An exploration of the role of executive functions in preschoolers’ phonological development

ABSTRACT

There is limited yet compelling evidence that domain-general processes may contribute to speech sound change. This study explored whether executive functions contribute to the achievement of adult-like speech production. Children who are 4 to 5 years old, 42 with high-average speech production skills, 11 with low-average and nine with speech sound disorder (SSD), participated in a battery of executive function and speech production tasks. Performance accuracy was compared across groups and also correlated with speech sound accuracy from a single-word naming task. Children with SSD demonstrated poorer performance than other groups on forward digit span, whereas children with low-average speech skills underperformed their peers on the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST). These preliminary results suggest that children with speech errors may have less mature working memory than peers who have mastered phonological targets earlier in development.

KEYWORDS:

• Phonological working memory
• speech sound disorder
• typically developing

Acknowledgments

Many thanks for the constructive feedback from Rochelle Newman, Yi Ting Huang, Shelley Brundage, D. J. Bolger and Bill Idsardi. We would also like to thank Lisa Freeman, Jenna Poland and the members of Dr. Ratner’s language lab for their invaluable assistance with coding and Yvan Rose for his assistance with Phon. Finally, we are sincerely appreciative of all the families who allowed their children to participate in this study as well as the clinicians and parents who provided us with referrals.

Declaration of interest

The authors of this manuscript report no conflicts of interest.