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Abstract Phonology is a widely discussed topic that is studied in detail by linguists, psycholinguists, philologists, pedagogues, and last, but not least, by speech and language pathologists. The assessment methods do inform us about the phonological processes and phonological delays in details by comparing the results with those of a normative sample and offer an opportunity to gradate the severity of the disorder, which is individual and can vary significantly in individual children. The aim of the study is to present evidence of the validity and reliability of a phonological assessment tool developed to assess the phonological inventory of Bulgarian preschool children. For this purpose, an author’s test was developed and conducted among 382 Bulgarian children. Results The present study provided evidence of validity and reliability (internal consistency) for this phonological assessment tool, confirming the reliability of its three subtests. Conclusions The present findings provide strong evidence of the validity and reliability of this phonological assessment tool.

The use of innovative technology in the field of Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) has gained significant attention nowadays. Despite being a promising research area, Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) have not been thoroughly studied and used in SLT. This paper makes two main contributions: firstly, providing a comprehensive review of existing research on the use of SARs to enhance communication skills in children and adolescents. Secondly, organizing the information into tables that categorize the interactive play scenarios described in the surveyed papers. The inclusion criteria for play scenarios in the tables are based only on their effectiveness for SLT proven by experimental findings. The data, systematically presented in a table format, allow readers to easily find relevant information based on various factors, such as disorder type, age, treatment technique, robot type, etc. The study concludes that the despite limited research on the use of social robots for children and adolescents with communication disorders (CD), promising outcomes have been reported. The authors discuss the methodological, technical, and ethical limitations related to the use of SARs for SLT in clinical or home environments, as well as the huge potential of conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a secondary assistive technology to facilitate speech and language interventions.