Author: Khadija Abbasi
Supervisor: Humaira Naz, Sharmeen Aslam Tarar, Farah Malik PhD
Degree: MS
Year: 2015-2017
University: Centre for Clinical Psychology, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
Present research study was designed to investigate the
Phonological Processes of Urdu Language in Typically
Developing Children aged 5.1 to 6.12 years having Urdu as a first
language. It was hypothesized that older children would likely to
use fewer phonological processes as compared to younger
children. It was also hypothesized that girls would likely to have
fewer phonological error patterns as compared to boys The
participants comprised of 120 children with equal gender
distribution (boys = 60 and girls = 60 girls) in four age groups
(5.1-5.6 years, 5.7-5.12 years, 6.1-6.6 years and 6.7-6.12 years),
were selected from different schools of Lahore. Indigenous
Wordlist for Articulation and Phonological Assessment (Shabbir,
et. al., 2016) was used in order to elicit data either spontaneously
or with prompts to assess error patterns of phonological processes
in typically developing children aged 5.1 to 6.12 years. Each
child’s speech was audio-recorded and phonetically transcribed
using Urdu IPA chart. Results revealed that nine error patterns of
phonological processes were observed in children, among these
Syllable Structure Processes was the highest occurrence than
other processes. Among these, four phonological processes were
suppressed before the age of 6.12 years. However, five processes
were found to be persistent in the age of 6.12 years. It was also
shown that the phonological processes suppressed gradually with
an increasing age. Significant age differences revealed that
children of age range (5.1- 5.6) and (5.7- 5.12) years had high
mean scores on all error patterns as compared to the children of
age range (6.1- 6.6) and (6.7- 6.12) years respectively.
Significant gender differences were found on one syllable
structure process, Anaptyxis. Findings of the present study has
provided an indigenous data on Urdu phonological development
that will be helpful for speech and language pathologists in
clinical decision making in diagnosis, assessment and speech
therapy of articulation disorder.
Keywords: Phonology processes, Indigenous tool, Urdu, Typically developing children.
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