resolution were used.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Purdue University. Participants received prizes and caregivers received $10 per session.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume all morphosyntactic errors in children with speech sound disorders are caused by phonological processing deficits. While irregular past tense errors were linked to phonological awareness, errors in subject pronouns and yes/no questions were not, suggesting these difficulties may have different underlying causes.