Comparisons among three articulation sampling procedures with preschool children.
The purpose of this study was to compare the articulatory responses of normally developing preschool children during three sampling procedures which were controlled for phonetic context. Thirty normally developing children (15 boys, 15 girls) aged 4:4 to 4:8 (years:months) served as subjects. The three test conditions were word test (stimuli consisting of multisyllabic meaningful words and word-strings), nonsense test (items consisting of multisyllabic nonsense utterances), and story-retell. Eight phonemes /t k l s f r tf f/ were tested in each of the three sampling conditions. The stimuli, elicited with pictures, were also controlled for syllable structure, canonical form, and semantic difficulty. Results showed no difference among the three sampling procedures for type and number of errors. Consistency of errors was presented and discussed. A significant sex difference, with boys making significantly more errors than girls, supported separation of articulation data by sex for 4-year-old children.
D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests; D013068:Speech Production Measurement