Children's knowledge of auditory/articulatory correspondences: phonologic and metaphonologic.

Forty-five normally developing children, 15 within each group of mean ages 5, 6, and 7, participated in a metaphonologic study examining the knowledge of auditory/articulatory correspondences. Tasks included (a) a nonverbal identification of correspondences by selecting the appropriate side of a split video screen display, and (b) a verbal explanation of the cues used to motivate this choice. With development, there were significant increases in numbers of correct responses on the nonverbal task and corresponding changes in relative proportions of verbal explanation types. No significant relationship between level of performance on metaphonologic tasks and phoneme production skill was found.

An approach to assessing and facilitating causal language in adults with learning disabilities based on Piagetian theory.

Salient characteristics associated with Piagetian cognitive stages served as the basis for developing a linguistic taxonomy of causal semantic relations. Causal statements from adults with learning disabilities and normally achieving adults were analyzed and organized within this taxonomy. A relationship between Piagetian cognitive stages and verbal expressions of causality was identified. Based on this relationship, principles of Piagetian cognitive theory were used to design assessment and intervention plans for adults with learning disabilities.

Communication of adults with learning disabilities: self and others' perceptions.

This study investigated perceptions of the communication performance of 31 young adults with severe learning disabilities enrolled in a vocational-education program. Communication assessment questionnaires, designed to rate communication skills of these students, were completed by the students themselves and vocational educators. These questionnaires included items in the areas of comprehension, verbal expression, social communication, and problem solving. Overall, the students' perceptions of their own communication performance were remarkably similar to those of the vocational educators. However, students perceived their communicative performance as less problematic than did others. Of the four areas pertinent to communication, students and vocational educators perceived problem solving as most difficult. Implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the development of assessment procedures for adults with learning disabilities.

Some phonological characteristics of the speech of normal-hearing children of deaf parents.

Articulation and stress patterns of 5 hearing children of deaf parents were studied. The children's phonological processes were compared with those of children from normal-speaking homes and with those of their deaf mothers to identify similarities and differences. The phonological processes used most frequently by these children were those that have been identified as common processes among children from hearing homes. None of the children adopted, with any frequency, the less typical productions found in their mother's speech. This was also true for one of the children who was observed to produce articulation and stress patterns resembling "deaf" speech. Possible factors relating to the children's adoption of the standard speech model rather than deaf speech are discussed.

Effect of syllable stress and serial position on error variability in polysyllabic productions of speech-delayed children.

This study explored the effect of naturally occurring interactions of syllable stress and serial positions, found in polysyllabic words, on the variability of phonological performance of speech-delayed children. The subjects were 8 mild to moderately delayed children between the ages of 5:2 and 6:11 with a mean age of 6:0. Continuous speech samples and nonimitated productions of polysyllabic single-word utterances were recorded and analyzed for each child. Two phonological processes (syllable deletion and intervocalic consonant deletion) were related to specific syllable context conditions. Increased process use in syllables of reduced stress occurring early in a sequence was predicted by the production patterns of young children initially learning to say words. Syllables with reduced stress also were found to be associated frequently with atypical error productions.

Relationship between early pronunciation processes and later pronunciation skill.

Two boys who exhibited different early phonological processes for the maintenance of syllables in polysyllabic words were studied at two subsequent times during the phonology development period. At Time 1 (mean age 1:10) one child used assimilation and reduplication, while the other used glottal and glide replacement. At Time 2 (mean age 3:8) and Time 3 (mean age 6:0) the children maintained differences in types and frequencies of process use. The child using glottal and glide replacement lagged somewhat behind the other regarding the rate of process dissolution, especially for those processes affecting affricates and clusters. The longitudinal data suggest that early processes applied to polysyllabic words may be predictive of later pronunciation skill for the production of continuous speech.

Early perceptual strategies for the replication of consonants from polysyllabic lexical models.

Perceptual processing strategies for the selection and organization of consonants for early replicas of polysyllabic models were investigated as a related study to the classification of productive strategies (Klein, 1981). The present study investigated the ways in which selected word factors (stress level and serial position of the syllable) provided facilitating cues for the production of polysyllabic words. The original procedure involved collecting a language sample from four children (ages 20-24 months) as each informally interacted with an adult during a play activity that included the manipulation of palpable and picturable objects represented by polysyllabic words. This paper focuses specifically on the perceptual strategies of only two of the four children; each demonstrated equally consistent but dissimilar production patterns. Each child's perceptual strategy is described on the basis of the proportion of instances that his/her consonant replicas could be related with the occurrence of specific word factors. Results revealed that (a) primary stress was an important processing cue for the selection of consonant(s) from 2-syllable words or from longer words containing one major stress, and (b) when two major stress levels occurred in a word, preferences for specific interactions of stress and serial position, as processing cues, appeared to be closely related to the number of syllables a child typically produced. The children, whose productions of the same word were dissimilar, exhibited similar perceptual strategies.

Productive strategies for the pronunciation of early polysyllabic lexical items.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify productive strategies for the pronunciation of early polysyllabic words. Replicas (children's modifications) of adult models were classified as either syllable-maintaining or syllable-reducing based on the types and frequencies of phonological processes applied in attempts to achieve simplification. Four children aged 20--24 months were tape-recorded as they were informally engaged in activities that involved naming toys and pictures represented by polysyllabic words. Different productive strategies were observed with different children. The classification of modification types as syllable-maintaining or syllable-reducing provided a useful framework in which to describe regularities in one child and among children for producing complex phonological sequences. Children varied from one another with respect to (a) the consistency in productions across lexical items (interword production), (b) the consistency in productions (tokens) of a single word (intraword), and (c) the preferences for the application of selected phonological processes. Findings are discussed in terms of conditions which may be related to regularity and variation in early attempts at the pronunciation of polysyllabic lexical items.