Percentage of consonants correct, when calculated from a free speech sample, increases gradually as the child gets older. PCC should be approximately...

• A. 70 at age 4 years
• B. 98 at age 12 years
• C. 80 at age 7 years
• D. 50 at age 2 years

Answer: (A)

PCC, or percent consonants correct, measures how many consonants a child produces in spontaneous speech correctly compared with the adult target. It’s a way to track phonological accuracy as children grow, and it tends to rise gradually with age as articulatory skills and inventory improve. For a typical four-year-old, about seven in ten consonants being produced correctly is a common average, so roughly 70% is the right ballpark. This fits the expected developmental path where younger children show lower PCC and it increases with age, rather than jumping to very high accuracy early on. The other values reflect different ages or atypical timings (significantly higher than expected for a four-year-old, or much lower for an older child), so they don’t match the typical pattern for a four-year-old.