According to Dodd's model for differential diagnosis, which of the following is a characteristic of articulation disorder?

According to Dodd's model for differential diagnosis, which of the following is a characteristic of articulation disorder?

• A. The child’s speech errors consist of distortion errors or isolated substitution errors.
• B. Thirty percent of children with SSD present with this subtype.
• C. The children produce speech more accurately in spontaneous than imitative speech.
• D. The child may produce groping movements when trying to imitate the error sound.

Answer: (B)

In Dodd’s differential diagnosis framework for speech sound disorders, articulation disorder is treated as a motor-based subtype where the surface errors tend to be limited and not driven by broad phonological patterns. A distinctive feature used in this model is the prevalence of this subtype among children with SSD: about 30% of cases fall into articulation disorder. This prevalence figure helps clinicians understand how common this subtype is compared with other patterns, guiding assessment and classification. The other statements describe specific error types or behaviors that can occur in articulation or other disorders, but they don’t define the articulation subtype within Dodd’s model. For example, distortion or isolated substitutions can appear in articulation errors, but the key distinguishing detail in this framework is the proportion of SSD cases that present as articulation disorder, roughly 30%. Groping movements point more toward motor speech disorders such as apraxia, and a discrepancy between spontaneous and imitative speech is not the defining hallmark used to characterize articulation disorder in this model.

In Dodd’s differential diagnosis framework for speech sound disorders, articulation disorder is treated as a motor-based subtype where the surface errors tend to be limited and not driven by broad phonological patterns. A distinctive feature used in this model is the prevalence of this subtype among children with SSD: about 30% of cases fall into articulation disorder. This prevalence figure helps clinicians understand how common this subtype is compared with other patterns, guiding assessment and classification.

The other statements describe specific error types or behaviors that can occur in articulation or other disorders, but they don’t define the articulation subtype within Dodd’s model. For example, distortion or isolated substitutions can appear in articulation errors, but the key distinguishing detail in this framework is the proportion of SSD cases that present as articulation disorder, roughly 30%. Groping movements point more toward motor speech disorders such as apraxia, and a discrepancy between spontaneous and imitative speech is not the defining hallmark used to characterize articulation disorder in this model.