This paper investigates stress assignment in Dutch aphasic patients in non-word repetition, as well as in real-word and non-word reading. Performance on the non-word reading task was similar for the aphasic patients and the control group, as mainly regular stress was assigned to the targets. However, there were group differences on the real-word reading and non-word repetition tasks. Unlike the nonbrain-damaged group, the patients showed a strong regularization tendency in their repetition of irregular patterns. The patients' stress error patterns suggest an impairment in retention or retrieval of targets with irregular stress patterns. Limited verbal short-term memory is proposed as a possible underlying cause for the stress difficulties.

The differentiation between subtypes of speech sound disorder (SSD) and the involvement of possible underlying deficits is part of ongoing research and debate. The present study adopted a data-driven approach and aimed to identify and describe deficits and subgroups within a sample of 150 four to seven-year-old Dutch children with SSD. Data collection comprised a broad test battery including the Computer Articulation Instrument (CAI). Its tasks Picture Naming (PN), NonWord Imitation (NWI), Word and NonWord Repetition (WR; NWR) and Maximum Repetition Rate (MRR) each render a variety of parameters (e.g., percentage of consonants correct) that together provide a profile of strengths and weaknesses of different processes involved in speech production. Principal Component Analysis on the CAI parameters revealed three speech domains: (1) all PN parameters plus three parameters of NWI; (2) the remaining parameters of NWI plus WR and NWR; (3) MRR. A subsequent cluster analysis revealed three subgroups, which differed significantly on intelligibility, receptive vocabulary, and auditory discrimination but not on age, gender and SLPs diagnosis. The clusters could be typified as three specific profiles: (1) phonological deficit; (2) phonological deficit with motoric deficit; (3) severe phonological and motoric deficit. These results indicate that there are different profiles of SSD, which cover a spectrum of degrees of involvement of different underlying problems.