Phonological Mean Length of Utterance in Children with Phonological Disorders

Aim: Although phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU) is addressed in normal children as well as those with specific language impairment and cochlear implanted children, there is poor focus on children with phonological disorders. Hence, the present study was carried out to determine the pMLU in children with phonological disorders in comparison with typically developing Kannada-speaking children. Methods: The study followed a case control design. Clinical group comprised 16 individuals (14 males and 2 females) with phonological disorders in the age range of 3 to 6 years. The control group comprised 30 age-matched children of whom 15 were males and 15 were females. A minimum of 50 spontaneous speech utterances were elicited from each child for a duration of 30 to 40 minutes which was audio-recorded. The children's utterances were narrowly transcribed and pMLU was calculated for each child. The sum of each word in all the utterances were totaled and divided by the number of words produced by the child to obtain the pMLU scores. Results: Independent t-test was employed to compare the differences between the mean pMLU scores across both groups. The results revealed a statistically significant difference between the means of pMLU scores across the group at p <0.05. Conclusion: The results revealed that children with phonological disorder are inferior in the acquisition of segments as well as in their whole-word phonological proficiency than typically developing children. Hence, pMLU measure could be regarded as a yardstick for phonological development, and forms the basis of a developmental scale for comparison against disordered phonology.