Child speech developmental norms in Greek monolinguals: whole word and consonant accuracy

ABSTRACT

Child phonological development in standard Greek is aptly represented by both single-case and cross-sectional studies. While some quantitative measures exist, such as the 75% criterion in the acquisition of singletons and clusters, reported norms require replication to fine-tune existing indicators, inform non-existent ones, and better reflect children’s typical developmental speech in contemporary Greece. Our cross-sectional study addresses this gap, in terms of consonant inventory acquisition, and percentage accuracy of words, singletons, clusters, and cluster reductions. Phonological Assessment for Greek (PAel) procedures facilitated data elicitation from 254 Greek-speaking participants, aged 2;0–7;0, equally represented for gender. Our study comprehensively informs quantitative norms on whole word accuracy (WWA), percentage of consonants correct (PCC), PCC variation across the different age groups of children, and the WWA-PCC correlation along the developmental path in this cross-sectional study. A schematic representation models children’s normative PCC-WWA profiles, facilitating the determination of phonological disorder in Greek with direct clinical application on diagnosis and intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Child development
• Greek norms
• phonological assessment
• quantitative measures

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the child participants and their families for supporting this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors report that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.