Implementing recommended approaches to assessing multilingual children’s speech

Abstract

Traditional approaches to assessing speech production are not appropriate for the diagnosis of speech sound disorders (SSD) in multilingual children. This study explored the implementation of recommended approaches to assessing the speech production of multilingual children in a French-speaking context. The speech production of 20 multilingual and 20 monolingual children aged 4-6 years was examined using a standardised naming task, parental ratings of intelligibility, and parental concern about speech development. We compared the diagnostic outcomes for monolingual and multilingual children using the norm-referenced approach and a criterion-referenced approach, based on percentage of consonant correct (PCC). We then examined the diagnostic outcomes for the 20 multilingual children using the recommended converging evidence approach (considering multiple measures). Results confirmed that the norm-referenced approach is not appropriate for French-speaking multilingual children, leading to an overdiagnosis of SSD. The converging evidence approach allowed for more informed and more nuanced diagnostic decisions for multilingual children.