Great speech assessment tool for English and/or Spanish speakers. Calculates percentages of errors by type automatically. You can save each administration to evaluate change over time.

1. TSHA Annual Convention
March 8-10, 2012
San Antonio, Texas
An iPad Speech Assessment for
English and Spanish Speakers
Mary Bauman, M.S., CCC-SLP
Barbara Fernandes, M.S., CCC-SLP

2. The iPad is a registered mark of Apple, Inc.
Presenters do not have any financial interest in
promoting the device.
The Bilingual Articulation Phonology Assessment is
a registered mark of Smarty Ears and authors of
this presentation have a direct financial relation
with the product presented.
Vendor presentation

3. Mary Bauman, M.S., CCC-SLP Barbara Fernandes, M.S, CCC-SLP
•Founder & CEO of Smarty Ears
•GeekSLP.com
•Developed over 30 apps for the
iPad & iPhone for speech and
language development
•Practicing bilingual speech-
language pathologist with
Bilinguistics
•Areas of focus in speech
sound disorders in English
and Spanish

4. The iPad

5. Our team wanted to create an
assessment tool that:
• could be used with monolingual (English or
Spanish) and bilingual (Spanish-English)
speakers
• provides multiple opportunities to assess
sounds in each position
• reduces the time required to analyze results
and makes the assessment process time
efficient

6. • Interactional Dual Systems Model of phonological
representation suggests that bilingual children possess two
separate phonological systems with mutual influence. These
systems are separate, yet non-autonomous.
(Paradis, 2001)
L2
L1
L1 L2

7. Click to visit www.bilinguistics.com

8. • Due to the interaction of the two languages
within a child’s phonological system, speech
production abilities should be tested and
compared across both languages.
• Testing in one language, even the language the
child uses the most, may not yield the most
accurate and reliable results. Combining
children's best performance across domains is
promising for improving assessment practices
for bilingual children. (Peña & Bedore, 2011)

9. • Possibility of a Test Mode Effect
• No significant differences in performance found
for children ages 7-8 between computer-based
testing (CBT) and paper-based testing (PBT)
(Sim & Horton, 2005)
Children also showed a
preference for
computer-based
assessments

10. SAM CPAC‐S SPAT
Primary Use
Production of Spanish
consonants and
phonological processes
Screener/comprehensive
assessment to gauge
articulatory and
phonological performance
To examine the production
of Spanish phonemes in
single words.
Normative
Sample
Spanish‐speaking children
Ages 3;0 +
Spanish‐speaking children
from the U.S., Mexico, and
Puerto Rico
Ages 3;0 to 8:11
Hispanic children from
Oregon
Ages ranged 2;6 to 5;5
Norm‐based or
Criterion Referenced
Criterion Referenced Criterion Referenced
Normative data published
on 9/15/09
Norm‐based
Administration Time
15 minutes 15‐20 minutes 5‐10 minutes

11. How can the BAPA help us with
assessment?
• Performs time-consuming calculations
and analysis
• Provides a more in-depth look at speech
errors in less time
• Generates report template to save time

12. • The BAPA codes both articulation and phonological
errors to allow the SLP to appropriately identify the
profile of the child
• Greater efficacy found in treatments that
differentiate between articulation and phonological
errors (Holm, Ozanne, & Dodd, 1997)
Speech
Articulation Phonology Other

13. • Articulation Disorder – difficulty producing
specific age-expected sounds; error in the motor
movements of sound production
▫ e.g., omission, distortions, substitutions
• Phonological process disorder – patterns of error
related to underlying difficulty with rules of a
language’s sound system
▫ e.g., weak syllable deletion, stopping, fronting,
assimilation
(ASHA, 2008)

14. Considerations in the development of the
BAPA:
• Frequency of occurrence of words in each
language
• Picturability of target words
• Selection of culturally-appropriate items
• Phonological differences between Spanish and
English
• Regional differences of words (in both Spanish
and English)
• Minimum of 2 targets of each frequently-
occurring sound in all positions

15. • Words chosen from familiar categories, such as
objects in the home, clothing, body parts, &
animals
• Target words selected based on how easily
pictures could be identified, particularly for
young children
• Stimulus pictures were field tested across
various age groups of children with different
cultural backgrounds and modified to find
stimuli that produced the highest rates of
correct identification

16. • Consideration given to exclude items that
may be less familiar or unfamiliar to
children who are culturally and
linguistically diverse
• Word targets selected from common
categories familiar to multiple cultures as
much as possible

17. • Consonant blends and sequences in Spanish
• Other assessment tools don’t address
reduction of consonant sequences
/n/ - Final consonant of syllable
or consonant sequence?

18. All of the documents and charts in this presentation
can be downloaded from our Free Resource Library.
Click here to visit the Resource Library

19. Stimulus Pictures:
• Eliminated words with various labels
due to regional or dialectal differences
Analysis:
• Report will address Spanish dialectal
differences, such as Mexican, Puerto
Rican, and Cuban Spanish

20. • Phonemes assessed in all positions
▫ Initial, medial, final
▫ Consonant clusters (blends) as well as consonant
sequences
Spanish: /n/
nariz chancla
conejo llorando
pan

21. • In English we distinguished between medial
(intervocalic) consonants and medial consonants
within a consonant sequence
English: /n/
neck blanket
dinosaur plant
Kitchen

22. • Many current tools assess each phoneme in
each position one time
• Have observed contextual/assimilatory
errors that can misrepresent child’s actual
error type
• Greater number of opportunities to produce
each target increases accuracy of error
analysis

23. • Doesn’t doubling the number
of opportunities increase the
number of words targeted
and administration time?

24. • The BAPA uses every opportunity to assess a
phoneme, which reduces the total number of
target words needed
• Accounts for all errors made within words
/bl/ cluster
/k/ medial
/s/ final

25. • Speech intelligibility is considered one of the main
manifestations in subjects with acquired or developmental
speech disturbances.
(Barreto, Ortiz, 2008)

27. http://bilinguistics.com/smile-program

28. Barreto, S. & Ortiz, K. (2008). Intelligibility measurements in speech
disorders: a critical review of the literature. Pró-Fono R. Atual.
Cient. 20(3): 201-206. Retreived from
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s0104-
56872008000300011&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en#back1
Holm, A., Ozanne, A., Dodd, B. (1997). Efficacy of intervention for a bilingual
child making articulation and phonological errors. International
Journal of Bilingualism, 1(1), 55-69.
Fernandes, Barbara (2011). iTherapy: The revolution of mobile devices within
the field of speech therapy. Perspectives. School-Based issues.
Peña, E.D. & Bedore, L.M. (2011). It takes two: Improving assessment
accuracy in bilingual children. ASHA Leader. Retreived from
http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2011/111101/It-Takes-
Two-Improving-Assessment-Accuracy-in-Bilingual-Children/

29. Secord, W. (2007). Eliciting Sounds. Florence, KY: Thomson Delmar
Learning.
Sim, G. & Horton, M. (2005). Performance and Attitude of Children in
Computer Based Versus Paper Based Testing. In P. Kommers &
G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on
Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications
2005 (pp. 3610-3614). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Skelton, S. (2004). Motor-skill learning approach to the treatment of
speech-sound disorders. CSHA Magazine, Summer, 8-9.
Yavas, M. & Goldstein, B. (1998). Phonological assessment and treatment
of bilingual speakers. American Journal of Speech-Language
Pathology, 7(2) 49-60.