A new phonological discrimination test for children aged 48-72 months

This contribution is part of a wider project aiming at the creation of a phonological discrimination test for preschool subjects (48- to 72-months-old). Children with primary language impairment are usually affected by deficits in speech production and/or in the phonological representation of speech sounds causing discrimination disorders. The proposed test is designed to evaluate the ability to discriminate pairs of non-words through a "same/different" judgment. The test items combined in pairs examine all the possible contrasts' simplifications (i.e. "phonological processes") that may accompany the speech production of typical developing preschool children even if these processes are not always (and all) present during language development, and even if there is currently no consensus in the literature on which processes belong to typical or atypical development