Transfer of /r/ across contexts.
This study was designed to determine if training on any one specific /r/ allophone would result in transfer to other /r/ allophones without specific training. Twelve grade school children who were unable to imitate correctly the /r/, /sigma/, and /gamma/ allophones in 40 stimulus items during baseline served as subjects. A multiple baseline was used: six subjects served as controls while six were trained, after which the first six were trained. Each subject received training on a randomly assigned syllable representing a specific allophone of /r/. After training, generalization to the untrained /r/s was assessed. Since most subjects increased the number of correct responses to items in several allophonic categories regardless of the specific allophone taught, the different allophones of /r/ may be members of the same response class rather than independent of one another.
D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D010700:Phonetics; D013070:Speech Therapy