Abstract:
The Assessment of Phonological Processes - Spanish is for use with pre-school speakers of Spanish who have highly unintelligible speech. It is a diagnostic instrument that identifies broad error patterns in the child's phonology. The test is administered individually and orally and takes about 20 minutes. Because of the age of the children, three dimensional stimuli, such as toys and body parts, are used instead of pictures to elicit speech. The tester records the child's utterances in the International Phonetic Alphabet as they are produced and also audiotapes the session. Percentage of occurrence scores are calculated for 10 basic phonological patterns. These data are used to derive a phonological deviancy score which corresponds to a severity level (mild, moderate, severe, profound). The testing process ends with the formulation of a goals statement. No studies of reliability or validity have been done and the test is criterion- rather than norm-referenced.