Patricia A. Broen

A 28-year follow-up of adults with a history of moderate phonological disorder: linguistic and personality results.

The present investigation is a follow-up to a longitudinal speech and academic study involving approximately 400 normally developing children begun in 1960 by Mildred Templin. From this large data base, the present project invited the participation of two groups of subjects (now aged 32 to 34): (a) 24 adults with a documented history of moderately severe phonological disorder that persisted at least through the end of first grade (probands) and (b) 28 adults from the same birth cohort and schools who were known to have had at least average articulation skills over the same period (controls). Results of follow-up testing revealed that the proband adults performed significantly more poorly than the control adults on all of the administered measures of articulation, expressive language, and receptive language. Results obtained from a screening of nonverbal reasoning ability were equivocal. On a questionnaire measure of personality, both groups scored well within the normal range for the dimensions of extroversion and neuroticism when compared to the tests normative sample. These results have been interpreted as suggesting that although many adults with a childhood history of delayed phonological development will continue to experience linguistic outcomes that are less favorable than those of controls, their performance in selected nonlanguage domains (e.g., nonverbal reasoning, personality) will be far more typical of the general population.

The relationship between perception and production of /w/, /r/, and /l/ by three-year-old children☆

Abstract Twenty-one normally developing 3-year-old children were tested on two approximant consonant contrasts, rake-lake and wake-rake , and a control contrast, wake-bake . Perception was assessed in a two-choice picture identification paradigm; stimuli were (1) natural and computer synthesized “clear cases” of the minimal pairs, and (2) synthetic stimulus series which interpolated on acoustic dimensions that differentiate the minimal pairs. As a group, the children showed very accurate perception of the minimal pairs. Performance on the synthetic series yielded consistent identification of the endpoint stimuli and monotonic functions with abrupt crossovers at the phoneme boundary. Children who did not yet articulate /r/ and /l/ appropriately showed somewhat less consistent perception than children who produced all phonemes correctly.

Variations in Normal Speech Disfluencies

College adults were asked to speak in each of three situations. All 40 subjects started in an Alone situation in which they simply talked spontaneously about any topic while sitting alone in a room. They then participated in a situation in which they were asked to speak alone in front of a TV camera and lights, or as if to an audience (Audience-TV situation). Finally, the experimenter entered the room and engaged the subject in casual Conversation for the final situation. Each situation was 12 minutes and was tape recorded. After the last session, the subjects filled out a brief questionnaire in which they rated each situation according to their judgment of the need to speak carefully and of their estimated disfluency in the situation. The most significant finding is that subjects were most disfluent in those situations they rated as least important. Contrary to usual observations, the greatest frequency of disfluencies occurred in the Conversation rather than the Audience-TV situation. It appeared that as subjects became more concerned about their speech, they monitored it more carefully and thus became more fluent.

The velopharyngeally inadequate child: phonologic change with intervention.

Diagnostic therapy is often recommended for children before physical management of the velopharyngeal structures. There is, however, limited information about the effectiveness of such intervention programs. This study describes the changes that occurred in a 3-year-old childs production of speech during a period of diagnostic therapy, and the changes that occurred following the fitting of a prosthesis. The mother served as the primary intervener, guided by a speech-language pathologist. The mother was able to change the childs speech so that more of her productions were at a correct place of articulation. After structural management, nasal and glottalized productions disappeared from the childs speech, but glottal stops did not.

Children's comprehension of six verb-tense forms.

Abstract Comprehension of six verb-tense forms, two present tense, two future tense, and two past tense, was tested using a picture-preference task. Twenty-four normal children between 3 yr, 6 mo and 5 yr, 5 mo served as subjects. Children improved with age throughout the age range tested and the verb-tense forms were acquired in the following order: present progressive, simple present, will and be going to , and simple past and past progressive. However, performance was affected by the specific verb being tested.

Patterns of Misarticulation and Articulation Change

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the impact of linguistic theory on the description and treatment of articulation disorders. Children identified as delayed or disordered in the acquisition of the sound system of their language present an interesting opportunity to explore some of the claims made about the phonological organization of English. Such children do not appear to produce random errors. Errors occur in predictable places in the system, and these children produce what seems to be a simplification of that system. The chapter also presents some ways in which information gathered in the course of the treatment of articulation disorders can be used to evaluate linguistic claims. Two broad approaches to the study of phonology result in two very different descriptions of articulation problems. Assessment and teaching procedures based on a taxonomic model focus on the description and teaching of individual phonemes, whereas remedial procedures based on a generative model describe and seek to change the phonological rules or phonological processes used by the child.

The Production and Perception of Speech by a Misarticulating Child

Early research in speech perception sought to identify the acoustic cues used in the perception of speech. This research was made possible by the development of the sound spectrograph, the pattern playback, and, later, the computer-driven speech synthesizer