Phonologically disordered German-speaking children

Speech sound disorders affect more children than any other developmental co mmunication disorder and are associated with longterm social and academic d ifficulties. The diversity of presenting symptoms has resulted in the need for classifying subgroups of speech disorders. Research on English-speaking children suggests that there are four types of surface speech error patter ns (B. Dodd, 1995): articulation disorder (e.g., lisp); delay (i.e., normal developmental patterns that are inappropriate for chronological age); cons istent use of atypical error patterns (e.g., deletion of all initial conson ants); and inconsistent pronunciation of the same lexical items. Classifica tion typologies should be language independent. This study investigated whe ther the same four subgroups, in similar proportions, would be found in Ger man-speaking children who had disordered speech. A total of 110 monolingual German-speaking children, aged 2 years 7 months to 7 years 7 months, parti cipated in the study. They had been referred for assessment of a suspected speech disorder. The results supported the subgroup classification, providi ng evidence for the universal character of speech disorders. One significan t difference was the relatively high proportion of children classified as h aving an articulation disorder. This was explained by the uncertainty regar ding a lisp as a disorder in German, since it is also found in up to 40% of normally developing children of the same age. The theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.