Developmental Speech Disorders (DSD) Exam 2 Practice

In preschoolers, speech often shows specific simplifications known as phonological processes. The list here captures the common ones: final consonant deletion, where the last sound is dropped (dog becomes do); cluster reduction, where multiple consonants in a row are simplified (spoon becomes poon, stop becomes top); stopping, where a fricative or affricate is replaced by a stop (fish becomes pish, sun becomes tun); fronting, where velars like /k/ and /g/ are replaced with alveolar sounds (go becomes do, cat becomes tat); and gliding, where liquids /l/ or /r/ are replaced by glides like /w/ or /j/ (look becomes wook, rain becomes wain). These patterns are typical parts of early speech development and often resolve with time as motor planning and phoneme awareness mature. The other options mix aspects that aren’t phonological processes (such as cognitive or memory terms) or non-speech behaviors, so they don’t reflect the usual patterns you’d expect in preschoolers’ speech development.