The purpose of this study was to investigate the phonological patterns of Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican preschoolers. Twenty-seven typically developing children of Puerto Rican descent were identified as participants. Ages ranged from 3;0 to 6;1, with a mean age of 4;4. There were a total of 15 boys and 12 girls. The children came from three educational centers in the San Juan area of Puerto Rico. The children were administered the Assessment of Phonological Processes-Spanish (APPS-2). The data gathered were compared to previous data gathered from Puerto Rican, Chilean, and Mexican-American preschoolers. The average TOMPD for all twenty-seven children was found to be 22.7. The most frequently occurring phonological patterns across all age groups were stridency deficiencies, postvocalic singleton omissions, and liquid deficiencies. Between age groups, no significant differences were noted in TOMPD scores. The children in the study exhibited similar error patterns as seen in previous studies on Puerto Rican preschoolers. Compared to previous studies across other dialects of Spanish, the Puerto Rican children exhibited greater TOMPD scores (22.7) than Chilean children (17.9) and Mexican-American children (10.3) who were administered the same assessment. Similar error patterns were shown across all dialects, with liquid deficiencies being one of the top three deviations for all three groups. All children scored within the "normal" range on the assessment tool. Therefore, there are specific dialectal features of Puerto Rican Spanish, such as substitution of the /h/ for the /s/, which should be considered a dialectal difference when assessing a child for services. Information such as this will assist SLPs in distinguishing between a language difference and disorder in diverse populations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-03282011-150158 |
| Date | 28 March 2011 |
| Creators | Hepler, Tara C. |
| Contributors | Raul Prezas |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword, application/octet-stream |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-03282011-150158/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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