Frequent Articulation Disorders in Children

Abstract

Millions of children worldwide suffer from articulation disorders. An essential part of their treatment requires performing home exercises prescribed by their Speech Language Pathologist.Hence, academic institutions and companies are developing algorithms to address the correct classification of good versus poor phoneme articulation. As of today, the efforts to cover all the phonemes in the English language provide less than 90% accuracy. TIK TALK to Me Ltd., an Israeli company that develops methods and devices for treating speech disorders, conducted a large-scale study on children's most frequent articulation disorders. Over more than 24 months, the company accumulated records from some 250 children, ages 3 to 12, treated by 45 Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) in the US. The metadata analysis obtained from the above records shows that 80% of the children required treatment on one or more of just 6 out of the 44 phonemes in the English language. The significance of the above findings is not just of academic interest to the community of speech-language pathologists. Companies and researchers should prioritize reaching top performance in the six most frequent articulation problems.