Phonological disorders affect childrens' ability to develop intelligible speech because the sound patterns of language are disrupted. Children who have phonological processing disorders have not learned the rules for how sounds fit together to make words, and use certain processes to simplify words. Children with these disorders are at risk for later reading and learning disabilities.
The following are a few examples of a phonological processes disorder:- Stopping is the substitution of a stop consonant (consonants characterized by complete stoppage of the outgoing breathstream as in p,b,t,d) for another sound requiring airflow (e.g., "shop" becomes "dop")
- Cluster reduction is the elmimination of part of a consonant blend (e.g., “blue” becomes “boo”, “spoon” becomes “poon", “tree” becomes “ti”
- Velar fronting is the substitution of sounds produced in the front of the mouth (t,d,n) for sounds in the back of the throat (k,g). In this instance, “duck” becomes “guk”, “car” becomes “tar”, “go” becomes “do” and “can” becomes “tan”