Computerized assessment of phonological processes in Malayalam (CAPP-M)

Literature on articulatory acquisition has shown that children master majority of the speech sounds of their language by 3.6 years of age. Various computerized assessment tools for identification of speech sound errors or phonological processes in children have been developed in English. In the recent past, attempts have been made in India also to develop such quick screening tools. This paper introduces such a tool named Computerized Assessment of Phonological Processes in Malayalam (CAPP-M). Based on the articulatory acquisition norms obtained from 120 typically developing Malayalam speaking children in the age range of 2-3 years, the word stimuli were selected for the software tool. An earlier developed similar software for 3.0-3.6 years (Merin and Sreedevi, 2010) was appended to this tool to accommodate a larger age range; ie, upto 3.6 years. Installation of Adobe AIR is mandatory to run this software which enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash® and Flex technologies, and ActionScript® to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser. The test tool provides quantified list of phonological processes in each child tested. Further the sensitivity of the software was tested on children with hearing impairment and children with mental retardation matched for language age. The tool was found to be sensitive to the speech productions of children with these communication disorders also. Thus, CAPP-M can be a quick screening tool for automatic and easy analysis of the speech sound error patterns in children with Malayalam as their native language.