Developing an articulation test for Arabic-speaking school-age children.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to develop an Arabic articulation test using familiar and visually transparent words in order to be used as a criterion for comparing phonemes of both normal and phonologically disordered Arabic-speaking children.


METHODS
A picture-naming test was designed for the Mansoura Arabic Articulation Test (MAAT) to elicit spontaneous single-word responses representing all possible consonant positions and vowels of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Three expert phoniatricians were asked to review MAAT and complete a questionnaire. The MAAT was presented to 100 normal Arabic-speaking Egyptian children randomly selected from the first- and second-grade kindergarten. They were 52 males and 48 females with ages ranging between 42 and 70 months. Children's responses were converted to a percent correct score for sound utterances and picture identification.


RESULTS
Statistically non-significant differences were found among experts' opinions reflecting approval for the MAAT items. A statistically highly significant adequate correlation was found between correct word utterances and picture identification which proved the content validity of MAAT. Test-retest reliability proved the consistency of MAAT.


CONCLUSIONS
MAAT is a valid and reliable test that can be applied to collect the phonetic inventory of Arabic-speaking young children.
Abou-Elsaad
Tamer
T
Phoniatric Unit, ORL Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt. taboelsaad@hotmail.com
Baz
Hemmat
H
El-Banna
Manal
M
D000375:Aging; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004534:Egypt; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013060:Speech; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests / Q000379:methods*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires