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Tagalog Articulation Test (TAT) for Children Aged 4 to 7 Years Old from
Quezon City: A Reliability Study (under The University of Santo Tomas,
Manila, Philippines)

Thesis · April 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1495.6408

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 Tagalog Articulation Test (TAT) for Children Aged 4 to 7 Years Old from
Quezon City: A Reliability Study

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to construct a reliable Tagalog Picture
Articulation Test (TAT) for children aged 4 to 7 years old, and determine the test-retest,
inter-rater, and intra-rater reliabilities of a developed TAT.

Method: The developed TAT was administered to a total of 38 Tagalog-speaking

children. The test-retest reliability was measured by administering the test twice within a
two-week interval and analyzed using the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient.
The inter-rater reliability was measured by comparing the results obtained by three
raters after reviewing audio-recorded administrations of the TAT. Kappa test for unique
raters was used to analyze the inter-rater reliability. The intra-rater reliability was
measured by comparing the results obtained by a rater after reviewing audio-recorded
administrations of the TAT twice within a one-week interval. Intra-class correlation
coefficient was used to analyze the intra-rater reliability.

Results: The values obtained revealed that the TAT had moderate ability to elicit the
same responses over a time difference, which may have been due to maturation and
learning effect. Findings revealed a high degree of agreement among three different
raters and a high degree of correlation between the two rating periods of a single rater.

Conclusion: The TAT is reliable in terms of obtaining the same ratings among three
raters of similar profiles and obtaining consistent ratings by a rater within a one-week
interval. However, potential fast mapping phenomena may have rendered it as not
reliable in terms of reproducing the same responses between two administrations given
a two-week time interval.

Keywords: articulation test, reliability, Tagalog, Filipino children

Introduction

The Philippines is home to more than 100 languages across 7,107 islands.1 The eight
major languages spoken in the country are Bicolano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilokano,
Pangasinense, Kapampangan, Tagalog, and Waray-Samarnon.2

Tagalog is part of the Malayo-Polynesian group of languages3 which in the past was
used by less than quarter of the population.1 Along with the other major languages,
Tagalog had been collectively termed as Pilipino, eventually evolving to Filipino.1 Given
this, the terms Filipino, Pilipino, and Tagalog essentially pertain to the same language1
spoken by at least 90% of the country’s population and is one of the country’s main
languages.4

Tagalog has 27 phonemes, with 18 consonants (see Appendix O), five vowels (Appendix
P), and four diphthongs1,4 as compared to English which has 41 phonemes (24
consonants, 15 vowels, three diphthongs (see Appendix Q).5

Ganzon6 (1997) highlighted the differences in the consonant production of both

languages. Aspirated in English but not in Tagalog are the initial /p, t, k/. Furthermore, in
English, /l/ is produced with the sides of the tongue open for airflow whereas in Tagalog,
the tongue is straight and flat. The English /r/ is produced with the tongue curled
upwards but not in contact with the roof of the mouth, while the Tagalog version requires
the tongue tip tapping against the gum. The English phonemes /t, d, n, s/ have the
tongue tip in contact with the back of the gum ridge but in Tagalog, the tongue makes
contact behind the upper teeth in Tagalog. Lastly, English speakers have difficulty
producing /ŋ/ and the glottal stop /˄/, both of which are common in Tagalog (See
Appendix J).

The ability to produce age-appropriate speech sounds is a significant milestone in the

normal language development of very young children (see Appendix R).7 Most children
commit errors in the process of learning production of words. A speech sound disorder
occurs when mistakes persist past a certain age. These include articulation errors
(making sounds) and phonological processes (sound patterns) (See Appendix S).8 Most
speech sound disorders are caused by medical conditions such as autism spectrum
disorders, global developmental delay, cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity
1


 disorder, hearing impairment, etc.9 Picture articulation tests, which are utilized to assess
a child’s articulation skills, can help determine the presence of the said disorder. The
tests consist several pictures, each designed to elicit a specific consonant phoneme
either in the initial or final positions of a word. Cues are utilized when a child is unable to
name a picture spontaneously. The results obtained from these tests are compared to
the established developmental norms of the population. Currently, there are no available
published Tagalog picture articulation tests.

Developing an Articulation Test

Tasks that require the retrieval of sounds in the process of analyzing a word form and
gaining access to a selected word’s meaning are often represented in lexical access
models.10,11,12 These models in general state that in the process of recalling a picture’s
name, a participant visually recognizes and analyzes the picture’s discrete details,
accesses the conceptual representations that match these details, and matches these
representations to entries in the mental lexicon to create lexical concepts. The lexical
concepts in turn trigger the selection of a word, activate the word’s phonological
properties, and continue on to producing a phonetic plan in order to verbally articulate
the word.10

Thus, in creating an articulation test, the pictures that represent these target words are
to be unambiguous: highly recognizable and imageable that the child can name the
picture without any model.13 To ascertain that the child can spontaneously name
pictures, it is paramount that pictures whose labels frequently occur in the child’s
language environment be used since high frequency concepts are named faster than
pictures that carry low frequency words.14 With the activation of a target word’s
phonological properties occurring after the semantic representation level and/or after the
selection of the target lexical node,14 narrowing down an articulation test’s set of stimulus
words requires taking both the child’s language environment and his primary language’s
phonetic environment. These target words are ultimately expected to be able to elicit all
possible phonological processes that the speakers of the language may produce.15

Past studies have recommended that test developers exercise caution when selecting
stimulus words for an articulation assessment tool so as to avoid errors that may root

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