Ralph L. Shelton

Functional Articulation Disorders: Preliminaries to Treatment

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses functional articulation disorders. An ideal definition of articulation disorder would be operational and would reflect the psychological reality of the problem as it influences the speaker and as it is perceived by listeners. It would reflect scientific knowledge about matters such as articulatory movements including coarticulation and the physiological mechanisms that support them. It would encompass phonological development and patterns. Speech pathologists concerned with treatment of disordered articulation may be troubled by expanding knowledge that is cumbersome to learn. Where clinicians once learned procedures for delivery to patients, they now must also understand those services relative to scientific knowledge concerning speech production, speech perception, linguistics, learning, scientific standards of evidence, and many other issues. Speech pathology has tended to accept authority as a source of clinical knowledge—the more remote the authority from the study of speech disorders, the greater its prestige.

Monitoring and reinforcement by parents as a means of automating articulatory responses.

A home training program for correction of articulation errors was tested with 8 children. The first week of the program involved short periods of word drill. The remaining 4 wk., parents were to listen daily to 40 conversational /s/ phone productions and to mark each production as correct or incorrect. Correct productions were rewarded by points to be accumulated and traded for prizes. Incorrect productions were corrected by the parent. Final probe scores did not differ significantly from mean baseline scores on a Sound Production Task. However, Talking Task and Reading Task measures showed differences significant at the .05 level. Four-month post-treatment scores indicated that gains made during the program were maintained.

Oral form recognition training and articulation change.

10 children with articulation disorders were given training in recognition of forms through oral exploration of those forms. Training materials were divided into sets. Fewer trials were required to reach performance criteria from one set to another, and fewer errors were made as Ss progressed from set to set. The control procedure used indicated that information gained through oral study of the forms contributed to performance but was not necessary to performance improvement. No gains were observed in any of four articulation measures.

Self-Monitoring Effects on Articulation Carryover in School-Age Children

The purpose of this study was to field-test a treatment strategy for bringing about articulation carryover in school-age children. Subjects were 8 elementary school students who misarticulated /s/ ...

Monitoring and Reinforcement by Parents as a Means of Automating Articulatory Responses: II. Study of Preschool Children

To establish articulatory responses on an automatic level 10 preschool children between 4 and 6 yr. of age were given training in production of a training sound out of context and in a set of 10 words. The mother of each child was oriented to a home program by means of a video tape that demonstrated activities to be employed. An audio tape was used to orient the mothers to the identification and evaluation of speech sounds. During the first wk. of home training, each mother was to evaluate her childs articulation of a training sound in an imitative word drill situation and in elicited conversation. Candy or stickers were given to the children for correct responses. During the remaining 4 wk., each mother was to monitor daily her childs spontaneous speech and to evaluate 30 conversational productions of the training sound. Correct responses were rewarded. When an incorrect response was produced, the mother was to have the child imitate the word after her. Each mother kept a record of how many of the 30 responses were correctly articulated each day. That record plus the childrens scores on sound-production tasks and talking-tasks constituted the data for analysis. For the group, sound-production task and talking-task measures obtained after training reflected better articulation than did pretreatment scores. Greater gains were made on sounds taught than on other sounds misarticulated by some of the children. Records accumulated by five of the parents also indicated improved articulation.

Cephalometric and intraoral variables as they relate to articulation improvement with training

C linical investigators in orthodontics and in speech pathology have conducted research intended to identify relationships between orthodontic and speech variables.12, ID For example, measurements of open-bite have been correlated with measurements of articulation. Also, such variables as lingual posture have been studied as they relate to both orthodontic and articulatory measures. This search for relationships represents an early step in the solution of several abiding clinical problems. Broadly, investigators wish to know whether speech behaviors or their modification influence occlusion, whether occlusion or its treatment influences articulation, and whether third variables or their manipulation influence occlusion, articulation, or both. Clinical experience and case studies, such as those reported by (iarliner, can at best generate hypotheses. Answers to the questions mentioned above will be attained only through research programs. Some evidence suggests that speakers adapt their articulatory movements to their dcntition.l”-lGs I8 H owever, no one has determined whether children’s responses to articulation training are related to orthodontic variables. Past correlational research indicates that many children with malocclusion have normal articulation but that there is a trend for children with occlusion problems or with teeth missing to have more articulation errors than do children with normal occlusion.l, I1 The correlational research that has been carried out has been addressed to the relationship between current articulation status and current

Variability in judgments of articulation when observer listens repeatedly to the same phone.

This study pertains to variability in articulation judgments made by Os who listened to repetitions of the same stimulus. In the first portion of the study, four Os were asked to listen to six tapes, each of which was prepared to present 90 repetitions of a syllable. The syllables were /sa/ and /rk/.2 The /s/ and /r/2 in two of the syllables were correctly articulated, in two they were moderately distorted, and in two they were severely distorted. Correctness of articulation of the target phones had been established previously by a panel of judges using a scaling procedure. The speakers were children with articulation problems. A total of 24 sets of judgments were obtained. For three of those sets, O frequently shifted between assessment of the phone as correct and incorrect. In the second portion, each of three tapes was evaluated by five of 15 judges. Two tapes were reused from the first part of the study, and a new tape presenting the same production of /is/ 90 times was also used. No judge listened to more than one tape. Again, a record was made of the frequency with which judges shifted in their assessment of a given articulation as correct or incorrect. More judges reported 12 or more shifts in the second portion of the study than in the first. Os consistency should be investigated in the situation where O evaluates a series of similar misarticulations of phones from the same phoneme.