An overview of resources for assessing toddlers' productions of polysyllables

Historically, routine assessment of children's speech has focused on consonant accuracy (e.g., ability to pronounce /k/ in car, bucket, and bike). The discovery of a link between the ability to produce polysyllables and speech, language, phonological processing, and later literacy abilities suggests that speech pathologists (SPs) need to extend their focus from consonant accuracy to children's ability to produce polysyllables, considering syllable number, shape, and stress pattern accuracy. This paper reviews a range of experimental tasks and clinical tools that SPs could use to examine toddlers' productions of polysyllabic real- and nonwords. Given that assessment of toddlers' productions of polysyllables is a relatively new area of research, SPs are encouraged to assess toddlers' polysyllable productions within the context of a comprehensive communication assessment.