Acquisition age of lateral and rhotic phonemes: the opinion of Speech and Language Therapists from Santiago, Chile

Abstract

Purpose: to describe at which age do speech and language therapists consider the / l /, / ɾ /, / r / phonemes should be acquired; to describe the criteria used by speech and language therapists to consider a phoneme as acquired; and to investigate the diagnostic criteria used by these professionals. Methods: this is an analytical cross-sectional study in which an online questionnaire was completed by 151 speech and language therapists from the Metropolitan region of Chile. The questionnaire included questions regarding the aims of this study. Results: around a 30% of respondents considered the /l/ phoneme to be acquired between 3,6-4,6 years, a 72% agreed on the /ɾ/ phoneme to be acquired from 4,0 to 4,11 and a 40% declared the acquisition of the /r/ phoneme between 5,6-5,11. When determining a phoneme as acquired, a 46.3% of interviewees referred to do it only when it was produced always and a 30% declared to consider as such when produced more than 50% of the times. When exposed to a real case, respondents provided three different diagnostic options. Conclusion: results showed a wide age range in which speech and language therapists consider the lateral and rhotic phonemes to be acquired, showing no consensus. There are diverse criteria to determine when each phoneme is acquired. Similarly, different opinions were evidenced regarding when a disorder would be defined as phonologic or articulatory.

Exploratory Study on the Prevalence of Speech Sound Disorders in a Group of Valencian School Students Belonging to 3rd Grade of Infant School and 1st Grade of Primary School

“…This author also considers that the consonant clusters formed by liquids appear later than the rest of the consonant groups. The phoneme /r/ would have be acquired between 5.6 and 5.11 years (Rojas Contreras et al, 2019).…”