A new tool for the assessment of Speech Sound Disorders in French-speaking children – EULALIES

1. Creation of a New Tool for Evaluating Phonological Development in French

The first step of the project involves developing a battery of tests to assess phonological development based on a psycholinguistic model of speech processing (Stackhouse & Wells, 1997). This battery will include five tasks targeting different levels of speech processing (Meloni et al., 2018): (1) picture naming, (2) non-word repetition, (3) diadochokinesis, (4) syllable repetition, and (5) phonological alteration detection. The ultimate goal is for these assessment tests to be implemented in software that will provide semi-automatic data analysis and aid in clinical diagnosis.
However, this test battery is not applicable to children aged 2 to 3 years. Yet, reference data is also needed for this age group to enable early identification of speech disorders. Therefore, a subpart of the project aims to develop speech assessment tests adapted to this age group and usable in a context of significant data collection.

2. Providing Reference Data on Phonological Development in French-Speaking Children

In the second step of the project, the phonological development assessment battery will be administered to typically developing children aged 2 to 11 years. The results of these tests will provide a systematic description of phonological and phonetic development in French-speaking children, which will serve as reference data for evaluating Speech Sound Disorders. Additionally, the data collected during these tests will constitute an unprecedented corpus for research on the acquisition of French phonology, made even more interesting as it will cover two different varieties of French, in France and Quebec.

3. Clinical Markers of Speech Sound Disorders in French-Speaking Children

The third part of the project involves applying the assessment tests to children with SSD. These disorders can be heterogeneous in nature and etiologies, with the common factor being reduced intelligibility for their age. We plan to test as many different subtypes of SSD as possible (e.g., children with apraxia of speech, phonological disorders, etc.) to provide reliable clinical markers for evaluating these disorders in French-speaking children. Indeed, due to insufficient scientific research in French-speaking children, speech-language pathologists often have to rely on markers established for English. This strategy is misguided as the two languages differ in terms of speech sound inventory and prosody. The chronology of development cannot be expected to be parallel across these two languages. Such application of inadequate markers may, of course, lead to «misidentification of disorder and inappropriate selection of treatment targets« (MacLeod et al., 2011).

- Development and validation of the EULALIES test battery for French in France (Meloni, 2022).
- To date, data collection from 257 typically developing children and 130 atypically developing children aged 3 to 11 years.
- Study of specific clinical markers for verbal dyspraxia in French (Meloni et al., 2021).
- Establishment of a test battery adapted to Quebec French.
- Establishment of a test battery adapted to Belgian French, and application for the study of orofacial myofunctional disorders in young children (PhD thesis M. Warnier, 2023), and for the collection of normative data (Warnier et al., 2023; P. van der Straten Waillet, ongoing).
- Use of the EULALIES battery for evaluating phonological development in deaf children with cochlear implants in two doctoral theses (Machart, 2022; Van Bogaert, 2024), and several articles in international journals or conference proceedings (Machart et al., 2020; Van Bogaert et al., 2022, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c).
- Use of the EULALIES battery for C. Boilley's doctoral study (2021-2025) on phonological awareness disorders and reading difficulties in children and adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities, in relation to musical rhythm processing abilities.
- Listing of the EULALIES battery on the Tool2Care platform (tool2care.org, which provides clinicians with critical information about assessment batteries; 2025).
- Development of tests and collection of normative data from French-speaking children aged 2 to 4 years (supervised by M. Canault and S. Kern, DDL laboratory, Lyon).

The project has met with strong demand from researchers and clinicians both nationally and internationally (Belgium, Quebec). The temporary version of the test battery has been used in several scientific studies, and has been registered on the Tool2Care platform, with clinical applications already in progress.
The next steps will be to:
- Publish the final EULALIES test battery;
- Complete the reference database on typical development (which means continuing to collect and process data);
- Standardise test scores;
- Extend the study of specific clinical markers to other types of speech disorders;
- Link the results of our tests to difficulties in phonological awareness and access to reading, particularly for children and adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities;
- Publish the test battery for children aged 2 to 4, together with the reference data; standardise the scores;
- Finalise the implementation of the tests on a software dedicated to speech therapy practice.

• Van Bogaert L, Machart L, Gerber S, Lœvenbruck H, Vilain A and Consortium EULALIES (2023), Speech rehabilitation in children with cochlear implants using a multisensory (French Cued Speech) or a hearing-focused (Auditory Verbal Therapy) approach. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 17:1152516. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1152516
• Meloni, G., Loevenbruck, H., Vilain, A., Gillet-Perret, E., Macleod, A. (2022). Évaluation de la perception des sons de parole chez les populations pédiatriques : réflexion sur les épreuves, Glossa, UNADREO - Union NAtionale pour le Développement de la Recherche en Orthophonie, 132, pp.1-27. ?hal-03646757?
• Meloni, G., Schott-Brua, V., Vilain, A., Loevenbruck, H., Eulalies Consortium & MacLeod, A. A. N, (2020) Application of childhood apraxia of speech clinical markers to French-speaking children: A preliminary study, International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22:6, 683-695, DOI:10.1080/17549507.2020.1844799
• Loevenbruck, H., Vilain, A. Machart, L., Van Bogaert, L. (éditrices, 2025), « Développement des compétences en français oral et écrit chez l’enfant sourd », numéro spécial Revue ANAE (Approche Neuropsychologique des Apprentissages chez l’Enfant), N°193
• Van Bogaert, L., Machart, L., Gerber, S., Lœvenbruck, H., Vilain, A., & Consortium EULALIES* (2023). Apports de la Langue française Parlée Complétée et de l’Auditory Verbal Therapy sur la production de parole d’enfants porteurs d’implants cochléaires. XVIIIèmes Rencontres Internationales d’Orthophonie : «Le langage oral : état des pratiques orthophoniques et de la recherche«, 30 nov - 1 dec 2023, Paris, France. pp.411-436.
• Van Bogaert, L., Machart, L., Lœvenbruck, H. & Vilain, A. (2023). Nonword repetition in children with cochlear implants using different speech and language rehabilitation approaches. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 7-11 August 2023, Praha, Czech Republic, pp. 3947-3951. < hal-04291582>
• Van Bogaert, L., Machart, L., Vilain, A., Loevenbruck, H. & Consortium EULALIES (2022), Perception de parole chez l’enfant porteur d’implant(s) cochléaire(s) : Étude sur l’Auditory Verbal Therapy et la Langue française Parlée Complétée, Journées d’Etudes sur la Parole, Noirmoutier, France.
• Machart, L., Vilain, A., Lœvenbruck, H., Meloni, G., Puissant, C. (2020). Production de parole chez l’enfant porteur d’implant cochléaire : apport de la Langue française Parlée Complétée. JEP-TALN-RECITAL 2020, Nancy, France. 388-396. hal-02798562v3
• Machart, L., Vilain, A., Lœvenbruck, H., Ménard, L., Meloni, G., Puissant, C. (2020), Influence of French Cued Speech on speech production in children with cochlear implants, workshop “Perspectives on Language in Children with Hearing Loss”, 14-15 Mai 2020, Macquarie University, Australie.

Children with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) ‘‘can have any combination of difficulties with perception, articulation/ motor production, and/or phonological representation of speech segments (consonants and vowels), phonotactics (syllable and word shapes), and prosody (lexical and grammatical tones, rhythm, stress, and intonation) that may impact speech intelligibility and acceptability’’ (International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, 2012). These disorders are highly prevalent, as they affect between 10 and 15% of preschool-aged children and 6% of school-aged children (American Speech Hearing Language Association, 2000; McLeod and Harrison, 2009). They can hamper language development and affect academic achievement and social inclusion. Yet, the underlying pathological processes of Speech Sound Disorders remain largely unknown (MacLeod et al. 2014), and there is no universal and agreed upon classification system (Waring & Knight, 2013). The situation is particularly troubling for languages other than English, as the classifying systems have been built to explain symptoms observed in English, and few attempts have been made to explore their applicability cross-linguistically. In French, particularly, no comprehensive and specific assessment tool for Speech Sound Disorders is available for clinicians. In addition, there is a clear lack of reference data on the phonological development of typically developing French-speaking children (MacLeod et al. 2011, Brosseau-Lapré et al. 2018). This lack of tools and data is in evident contradiction with current recommendations for evidence-based clinical practice. EULALIES is an international collaborative project that brings together researchers and clinicians from France and Canada in order to (1) develop a standardized assessment tool for SSD in French, implemented via a software interface to facilitate test administration and semi-automatize analyses, (2) develop normative data on the phonological development of typical French-speaking children from early preschool ages to later stages, and (3) establish specific clinical markers for different subtypes of SSD in French, that take into account the linguistic specificities of the France and Quebec varieties.
This project will have evident clinical impact, as our goal is to provide French-speaking clinicians with a new standardized and semi-automatized tool for the evaluation of SSD. This means better practice, better treatment, better care for the children. We are working in conjunction with speech and language therapists, and we are very much committed to making our results and tools available to the speech and language clinicians, through training sessions for SLT students or professionals. The project is also designed to have theoretical impact, as it will provide basis for important research on language-specific phonological development and disorders. It will advance fundamental research on typical phonological development, first, as we will build a large database on the acquisition of French covering a wide age span and different linguistic varieties. This database should foster new directions of research on the explaining factors of speech development. The project will also impact clinical research, as we will provide a wealth of data on different phonological processes at stake in SSD. These data will be made accessible to the scientific community on the PhonBank platform (Rose & MacWhinney, 2014). Finally, the EULALIES project is meant to have crucial social impact, since better knowledge on typical phonological development in French and better evaluation of SSD mean earlier and better adapted intervention, which will in turn help alleviate the academic and social-emotional difficulties that have been shown to pervade into adulthood (Pennington et Bishop, 2009, Felsenfeld et al., 1994, McCormack et al. 2009).