Lexical and phonological effects in early word production

Are Late Talkers Just Late? Neighborhood Density and Word Frequency Properties of Late Talkers' Spoken Vocabularies

PURPOSE

Typically developing toddlers extract patterns from their input to add words to their spoken lexicons, yet some evidence suggests that late talkers leverage the statistical regularities of the ambient language differently than do peers. Using the extended statistical learning account, we sought to compare lexical-level statistical features of spoken vocabularies between late talkers and two typically developing comparison groups.

METHOD

MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories American English Words and Sentences (N = 1,636) were extracted from Wordbank, a database of CDIs. Inventories were divided into three groups: (a) a late talker group (n = 202); (b) a typically developing age-matched group (n = 1,238); and (c) a younger, typically developing group (n = 196) matched to the late talkers on expressive language. Neighborhood density and word frequency were calculated for each word produced by each participant and standardized to z scores. Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate group differences.

RESULTS

The late talker and younger, language-matched groups' spoken vocabularies consist, on standardized average, of words from denser phonological neighborhoods and words higher in frequency of occurrence in parent-child speech, compared to older, typically developing toddlers.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide support for the extended statistical learning account. Late talkers appear to generally be extracting and using similar patterns from their language input as do younger toddlers with similar levels of expressive vocabulary. This suggests that late talkers may be following a delayed, not deviant, trajectory of expressive language growth.

Accuracy of Speech Sound Analysis: Comparison of an Automatic Artificial Intelligence Algorithm With Clinician Assessment

PURPOSE

Automatic speech analysis (ASA) and automatic speech recognition systems are increasingly being used in the treatment of speech sound disorders (SSDs). When utilized as a home practice tool or in the absence of the clinician, the ASA system has the potential to facilitate treatment gains. However, the feedback accuracy of such systems varies, a factor that may impact these gains. The current research analyzes the feedback accuracy of a novel ASA algorithm (Amplio Learning Technologies), in comparison to clinician judgments.

METHOD

A total of 3,584 consonant stimuli, produced by 395 American English-speaking children and adolescents with SSDs (age range: 4-18 years), were analyzed with respect to automatic classification of the ASA algorithm, clinician-ASA agreement, and interclinician agreement. Further analysis of results as related to phoneme acquisition categories (early-, middle-, and late-acquired phonemes) was conducted.

RESULTS

Agreement between clinicians and ASA classification for sounds produced accurately was above 80% for all phonemes, with some variation based on phoneme acquisition category (early, middle, late). This variation was also noted for ASA classification into "acceptable," "unacceptable," and "unknown" (which means no determination of phoneme accuracy) categories, as well as interclinician agreement. Clinician-ASA agreement was reduced for misarticulated sounds.

CONCLUSIONS

The initial findings of Amplio's novel algorithm are promising for its potential use within the context of home practice, as it demonstrates high feedback accuracy for correctly produced sounds. Furthermore, complexity of sound influences consistency of perception, both by clinicians and by automated platforms, indicating variable performance of the ASA algorithm across phonemes. Taken together, the ASA algorithm may be effective in facilitating speech sound practice for children with SSDs, even in the absence of the clinician.

Diagnosing inconsistent phonological disorder: quantitative and qualitative measures

Studies of children's consistency of word production allow identification of speech sound disorder. Inconsistent errors are reported for two groups of children: childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) due to difficulty with the motoric precision and consistency of speech movements; and inconsistent phonological disorder (IPD) attributed to impaired phonological planning. This paper describes the inconsistent productions of children with IPD in comparison to typically developing children. In two studies of suspected SSD (N = 135), 22 children pronounced ≥40% of 25 words inconsistently on three repeated trials. No participant had symptoms of CAS. They were monolingual and spoke Australian- or Irish-English. Assessment determined the proportions of words said consistently (i.e. the same across productions: all correct or with the same error) or inconsistently (i.e. differently across productions: at least one correct and one error or different errors in productions). Qualitative analyses examined error types and explored the effect of target words' characteristics on inconsistency. Children with IPD produced 52% of words with different errors. While 56% of all phoneme errors were developmental (age appropriate or delayed), atypical errors typified inconsistency: default sounds and word structure errors. Words with more phonemes, syllables and consonant clusters were vulnerable to inconsistency, but their frequency of occurrence had no effect. TD children and those with IPD had different quantitative and qualitative error profiles, confirming IPD as a diagnostic category of SSD. Qualitative analyses supported the hypothesised deficit in phonological planning of words' production for children with IPD.

The Effects of Phonological Complexity on Word Production in French-Speaking Children

Word complexity indices, such as the Index of Phonetic Complexity (IPC) and the Word Complexity Measure (WCM), code a word in terms of featural and structural properties that pose difficulty in phonological development. Studies have investigated the influence of complexity indices on vocabulary development; however, few have examined their influence on consonant accuracy. Furthermore, these indices were developed for English-speaking children and have not been widely applied to other languages. This study investigates whether a word's phonological complexity influences how accurately it is produced in French-speaking children. Four databases consisting of the productions of children (n = 74), aged 1;11 to 4;9, were analyzed. Words were coded in terms of the IPC, WCM, and parameters that add complexity during phonological development. Using mixed-effects logistic regression, we examined whether phonological complexity as determined by the IPC, WCM, or by alternative indices better accounts for the influence of complexity on production. We also investigated whether the accuracy of a target sound/structure was influenced by a word's complexity. Results indicated that complexity based on the IPC or WCM significantly influenced consonant accuracy; however, indices tapping fewer features provided superior model fit. At younger ages, the presence of fricatives/liquids and, at all ages, the presence of alveopalatal fricatives, codas, and clusters significantly influenced accuracy. Findings were inconclusive as to whether whole word complexity influenced the accuracy of a target sound/structure. Results suggest that current complexity indices provide only approximate indications of how featural and structural properties of words influence production.

Individual variation in bilingual vocabulary in preschoolers with developmental language disorder

BACKGROUND

It is unclear how speech production, selective attention, and phonological working memory are related to first- (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabularies in bilingual preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

AIMS

To study individual variation in vocabularies in DLD bilingual preschoolers by (1) comparing them to typically developing (TD) bilingual, and TD and DLD monolingual peers; (2) differentially predicting L2 vocabulary; and (3) identifying and characterizing bilinguals' L1/L2 vocabulary profiles.

METHODS

We measured the selective attention, working memory, and L1 Turkish/Polish (where applicable) and L1/L2 Dutch speech and vocabulary abilities of 31 DLD bilingual, 37 TD bilingual, and 61 DLD and 54 TD Dutch monolingual three-to-five year-olds.

RESULTS

DLD bilinguals scored lower than TD bilinguals and TD/DLD monolinguals on all measures, except L2 vocabulary, where all bilinguals underperformed all monolinguals. Selective attention predicted Dutch vocabulary across groups. Three bilingual vocabulary profiles emerged: DLD bilinguals were less likely to be L1 dominant, TD/DLD bilinguals with better attention more often had a Balanced high L1/L2 profile, while those with poorer selective attention and L1 speech tended to be L2 dominant.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the roles of L1 speech and selective attention, rather than L2 speech and working memory, in understanding bilingual vocabulary variation among DLD preschoolers.

Content validity of the Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills-Brazilian Portuguese (PEEPS-BP) - Expanded List

PURPOSE

To carry out the cross-cultural adaptation of the Instrument Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills- Brazilian Portuguese (PEEPS-BP) - Expanded list, performing content validation.

METHODS

Cross-cultural, quantitative and cross- sectional adaptation study, considering psychometric criteria. A study was carried out on the list of 423 words from the Communicative Development Inventory - MacArthur - Words and Sentences, adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. The method was divided into four steps. The list was judged by expert judges (JE) and non-specialist judges (JNE), considering as a criterion the familiarity of the word for a child aged between 24 and 36 months, and the representativeness of the word with toy/object, contemplating Steps 1 and 2. The child judges analyzed, in a data collection situation, the familiarity and representativeness of the stimulus-words, presented in Step 3. Afterwards, the pilot study - Step 4, was carried out with the selected stimulus-words. In the statistical analysis by expert and non-specialist judges, the Fleiss' Kappa and Gwet Concordance index was used. In the analysis of the responses of the child judges and in the Pilot Study, the analysis was made in relation to the type of response of the child, specifically scoring the spontaneous naming of the toy/object, scoring qualitatively.

RESULTS

The result of Steps 1 and 2, and the agreement of the statistical tests for the Familiarity and Representativeness criteria was 45.7% for JE and 76.4% for JNE, and a result of 100% for the agreement of Representativeness. A total of 122 words were analyzed, resulting from previously established criteria, totaling 34 words (exclusion of one word by the researchers), totaling 33 stimulus-words. In Stage 3, of the 33 stimulus-words applied, nine presented spontaneous naming scores below expectations, being retested for Step 4, the Pilot Study. The result of the Pilot Study showed that of the nine retested stimulus-words, four of them still had a score below, being excluded from the study. Therefore, with the application of the Pilot Study, the expanded list of PEEPS-BP resulted in 29 words.

CONCLUSION

The PEEPS-BP - Expanded List showed satisfactory evidence of content validity for the cross-cultural adaptation of the test.

Preschool children's consistency of word production

Consistency of word production contributes to carers' ability to understand children's speech. Reports of the proportion of words produced consistently by typically developing preschool children, however, vary widely from 17% to 87%. This paper examines the quantitative (consistency count) and qualitative (e.g. phonemic analysis) characteristics of word consistency in 96 children aged 36-60 months. Children named 15 pictures twice, in separate trials, in the same assessment session. The mean consistency of the production for the whole group was 82%. Older children were more consistent than younger children. Girls were more consistent than boys. Words produced correctly in one trial and in error in another may indicate resolving error patterns. Words produced in error in two different ways provided useful evidence about the nature of inconsistent word production in typically developing children. The clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The Pausing Strategies in Chinese Preschool Children's Narratives

PURPOSE

Language production, a dynamic process involving real-time language processing, is crucial for children's language and communication development. To explore the early development of children's real-time language production, this study investigated Chinese preschool children's pausing strategies in narratives and their associations with verbal working memory and vocabulary abilities.

METHOD

A picture-elicited narrative task was employed. Sixty Mandarin-speaking children aged 4-5 years were asked to tell a story according to the book Frog, Where Are You? The pausing types and positions in narratives were coded and analyzed. Additionally, children's verbal working memory and vocabulary were measured.

RESULTS

The results showed that 4- to 5-year-old children prefer to use silent pauses and tend to produce pauses within clauses. The total frequency of pausing decreases with age and shows a significant gender difference. Girls prefer to use within-clause pauses, whereas boys prefer to use between-clause pauses. More importantly, children's pausing frequency is closely associated with their verbal working memory and vocabulary, in which working memory plays a more important role.

CONCLUSIONS

This study is a first-step exploration of pausing strategies in 4- to 5-year-old Chinese children's narratives. The developmental characteristics of pausing strategies shown in typically developing children serve as a crucial reference for interventions for children with language deficits.

Which phonological and lexical factors best influence whether a word is produced and pronounced well?

This study examines lexical and phonological factors that influence word production and pronunciation. Specifically, we investigate whether phonological production (measured by percent consonants correct) contributes to word production and pronunciation over and above the properties of the target words (e.g., word frequency, neighborhood density, and phonetic complexity). Forty French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 1;11 to 3;1, participated in a spontaneous language sample and were administered a naming and a nonword repetition task. Their parents filled out the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory (MCDI) and rated their children's pronunciation on an experimental version of the MCDI. Statistical models indicated that word frequency and the phonetic complexity of the target words influenced whether a word was produced. These factors along with neighborhood density and the children's production capacities influenced whether a word was pronounced poorly or well. Findings indicate that parents can provide reliable information on the word pronunciation of their children.

Speech Error Variability and Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers

PURPOSE

The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness.

METHOD

This article begins with a narrative review of the theoretical interpretation of speech error variability. The post hoc exploratory analysis of the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness included 40 children: 20 with typical speech and language and 20 with speech sound disorder and typical language. Groups were matched on gender, age, maternal education, receptive and expressive vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and expressive morphosyntax. Multiple regression was used to identify the best fit model for the relationship between vocabulary, speech errors, and phonological awareness.

RESULTS

Segmental variability was associated with poor phonological awareness in preschool-aged children.

CONCLUSION

Children with high levels of segmental variability have poor phonological awareness, likely due to unstable phonological representations.

Consonant Age of Acquisition Reveals Nonlinear Effects in Nonword Repetition Performance

Recent work has shown significant sublexical effects of long-term memory in nonword repetition (NWR) using a dichotomous consonant age of acquisition (CAoA) variable (Moore, 2018; Moore, Fiez, and Tompkins, 2017). Performance consistently decreased when stimuli comprised consonants acquired later versus earlier in speech development. To address potential confounds related to stimulus design and linearity, the purpose of this study was to test whether performance decreases as the CAoA value of stimuli increases in various linguistic tasks using a continuous CAoA variable. Thirty-one college students completed NWR and other linguistic tasks in which the stimuli varied in average CAoA values. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. After accounting for phonotactic probability, CAoA was a statistically significant predictor of performance across the models reported. The relationship was more complex in some of the models in which CAoA showed a statistically significant nonlinear relationship with the outcome measure. Results from this study support previous work showing that CAoA affects performance on NWR and other linguistic tasks that vary in their memory, auditory perceptual, and articulatory demands. Importantly, this line of work was extended here by demonstrating that the CAoA effect is robust across novel stimulus sets and study designs, and may be more complex than previously understood when using a dichotomous CAoA variable. Quadratic results suggest that the CAoA variable has a differential effect on performance for low to moderate CAoA values, but for higher CAoA values the effect is similarly negative. The nonlinear relationship between CAoA and measures of speed and accuracy on some of the tasks warrants further study into the complex relationship between various predictive factors that contribute to language performance.

Predictors of Speech Severity and Inconsistency Over Time in Children With Token-to-Token Inconsistency

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to describe and explain changes in severity of speech sound disorder (SSD) and token-to-token inconsistency in children with high levels of inconsistency.

METHOD

Thirty-nine children (aged 4;6-7;11 [years;months]) with SSDs and high levels of token-to-token inconsistency were assessed every 6 months for 2 years (i.e., five assessment points). Growth modeling was used to assess relations among therapy support, receptive vocabulary, severity, and inconsistency over time.

RESULTS

Children with the most severe SSDs and highest levels of token-to-token inconsistency showed the smallest improvements in speech accuracy over time. Therapy support did not predict changes in speech accuracy or token-to-token inconsistency over time. Receptive vocabulary (measured at the outset of the study) was also a significant predictor of speech accuracy and inconsistency.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that an immediate start to intervention (rather than a wait-and-see approach) is recommended for children with inconsistent speech error patterns. The results also highlight the value of developing vocabulary knowledge in addition to improving speech accuracy for some children with inconsistent speech production.

Intraword Variability in Children With Auditory Brainstem Implants: A Longitudinal Comparison With Children With Cochlear Implants

PURPOSE

Intraword variability designates the phenomenon that a particular target word is produced variably by a child at one point in the child's development. In this study, the amount of intraword variability is studied longitudinally in children with auditory brainstem implants (ABIs). Auditory brainstem implantation is a relative recent technique in pediatric hearing restoration. Therefore, little is known about the phonological development of these children's speech.

METHOD

The intraword variability is investigated in three children with ABI, in comparison to children with cochlear implants, matched on lexical development. Intraword variability is measured using relative entropy in order to take into account the frequency distribution in children's productions.

RESULT

Results showed considerable variation between the three children with ABI. Still, all children had higher levels of intraword variability in their spontaneous speech productions as compared to children with cochlear implants.

CONCLUSION

It seems that children with ABI are lagging behind their phonological development in reference to children with cochlear implants.

Vowel errors produced by preschool-age children on a single-word test of articulation

Eighty-four children, age 4-5 years, with and without speech sound disorder (SSD) completed a battery of standardized speech and language tests, including the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation, Third Edition (GFTA-3). Children with SSD produced more vowel errors than children with typical speech abilities. Percentage vowels correct and consonant error variability were highly correlated, suggesting that poorly specified phonological representations affect both consonants and vowels within a child's phonological system. However, the GFTA-3 did not contain sufficient target words to determine full vowel inventory. Using words from the GFTA-3, we present a case study of a child with vowel errors along with a sample analysis of these errors, primarily in terms of consonant-vowel feature interactions. Children who exhibit vowel errors on standardized single-word tests of speech accuracy may benefit from further vowel probes to determine how vowel and consonant errors interact in their phonological systems for more targeted therapy.

Consonant and vowel production in the spontaneous speech productions of children with auditory brainstem implants

Auditory brainstem implantation provides hearing sensations in children and adults with anomalies of the auditory nerves. In children, perceptual benefits have been established, and research already demonstrated (limited) effects on children's speech production. The current study extends the literature by scrutinizing the phonological development of three children with ABI. Spontaneous speech samples were used to establish their phonemic inventories of vowels, word-initial consonants and word-final consonants, both independently of the target phoneme and relative to the target phoneme. The three children produced all vowels with longer device use and larger vocabulary size. Word-initial and word-final consonants appeared in the three children's spontaneous productions. However, the segmental accuracy was only moderate in the children's productions.

Performance of Swedish children on a dynamic motor speech assessment

Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the performance of typically developing Swedish-speaking children on DYMTA (Dynamisk Motorisk Talbedömning), a Swedish dynamic motor speech assessment.Method: Participants were 94 children, 45 boys/49 girls (9/8 multilingual), with typical oral motor, speech, and language skills, between 37 and 106 months divided into five age-groups. They performed two speech motor assessments, DYMTA-A and DYMTA-B using dynamic assessment.Result: Typically developing children show good motor speech performance on targeted speech characteristics already at the age of three. DYMTA median total score was high for all ages; 90% of maximum or above. A significant correlation with age was found for DYMTA-A (p = 0.000, r = 0.49) and DYMTA-B (p = 0.000, r = 0.77). No significant differences were found across gender or concerning being mono- or multilingual.Conclusion: DYMTA is the first Swedish assessment tool designed to identify children with CAS. The results of this study demonstrate that typically developing Swedish children perform well on DYMTA and that the test has possible utility for both mono- and multilingual children.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers Treatment: Effect on Expressive Vocabulary and Phonology

Purpose This study examined the effect of Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) treatment on toddlers' expressive vocabulary and phonology. Parent acceptability of VAULT treatment was also considered. Method We used a nonconcurrent multiple baseline single case experimental design with three late talking toddlers aged 21-25 months. The treatment was delivered twice weekly in 30-min sessions for 8 weeks by a rotating team of four speech-language pathologists. Toddlers heard three of their 10 strategically selected target words a minimum of 64 times in play activities each session. Expressive vocabulary and phonology was assessed pre-post, with parent interviews conducted posttreatment. Results All toddlers increased production of target words and expressive vocabulary. Ambient expressive vocabulary size increased by an average of 16 words per week (range of 73-169 words learned over the treatment period). On a 20-item, single-word speech assessment, the toddlers' phonetic inventories increased on average from three to seven consonants, and five to eight vowels. Two toddlers used protowords pretreatment, which were replaced by recognizable attempts at words posttreatment. Parents reported the treatment was acceptable for the child and their family with future consideration of parent-based delivery of the treatment in the home. Conclusions The results of this treatment provide further evidence of a model of intervention informed by the principles of implicit learning, and the interconnectedness of phonological and lexical learning. Investigation is required to establish the efficacy and feasibility of VAULT in clinical contexts. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14714733.

Intraword Variability in French-Speaking Monolingual and Bilingual Children

Purpose This study examines intraword variability in 40 typically developing French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 2;6-4;8 (years;months). Specifically, it measures rate of intraword variability and investigates which factors best account for it. They include child-specific ones such as age, expressive vocabulary, gender, bilingual status, and speech sound production ability, and word-specific factors, such as phonological complexity (including number of syllables), phonological neighborhood density (PND), and word frequency. Method A variability test was developed, consisting of 25 words, which differed in terms of phonological complexity, PND, and word frequency. Children produced three exemplars of each word during a single session, and productions of words were coded as variable or not variable. In addition, children were administered an expressive vocabulary test and two tests tapping speech motor ability (oral motor assessment and diadochokinetic test). Speech sound ability was also assessed by measuring percent consonants correct on all words produced by the children during the session. Data were entered into a binomial logistic regression. Results Average intraword variability was 29% across all children. Several factors were found to predict intraword variability including age, gender, bilingual status, speech sound production ability, phonological complexity, and PND. Conclusions Intraword variability was found to be lower in French than what has been reported in English, consistent with phonological differences between French and English. Our findings support those of other investigators in indicating that the factors influencing intraword variability are multiple and reflect sources at various levels in the speech processing system.

Practice and experience predict coarticulation in child speech

Much research in child speech development suggests that young children coarticulate more than adults. There are multiple, not mutually-exclusive, explanations for this pattern. For example, children may coarticulate more because they are limited by immature motor control. Or they may coarticulate more if they initially represent phonological segments in larger, more holistic units such as syllables or feet. We tested the importance of several different explanations for coarticulation in child speech by evaluating how four-year-olds' language experience, speech practice, and speech planning predicted their coarticulation between adjacent segments in real words and paired nonwords. Children with larger vocabularies coarticulated less, especially in real words, though there were no reliable coarticulatory differences between real words and nonwords after controlling for word duration. Children who vocalized more throughout a daylong audio recording also coarticulated less. Quantity of child vocalizations was more predictive of the degree of children's coarticulation than a measure of receptive language experience, adult word count. Overall, these results suggest strong roles for children's phonological representations and speech practice, as well as their immature fine motor control, for coarticulatory development.

Development and Validation of a Probe Word List to Assess Speech Motor Skills in Children

Purpose The aim of the study was to develop and validate a probe word list and scoring system to assess speech motor skills in preschool and school-age children with motor speech disorders. Method This article describes the development of a probe word list and scoring system using a modified word complexity measure and principles based on the hierarchical development of speech motor control known as the Motor Speech Hierarchy (MSH). The probe word list development accounted for factors related to word (i.e., motoric) complexity, linguistic variables, and content familiarity. The probe word list and scoring system was administered to 48 preschool and school-age children with moderate-to-severe speech motor delay at clinical centers in Ontario, Canada, and then evaluated for reliability and validity. Results One-way analyses of variance revealed that the motor complexity of the probe words increased significantly for each MSH stage, while no significant differences in the linguistic complexity were found for neighborhood density, mean biphone frequency, or log word frequency. The probe word list and scoring system yielded high reliability on measures of internal consistency and intrarater reliability. Interrater reliability indicated moderate agreement across the MSH stages, with the exception of MSH Stage V, which yielded substantial agreement. The probe word list and scoring system demonstrated high content, construct (unidimensionality, convergent validity, and discriminant validity), and criterion-related (concurrent and predictive) validity. Conclusions The probe word list and scoring system described in the current study provide a standardized method that speech-language pathologists can use in the assessment of speech motor control. It can support clinicians in identifying speech motor difficulties in preschool and school-age children, set appropriate goals, and potentially measure changes in these goals across time and/or after intervention.

Lexical-Semantic Cues Induce Sound Pattern Stability in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose When learning novel word forms, preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment) produce speech targets inaccurately and with a high degree of intraword variability. The aim of the current study is to specify whether and how layering lexical-semantic information onto novel phonological strings would induce increased organization of sound production patterns. Method Twenty-one preschoolers with DLD and 21 peers with typical language (ranging in age from 4;1 to 5;11 [years;months]) imitated multiple renditions of novel words, half with (i.e., words) and half without (i.e., nonwords) a linked visual referent. Methods from network science were used to assess the stability and patterning of syllable sequences. Sound accuracy was also measured. Results Children with DLD were less accurate and more variable than their typical peers. However, once word forms were associated with a visual referent, network stability, but not accuracy, improved for children with DLD. Conclusions Children with DLD showed significant word form deficits as they acquired novel words and nonwords. The inclusion of a meaningful referent resulted in increased sound sequence stability, suggesting that lexical-semantic information provides a bootstrap for phonological organization in children with DLD.

Variability across repeated productions in bilingual children speaking Jamaican Creole and English

PURPOSE

Previous work suggests that variability across repeated productions of the same word may be useful in diagnosing speech sound disorder (SSD) in bilingual children. However, there is debate over what level of variability in transcribed productions should be considered typical even in monolingual speech development. High variability in the input represents a factor that could promote increased production variability in bilinguals. For this reason, the current study examines transcription-based token-to-token variability in bilingual children speaking Jamaican Creole (JC) and English.

METHOD

Twenty-five bilingual children aged 3;4-5;1 and twenty-five monolingual children aged 2;9-4;1 from a previous study were recorded producing eleven items in three repetitions.

RESULT

Contrary to our hypothesis, bilingual children showed similar rates of token-to-token variability compared to the monolingual children. In a separate analysis of bilingual data across languages, bilingual children were more variable in JC compared to English productions.

CONCLUSION

The difference between language contexts suggests that creole languages, which exist on a usage continuum, may be associated with increased variability in production. Our findings suggest that token-to-token production variability may be of similar clinical utility for bilingual and monolingual populations.

A Framework of Motoric Complexity: An Investigation in Children With Typical and Impaired Speech Development

Introduction The current work presents a framework of motoric complexity where stimuli differ according to movement elements across a sound sequence (i.e., consonant transitions and vowel direction). This framework was then examined in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), other speech sound disorders (SSDs), and typical development (TD). Method Twenty-four children (CAS, n = 8; SSD, n = 8; TD, n = 8), 5-6 years of age, participated in this study. The children produced words that varied in motoric complexity while transcription, acoustic, and kinematic data were collected. Multidimensional analyses were conducted to examine speech production accuracy, speech motor variability, and temporal control. Results Analyses revealed poorer accuracy, longer movement duration, and greater speech motor variability in children with CAS than TD (across all measures) and other SSDs (accuracy and variability). All children demonstrated greater speech motor variability and longer duration as movement demands increased within the framework of motoric complexity. Diagnostic grouping did not mediate performance on this task. Conclusions Results of this study are believed to reveal gradations of complexity with increasing movement demands, thereby supporting the proposed framework of motoric complexity. This work also supports the importance of considering motoric properties of sound sequences when evaluating speech production skills and designing experimental and treatment stimuli.

Effects of a naturalistic intervention on the speech outcomes of young children with cleft palate

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which a naturalistic communication intervention, Enhanced Milieu Teaching with Phonological Emphasis (EMT + PE) improved the speech outcomes of toddlers with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP ± L)Method: This study was a stratified randomised controlled trial.Setting: Treatment was delivered in a university clinic by a trained speech-language pathologist.Thirty children aged between 15 and 36 months (M = 25) with nonsyndromic CP ± CL and typical cognitive development were randomly assigned to a treatment (EMT + PE) or business as usual comparison condition.Participants in the EMT + PE treatment group received 48, 30-min sessions, over a 6-month period. Fidelity of treatment was high across participants.The primary outcome measures were percent consonants correct (PCC), consonant inventory, compensatory articulation errors, and nasal emission.Result: Regression analyses controlling for pre-intervention child characteristics were conducted for PCC and consonant inventory. Intervention was not a significant predictor of post-intervention outcome. Words per minute differentiated the children who benefitted from the intervention from those who did not. Reduction in compensatory errors and nasal emission occurred in both groups but to a greater degree in the EMT + PE group.Conclusion: EMT + PE is a promising early speech intervention for young children with CP ± L, especially for children with higher rates of word use.

Phonological Assessment Instrument (INFONO): A pilot study

PURPOSE

To analyze the recognizability and effectiveness of items in the Phonological Assessment Tool (Instrumento de Avaliação Fonológica - INFONO) at eliciting target words, as well as to evaluate the internal consistency of the instrument and compare performance between genders, school types and typical vs. atypical phonological development.

METHOD

Participants were 48 children (n=26 with typical phonological development and n=22 with atypical development) categorized by age (6 age groups ranging from 3 years and 8 years 11 months), type of school (public vs. private) and gender (male vs. female). Data were collected by the spontaneous naming task of the INFONO. Recognition rates, scores, recognition difficulties and internal consistency were examined in 116 items. Performance in a final set of 84 items was also compared between genders, school types and typical/atypical phonological development.

RESULTS

Most target words achieved high recognition rates were considered suitable for use in the INFONO. Some images had to be redesigned to facilitate the spontaneous production of target words, while other items were excluded from the instrument altogether. The instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency. There were no statistically significant differences between genders and school types, though differences were observed between typically and atypically developing children.

CONCLUSION

The images in the INFONO were successfully recognized by participants and were effective at eliciting the target words. The final set of items contained the minimum number of target words which would allow for an assessment of all phonemes in Brazilian Portuguese in different word and syllable positions, and these items presented excellent internal consistency.

Phonological development of Finnish speaking children at 3;6 and associations to previous and simultaneous lexical ability

Previous studies of Finnish children's phonological development focus mainly on children under 2;0. Earlier findings have suggested that phonological and lexical development are strongly associated at an early age. However, less is known about the longitudinal association. This study describes the phonological skills of Finnish-speaking children at 3;6 and compares them with early lexicon size at 2;0 and lexical ability at 3;6 (N = 67). The children's phonological development was measured using The Finnish Phonology Test. Lexical development was evaluated using the Finnish, long-form version of the Communicative Development Inventory at 2;0 and the Boston naming test at 3;6 At 3;6, all children mastered the vowels and diphthongs fully, and most of the children also mastered the consonants, with the exception of the phonemes/d/and/r/. Phonotactic skills had also been acquired well at this group level, although the word-medial and, especially, word-initial consonant clusters were still challenging. The percentage of phonemes correct was 95. Both paradigmatic and phonotactic skills at 3;6 were significantly associated with lexicon size at 2;0. In addition phonotactic skills correlated with naming ability at 3;6. Lexical development at 2;0 explained 21% of the variance in the phonological development at 3;6, whereas, the explaining value of simultaneous lexical skill was limited (9%). Present findings propose that associations between lexical and phonological skills weaken as phonological skills become more honed.

Past perspectives and new opportunities for the explanatory item response model

Models of word reading that simultaneously take into account item-level and person-level fixed and random effects are broadly known as explanatory item response models (EIRM). Although many variants of the EIRM are available, the field has generally focused on the doubly explanatory model for modeling individual differences on item responses. Moreover, the historical application of the EIRM has been a Rasch version of the model where the item discrimination values are fixed at 1.0 and the random or fixed item effects only pertain to the item difficulties. The statistical literature has advanced to allow for more robust testing of observed or latent outcomes, as well as more flexible parameterizations of the EIRM. The purpose of the present study was to compare four types of Rasch-based EIRMs (i.e., doubly descriptive, person explanatory, item explanatory, doubly explanatory) and more broadly compare Rasch and 2PL EIRM when including person-level and item-level predictors. Results showed that not only was the error variance smaller in the unconditional 2PL EIRM compared to the Rasch EIRM due to including the item discrimination random effect, but that patterns of unique item-level explanatory variables differ between the two approaches. Results are interpreted within the context of what each statistical model affords to the opportunity for describing and explaining differences in word-level performance.

Density and Distinctiveness in Early Word Learning: Evidence From Neural Network Simulations

High phonological neighborhood density has been associated with both advantages and disadvantages in early word learning. High density may support the formation and fine-tuning of new word sound memories-a process termed lexical configuration (e.g., Storkel, 2004). However, new high-density words are also more likely to be misunderstood as instances of known words, and may therefore fail to trigger the learning process (e.g., Swingley & Aslin, 2007). To examine these apparently contradictory effects, we trained an autoencoder neural network on 587,954 word tokens (5,497 types, including mono- and multisyllabic words of all grammatical classes) spoken by 279 caregivers to English-speaking children aged 18-24 months. We then simulated a communicative development inventory administration and compared network performance to that of 2,292 children aged 18-24 months. We argue that autoencoder performance illustrates concurrent density advantages and disadvantages, in contrast to prior behavioral and computational literature treating such effects independently. Low network error rates signal a configuration advantage for high-density words, while high network error rates signal a triggering advantage for low-density words. This interpretation is consistent with the application of autoencoders in academic research and industry, for simultaneous feature extraction (i.e., configuration) and anomaly detection (i.e., triggering). Autoencoder simulation therefore illustrates how apparently contradictory density and distinctiveness effects can emerge from a common learning mechanism. OPEN RESEARCH BADGES: This article has earned an Open Data badge for making publicly available the digitally-shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://osf.io/2qk5j/. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration

The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children's production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children's coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children's vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children's phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.

Assessing consonant production in children with cochlear implants

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to investigate the development of consonant inventory and accuracy in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients and compare their performance to typical hearing (TH) children.

METHODS

One hundred and twenty nine children with CIs, implanted between 6-38 months of age, and 30 age-matched children with TH participated in this study. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at 3.5 and 4.5 years chronological age and the first 100 different words spoken by each participant were transcribed. Two consonant production measures were subsequently calculated to assess consonant acquisition and mastery. The percentage of Consonants Correct (CC) was used for measuring accuracy and Consonant Diversity (CD), an inventory measure, was used to identify the number of different consonants spoken by each participant. Repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted to examine the differences in consonant production scores based on presence of CI (participants with CI versus typical hearing (TH) participants), and chronological age at data collection (3.5 years versus 4.5 years).

RESULTS

CI recipients displayed lower consonant production scores compared to TH children. Children with the most device experience (32-38 months at 3.5 years) performed on par with their TH peers.

CONCLUSIONS

The two measures used in this study together appear capable of comprehensively describing the changes in consonant production skills of children. Results from this study indicate that while most CI participants display lower scores compared to TH children, many of the CI users are able to produce speech sounds on par with TH children.

Phonological selectivity in the acquisition of English clusters

Phonological selectivity is a phenomenon where children preselect which target words they attempt to produce. The present study examines selectivity in the acquisition of complex onsets and codas in English, and specifically in the acquisition of biconsonantal (CC) clusters in each position compared to triconsonantal (CCC) clusters. The data come from the naturalistic productions of three English-speaking children. The results indicate that children only attempt to produce target tokens with a CCC onset after they have successfully produced target tokens with a CC onset, and that the same occurs in the case of codas. Frequency, morphological complexity, sonority, and /s/ clusters were examined and ruled out as possible explanations of these acquisition patterns. Overall, this suggests that children are selective in their target words, and only attempt to produce words that contain a cluster after they have produced words containing a shorter cluster of the same type (i.e., onset/coda).

Do children really acquire dense neighbourhoods?

Children learn high phonological neighbourhood density words more easily than low phonological neighbourhood density words (Storkel, 2004). However, the strength of this effect relative to alternative predictors of word acquisition is unclear. We addressed this issue using communicative inventory data from 300 British English-speaking children aged 12 to 25 months. Using Bayesian regression, we modelled word understanding and production as a function of: (i) phonological neighbourhood density, (ii) frequency, (iii) length, (iv) babiness, (v) concreteness, (vi) valence, (vii) arousal, and (viii) dominance. Phonological neighbourhood density predicted word production but not word comprehension, and this effect was stronger in younger children.

Speech Production Accuracy and Variability in Monolingual and Bilingual Children With Cochlear Implants: A Comparison to Their Peers With Normal Hearing

Purpose This study investigates consonant and vowel accuracy and whole-word variability (also called token-to-token variability or token-to-token inconsistency) in bilingual Spanish-English and monolingual English-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) compared to their bilingual and monolingual peers with normal hearing (NH). Method Participants were 40 children between 4;6 and 7;11 (years;months; M _age = 6;2), n = 10 each in 4 participant groups: bilingual Spanish-English with CIs, monolingual English with CIs, bilingual Spanish-English with NH, and monolingual English with NH. Spanish and English word lists consisting of 20 words of varying length were generated, and 3 productions of each word were analyzed for percent consonants correct, percent vowels correct, and the presence of any consonant and/or vowel variability. Results Children with CIs demonstrated lower accuracy and more whole-word variability than their peers with NH. There were no differences in rates of accuracy or whole-word variability between bilingual and monolingual children matched on hearing status, and bilingual children had lower accuracy and greater whole-word variability in English than in Spanish. Conclusions High rates of whole-word variability are prevalent in the speech of children with CIs even after many years of CI experience, and bilingual language exposure does not appear to negatively impact phonological development in children with CIs. Contributions to our understanding of underlying sources of speech production variability and clinical implications are discussed.

Neighborhood Density and Word Production in Delayed and Advanced Learners

Purpose This study reexamines the claim that difficulty forming memories of words comprising uncommon sound sequences (i.e., low phonological neighborhood density words) is a determinant of delayed expressive vocabulary development (e.g., Stokes, 2014). Method We modeled communicative development inventory data from (N = 442) 18-month-old children, with expressive lexicon sizes between 0 and 517 words (Mdn = 84). We fitted a Bayesian regression model in which the production of each communicative inventory word (N = 680) by each child was predicted by interactions between that child's expressive lexicon size and the word's (a) phonological neighborhood density, (b) frequency in child-directed speech, (c) length, (d) babiness, and (e) concreteness. Results Children with larger expressive lexicons were more likely to produce words comprising uncommon sound sequences than age-matched children with smaller lexicons. However, the magnitude of the interaction between expressive lexicon size and phonological neighborhood density was modest relative to interactions between expressive lexicon size and word frequency, length, babiness, and concreteness. Conclusion Emphasis on a difficulty with the memorization of low-neighborhood density words as a determinant of slow vocabulary growth may be unwarranted, and the current evidence base in this direction is not robust enough to strongly support the development of possible interventions for late talkers.

Profiling Speech Sound Disorders for Clinical Validation of the Computer Articulation Instrument

Purpose The current article presents data from 2 studies on clinical groups of children referred for speech assessment. The aims of these studies are to validate the Computer Articulation Instrument (CAI) with the known-group validation method and to determine the differential diagnostic power of the resulting speech profiles. Method Study 1 examined known-group validity by comparing the scores of 93 children diagnosed with speech-language difficulties on the picture naming (PN) task of the CAI with intelligibility judgments given by speech-language pathologists. In Study 2, the speech profiles of 41 children diagnosed with speech sound disorders (SSDs), consisting of 4-6 factor scores extracted from the 4 tasks of the CAI, namely, PN, nonword imitation (NWI), word and nonword repetition, and maximum repetition rate (MRR), were validated against clinical judgments of severity of the SSD given by speech-language pathologists. Results In Study 1, a repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed a significant effect of intelligibility level on the PN performance of the CAI and there were highly significant correlations between intelligibility and PN performance in the expected direction. Neither intelligibility level nor PN performance was related to nonverbal intelligence and language scores. The analysis of variance and a series of t tests in Study 2 revealed significant differences between the moderate and severe groups for the CAI factors based on PN and NWI and the bisyllabic and trisyllabic sequences of MRR, but not for the factor word and nonword proportion of whole-word variability based on word and nonword repetition, and the monosyllabic sequences of MRR. These results suggest that, especially, the tasks PN, NWI, and the bisyllabic and trisyllabic sequences of MRR are most sensitive for diagnosing SSDs. Conclusions The findings of these 2 studies support the known-group validity of the CAI. Together with the results of a previous study of our group on reliability and validity ( van Haaften et al., 2019 ), we can conclude that the CAI is a reliable and valid tool for assessment of children with SSDs.

Normative Features of Phoneme Acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese

PURPOSE

To analyze the influence of gender, age, and types of school (public or private) on phoneme production, and provide normative data on phonological acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese (BP).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

The sample consisted of 733 children (ages 3 years to 8 years and 11 months), all monolingual speakers of BP with typical phonological development. Participants were evaluated using the spontaneous naming task from the Phonological Assessment Tool (Instrumento de Avaliação Fonológica - INFONO). The children's speech production was audio-recorded, transcribed, and submitted to phonological analysis.

RESULTS

The effect of age was significant for all phonemes and syllable structures, especially when analyzed in combination with types of school and gender. Overall, phoneme production accuracy increased with age and varied depending on the types of school attended by the children, but did not differ between genders.

CONCLUSION

Age had a greater impact on phoneme production. The normative data on phonological acquisition highlighted the differences between the ages of mastery for different phonemes, with elements such as the /r/ sound and complex onsets being acquired much later in development than some of the other phonemes analyzed.

Whole-word measures and the speech production of typically developing Dutch children

In this study, the phonological whole-word measure Phonological Mean Length of Utterance was applied to identify stages in the phonological acquisition of Dutch children. Ninety spontaneous speech samples of 47 typically developing Dutch children from a previous study were examined. Samples were distributed across nine age groups ranging between 1;3-4;0 years. Across all age groups, PMLU of word productions increased significantly with the largest increase found below age 2;0 years. PMLU of the target words showed no significant increase across age groups. Outcomes suggest that the phonological whole-word measure PMLU can be further developed for clinical purposes in Dutch-speaking children. In the future, this measure could become relevant for the diagnosis and evaluation of therapy on the basis of spontaneous language.

Intra-word consistency and accuracy in Finnish children aged 3-6 years

This study examined intra-word consistency and accuracy in typically developing Finnish children and their relation to children's vocabulary size and phonological skills. A total of 80 typically developing Finnish children aged 3;0 to 6;11 were asked to name 20 words three separate times during a single assessment session. Responses were classified into four categories: 1) consistently correct productions, 2) consistently incorrect productions, 3) variable productions with hits (variable productions including at least one matched adult target), and 4) variable productions with no hits. The results revealed that 5- and 6-year-old children produced significantly more often consistently correct responses than younger children. However, even for the 3- and 4-year old children the most frequent response type was consistently correct production. Between these two youngest age groups (3 and 4), the only significant difference was in consistently incorrect responses, which the 3-year-olds produced more often than the older children. There was a significant negative correlation between consistently incorrectly produced words and children's phonological skills, but no other relationships were found. The results indicate that when assessing children with speech sound disorder (SSD), Finnish clinicians need to take into account the fact that even 3-year-old typically developing children generally produce words correctly, either consistently or inconsistently.

Speech Intervention Outcomes Associated With Word Lexicality and Intervention Intensity

Purpose This study examined how lexical representations and intervention intensity affect phonological acquisition and generalization in children with speech sound disorders. Method Using a single-subject multiple baseline design, 24 children with speech sound disorders (3;6 to 6;10 [years;months]) were split into 3 word lexicality types targeting word-initial complex singleton phonemes: /ɹ l ʧ θ/. Specifically, academic vocabulary words, nonwords (NWs), and high-frequency (HF) words were contrasted. Intervention intensity was examined by comparing the performance of 12 children who completed eleven 50-min sessions (4 children/word type) to the performance of 12 who completed 19 sessions (4 children/word type). Children's production accuracy of their treated phonemes and overall percent consonants correct values were used to measure phonological generalization via percentage accuracy scores and d scores. Results All word lexicality conditions elicited phonological change, suggesting that academic vocabulary words, NWs, and HF words are viable intervention targets. Group mean averages were similarly high for the NWs and HF words, although children in the NW condition demonstrated more consistent phonological gains. Children who received 19 intervention sessions achieved 6 times more gains in treated sound accuracy than did children who received 11 sessions. Conclusions Word lexicality did not significantly influence children's intervention outcomes. More intensive intervention, as characterized by the number sessions, resulted in greater phonological change than did a shorter intervention program. Intervention intensity outcomes should be considered when establishing best practices for speech intervention scheduling. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7336055.

Relationship between mean length of utterance and vocabulary in children with typical language development

ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the existence of a relationship between vocabulary and measures of mean length of utterance in children in their language development phase. Methods: the sample consisted of 72 children aged 2 to 4 years, 11 months and 29 days, 36 boys and 36 girls, with typical language development, evenly distributed into age groups, enrolled in kindergartens with the public school system, in Santa Maria, RS, Brazil. Videos of the spontaneous speech of each subject were made, and then, the analysis of the vocabulary and Mean Length of Utterance took place. Statistical analysis was performed using the Statistical Analysis System program, version 9.2 and Spearman correlation coefficient, with a significance level of p <0.05. Results: the influence of gender in the Mean Length of Utterance correlation and vocabulary was observed. There was a difference between the ages of 2 and 4 years. Conclusion: vocabulary development promotes mean length utterance, indicating positive correlation between gender and age range.

Questioning the role of lexical contrastiveness in phonological development: Converging evidence from perception and production studies

In this article, we address relations between lexical and phonological development, with an emphasis on the notion of phonological contrast. We begin with an overview of the literature on word learning and on infant speech perception. Among other results, we report on studies showing that toddlers' perceptual abilities do not correlate with the development of phonological contrasts within their lexicons. We then engage in a systematic comparison between the lexical development of two child learners of English and their acquisition of consonants in syllable onsets. We establish a developmental timeline for each child's onset consonant system, which we compare to the types of phonological contrasts that are present in their expressive vocabularies at each relevant milestone. Like the earlier studies, ours also fails to return tangible parallels between the two areas of development. The data instead suggest that patterns of phonological development are best described in terms of the segmental categories they involve, in relative independence from measures of contrastiveness within the learners' lexicons.

Single word test for the assessment of speech sound production in Persian speaking children: Development, validity and reliability

OBJECTIVES

Single word tests are used frequently to determine clients' speech sound errors. These tools are user-friendly and popular for speech and language pathologists. The aim of this study was to design and validate a single word test for the assessment of speech sound production for Persian speaking children.

METHODS

The present study included two phases. In phase I, test material was developed. Psychometric properties were evaluated in phase II. In the next phase, 525 typically developing Persian-speaking children with the age range of 3-5 years old were studied. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 24.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL) was used for statistical analysis of this study. The significance level was set at (p < 0.05). Pilot study was performed by administrating the test on 25 typically developing children, construct validity: by administrating the test on 400 typically developing children and the comparison of performance of the children in 4 age groups (discriminative validity regarding age and by administration of this test and phonetic subtest of Persian version of diagnostic evaluation of articulation and phonology on 100 children (convergent validity)). Inter-rater reliability was performed by transcription and scoring of samples of 25 children and calculation of Intra Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was calculated. Test-retest was completed by administrating the test two times on 30 children with two weeks intervals. Internal consistency was achieved by the calculation of the correlation of the items of test.

RESULTS

The final version of the test includes 70 target words for assessment of the consonants in three positions, vowels in medial position and consonant clusters (CVCC). There was 80% or more than it for the percentage agreement between experts for the content validity. There wasn't any significant difference between experts' responses about items of the test. 4 pictures were revised based on children's responses for the pilot study. All of the reliability values (test-re test, internal consistency and inter-rater reliability) were higher than 0.85. There was a significant difference between the four age groups for the mean value of Persian single word test for speech sound production (p < 0.0001). There was a high correlation between the score of this instrument and the scores of participants in the Phonetic sub-test of the Persian version of Diagnostic evaluation of articulation and phonology(r = 0.934, p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

It seems that the Persian Speech sound Production Test is a reliable and valid tool that can be used to measure speech sound errors for Persian speaking children.

An Application of Network Science to Phonological Sequence Learning in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

PURPOSE

Network science has been a valuable tool in language research for investigating relationships between complex linguistic elements but has not yet been applied to sound sequencing in production. In the present work, we used standard error-based accuracy and articulatory kinematic approaches as well as novel measures from network science to evaluate variability and sequencing errors in speech production in children with developmental language disorder (DLD; aka specific language impairment).

METHOD

Twelve preschoolers with DLD and 12 age-matched controls participated in a 3-day novel word learning study. Transcription and articulatory movement data were collected to measure accuracy and variability of productions, and networks of speech productions were generated to analyze syllable co-occurrence patterns.

RESULTS

Results indicated that children with DLD were less accurate than children with typical language at the segmental level. Crucially, these findings did not align with performance at the articulatory level, where there were no differences in movement variability between children with DLD and those with typical language. Network analyses revealed characteristics that were not captured by standard measures of phonetic accuracy, including a larger inventory of syllable forms, more connections between the forms, and less consistent production patterns.

CONCLUSIONS

Network science provides significant insights into phonological learning trajectories in children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Importantly, errors in word production by children with DLD do not surface as a result of weakness in articulatory control. Instead, results suggest that speech errors in DLD may relate to deficits in sound sequencing.

Neighborhood Density and Syntactic Class Effects on Spoken Word Recognition: Specific Language Impairment and Typical Development

PURPOSE

The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of neighborhood density and syntactic class on word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typical development (TD).

METHOD

Fifteen children with SLI (M age = 6;5 [years;months]) and 15 with TD (M age = 6;4) completed a forward gating task that presented consonant-vowel-consonant dense and sparse (neighborhood density) nouns and verbs (syntactic class).

RESULTS

On all dependent variables, the SLI group performed like the TD group. Recognition performance was highest for dense words and nouns. The majority of 1st nontarget responses shared the 1st phoneme with the target (i.e., was in the target's cohort). When considering the ranking of word types from easiest to most difficult, children showed equivalent recognition performance for dense verbs and sparse nouns, which were both easier to recognize than sparse verbs but more difficult than dense nouns.

CONCLUSION

The current study yields new insight into how children access lexical-phonological information and syntactic class during the process of spoken word recognition. Given the identical pattern of results for the SLI and TD groups, we hypothesize that accessing lexical-phonological information may be a strength for children with SLI. We also discuss implications for using the forward gating paradigm as a measure of word recognition.

The Implications of Nasal Substitutions in the Early Phonology of Toddlers With Repaired Cleft Palate

OBJECTIVE

To examine the implications of nasal substitutions in the early words of toddlers with cleft palate.

DESIGN

Retrospective.

PATIENTS

Thirty-four toddlers with nonsyndromic cleft palate and 20 noncleft toddlers, followed from ages 13 to 39 months.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The groups were compared for the percentage of toddlers who produced nasal substitutions in their early words. The percentage of toddlers with repaired cleft palate who produced nasal substitutions and were later suspected of having velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) was also examined.

RESULTS

Seventy-six percent of the toddlers in the cleft group (n = 26) and 35% of toddlers in the noncleft group (n = 7) produced nasal substitutions on one or more of their early words. Only 38% (10/26) of the toddlers with cleft palate who produced nasal substitutions in their early words were later diagnosed as having moderate-severe hypernasality and suspected VPD.

CONCLUSIONS

The presence of nasal substitutions following palatal surgery was not always an early sign of VPD. These substitutions were present in the early lexicon of children with and without cleft palate.

Reverse production effect: children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced

This research investigates the effect of production on 4.5- to 6-year-old children's recognition of newly learned words. In Experiment 1, children were taught four novel words in a produced or heard training condition during a brief training phase. In Experiment 2, children were taught eight novel words, and this time training condition was in a blocked design. Immediately after training, children were tested on their recognition of the trained novel words using a preferential looking paradigm. In both experiments, children recognized novel words that were produced and heard during training, but demonstrated better recognition for items that were heard. These findings are opposite to previous results reported in the literature with adults and children. Our results show that benefits of speech production for word learning are dependent on factors such as task complexity and the developmental stage of the learner.

Consonant Age-of-Acquisition Effects in Nonword Repetition Are Not Articulatory in Nature

PURPOSE

Most research examining long-term-memory effects on nonword repetition (NWR) has focused on lexical-level variables. Phoneme-level variables have received little attention, although there are reasons to expect significant sublexical effects in NWR. To further understand the underlying processes of NWR, this study examined effects of sublexical long-term phonological knowledge by testing whether performance differs when the stimuli comprise consonants acquired later versus earlier in speech development.

METHOD

Thirty (Experiment 1) and 20 (Experiment 2) college students completed tasks that investigated whether an experimental phoneme-level variable (consonant age of acquisition) similarly affects NWR and lexical-access tasks designed to vary in articulatory, auditory-perceptual, and phonological short-term-memory demands. The lexical-access tasks were performed in silence or with concurrent articulation to explore whether consonant age-of-acquisition effects arise before or after articulatory planning.

RESULTS

NWR accuracy decreased on items comprising later- versus earlier-acquired phonemes. Similar consonant age-of-acquisition effects were observed in accuracy measures of nonword reading and lexical decision performed in silence or with concurrent articulation.

CONCLUSION

Results indicate that NWR performance is sensitive to phoneme-level phonological knowledge in long-term memory. NWR, accordingly, should not be regarded as a diagnostic tool for pure impairment of phonological short-term memory.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5435137.

Stimulus Characteristics of Single-Word Tests of Children's Speech Sound Production

Purpose

This clinical focus article provides readers with a description of the stimulus characteristics of 12 popular tests of speech sound production.

Method

Using significance testing and descriptive analyses, stimulus items were compared in terms of the number of opportunities for production of all consonant singletons, clusters, and rhotic and nonrhotic vowels of Standard American English; phonetic/phonological and structural complexity; and the presence of bound morphemes.

Results

The tests varied widely in terms of the number of opportunities for production of consonant singletons, clusters, and rhotic and nonrhotic vowels. Most of the tests included only 1 opportunity, scored or unscored, to produce a majority of the consonant singletons in each word position. Only 3 of the tests included stimulus items with 3-element clusters. The majority contained limited opportunities to produce 3- or 4-syllable stimulus items. The tests provided sufficient opportunities for production of most vowels, although most did not score vowels. The tests differed significantly in the complexity of their stimulus items. Most, however, contained a negligible number of items that, with the addition of a bound morpheme, resulted in a word-final cluster.

Conclusion

Most of the tests elicit an inadequate sample with which to conduct a comprehensive phonological analysis.