What is are phonological and articulation delays?
A phonological delay refers to when a child continues to simplify his speech beyond the typical ages of use. A child with a severe phonological delay will be very hard to understand, especially to those who are not around them a lot (i.e. grandparents). With a phonological delay, the child struggles with certain classes of sounds. The errors can be described using phonological processes (i.e. fronting of back sounds; using /t, d/ for /k, g/). A child with an articulation delay, on the other hand, is a child who struggles to produce sounds, not related to a process. The child’s errors can be described as the inability to produce /t/ or /d/ because the articulators are not able to move to form the sound.
