Pseudowords to phonological therapy validated by expert judges

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Create a pseudowords list based on favorable environments and submit this to the judgment of expert judges, to obtain a validated list of pseudowords that can be used in therapy.

Methods

A study that analyzed the favorable environments of all phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese was sought and, from their data, a pseudoword list for each phoneme, at different levels of favoring, was created. The judging sample of the list was composed of ten judges who reviewed thepseudowords. This analysis was performed in two distinct stages. In the first stage, five judges analyzed the bestpseudowords. In the second stage, the other five judges judged whether pseudowords were essential for therapy. The concordance analysis among the judges was performed through the Content Validity Ratio.

Results

The judges of the first stage reviewed and considerably reduced the number ofpseudowords, from 4000 in total to 1547. And, with the statistical analysis used on the data obtained with the judges of the second stage, the pseudoword list with content validity was reduced to few options. The judges pointed to the simplicity in the structure of pseudowords as a selection criterion.

Conclusion

The expert judges' judgment resulted in a small number of pseudowords that have content validity and can be used in phonological therapy.

Keywords
Speech; Speech Therapy; Linguistics; Speech Sound Disorder; Child