Clinical comparisons: Phonological processes and their relationship to traditional phoneme acquisition norms

Two psycholinguistic philosophies of speech articulation development in children are the traditional and the phonological approaches. The traditional approach is perhaps the most widely used, and it is most useful for children whose speech differs from standard speech by only a few phonemes or who need oral sensorimotor stimulation. For severely unintelligible speech, many clinicians and teachers favor the phonological approach, with its emphasis on linguistic rules governing syllable formation. This article compares and contrasts the two approaches and the underlying psycholinguistic philosophies inherent in each.