Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
ISSN: 0033-555X (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pqje19
Children's understanding of their own phonological forms Barbara Dodd To cite this article: Barbara Dodd (1975) Children's understanding of their own phonological forms, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27:2, 165-172, DOI: 10.1080/14640747508400477 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640747508400477
Published online: 29 May 2007.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 41
View related articles
Citing articles: 14 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=pqje19 Download by: [University of Florida]
Date: 05 November 2015, At: 13:49
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (1975) 27, 165-172
CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR OWN PHONOLOGICAL FORMS BARBARA DODD
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
MRC Developmental Psychology Unit,Drayton House, Gordon Street, London WCI , U.K. The ability of young children to understand their own and other children’sdeviant phonological forms was tested. Children were better at understanding an unfamiliar adult’s speech than they were at understanding their own or other childrens’speech. Their understanding was found to be related to the degree to which the deviant speech resembled the adult phonological form. It was concluded that children do not store their own deviant phonological forms for recognition in the same way that they store adult forms.
Introduction Theories of phonological acquisition often assume a link between articulatory performance and auditory perceptual performance (Pollack and Rees, 1972). One theory holds that an auditory feedback loop, established during babbling activity, allows children to modify their articulatory movements to more closely approximate the adult forms, through repeated imitation and continuous practice (Fry, 1966). I n contrast, Waterson (1971) suggested that a child reproduces only those sounds which he “perceives as clearest out of the whole utterance and which he recognizes as functional”. Both hypotheses necessitate a link between articulatory performance and auditory perceptual performance that would allow children to understand their own developing phonological forms. The auditory feedback loop theory requires simultaneous monitoring of the acoustic consequences of articulatory movements which must be compared with the appropriate adult form. The prosodic theory states that a child’s articulatory performance is equivalent to his perception and discrimination of adult forms. Smith found that the subject of his case study could understand both imitations and tape recordings of his own phonological forms; although his understanding was reluctant and he was aware of his inability to pronounce the word correctly (Morton and Smith, 1974). There is some evidence that expressive and receptive processes are separate and that they develop differentially. Research on infant speech perception shows that infants can discriminate contrasts which they cannot produce (Morse, 1974). Jakobson (1964) describing the phonemic typology of aphasics pointed out that “efferent aphasia” led to difficulties in using phoneme clusters, constructing syllables, and in making the transition from phoneme to phoneme, whereas ‘%ensory
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
I 66
B. DODD
aphasia” led to an inability to utilize certain phonemic constituents. Aphasia, then, can result in loss or impairment of either predominantly expressive or predominantly receptive phonemic functions. Guess (1969) demonstrated that retarded children, when taught a grammatical rule receptively, could not use that rule expressively, and vice versa. H e presented this evidence in support of the “possibility that receptive language and productive speech may be dissociated from one another”. Smith(1973) gives an example of an incorrect phonological form used by his son that could not be an imitation of a heard adult form. When pluralizing cloth (pronounced [kht]) he produced [kbt~d],presumably an attempt at cloth-es, not the accepted cloths. Smith describes several other phenomena (e.g. restructuring, puzzle phenomena) concerning the relationship between perception and production, and concluded that when a child begins to speak he uses the adult surface phonemic system as an input to his phonological system. T h e following experiments were carried out to examine the link between articulatory and auditory perceptual performance in terms of developmental phonology, and to test Smith’s (1973) conclusion that children internalize the adult phonological form.
Experiment I Subjects
There were 14 subjects, 10 males and 4 females. T h e mean age was 3 years 2 months, with a standard deviation of 8 months and a range from z years 3 months to 4 years 7 months. All children lived in inner London, none were attending school. English was the native language of all subjects; one subject had some receptive knowledge of Hindi. Procedure All subjects were seen twice. Both sessions were conducted in a sound-proof room. Session one consisted of a pretest, in which each child’s ability to understand and respond to a tape-recorded voice was tested by asking him to point to pictures named by a taped adult voice. Subjects were then asked to name coloured pictures of familiar objects shown on 10 X 10cm flash cards. Twelve pictures which elicited consistent articulation errors were selected (for types of errors made see Table I). The consistent nature of the articulation errors made by each subject was determined by selecting all those pictures which had elicited an articulatory error on their first presentation, and asking each subject to name
TABLE I Frequency of different types of articulation errors Type Consonant substitution Omission of a consonant Substitution of a vowel Omission of an unstressed or initial syllable Intruding sounds
Frequency 90 71
8 I9 9
Example [dzml forjum [ne~k]for snake [su:lza] for soldier [lu:n] for balloon [dgiraeft] for girufs.
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
UNDERSTANDING OF PHONOLOGICAL FORMS
167
them a second time. A third example of each child’s articulation of the selected 12 words was gained when the subject’s naming of these pictures was recorded on a Uher Royal stereophonic tape recorder. Later, each subject’s tape was edited to leave 10easily audible “test words”. The 10words on each subject’s tape varied, but were drawn from a total of 40 different words. Following each subject’s naming of the 10test words, a female adult recorded the same 10 words using correct articulation patterns. Session z occurred between 4 and 7 days after the first session. Subjects were told that they would hear a girl/boy saying the name of one of the pictures placed in front of them. For each trial four pictures were placed on a table side by side in front of the subject. There was the picture which had elicited the test word, a picture whose name rhymed with the adult form of the test word, and two other pictures whose names were of the same number of syllables as the test word (e.g. snake, cake, hat, boat). The position of the picture corresponding to the test word was randomized. Before each of the 10trials, the children were given the instruction: “Show me the picture (s)he says”. The child’s previously recorded response to the test stimulus was then played to him. If there was no response the word was played a second and a third time, accompanied by a repeated instruction. If there was still no response the trial was counted as an error. After 10trials using the subject’s own naming as stimuli, the test procedure was repeated using the taped adult voice naming the same pictures. The subjects’ understanding of their own naming was tested first in all cases, since a pilot study had indicated that subjects would have no difficulty understanding the adult naming, and they might rely on memory, if they realized the same picture were being named in both conditions.
Results Subjects made significantly more errors in identifying pictures named by themselves, than in identifying pictures named by an unfamiliar adult (see Table 11). TABLE I1 Error scores of subjects’ understanding of pre-taped stimuli of own and adult speech Subjects’ own speech Mean errors Range IL
5286* 3-9 errors
Adult speech 0.571 0-2
errors
U = o P < 0.001. Max. no. errors possible = 10.
T h e 74 errors made in response to the subjects’ own naming as stimuli consisted of the following types : 10refusals
to respond; 9 trials where subjects insisted that the word spoken was not represented by any of the pictures (e.g. the child’s deviant form for skipping was [ k ~ p ~;kwhen ] this was presented as a stimulus the child’s response was to ask “Where’s the picture of the cuckoo?” She apparently interpreted her own deviant form as meaning cucboo) ; 27 trials where subjects chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word; 28 trials where subjects chose either of the other two pictures.
I 68
B. DODD
The 8 errors in response to the adult naming as stimuli consisted of the following types : refusals to respond ; trials where subjects insisted that the word spoken was not represented by any of the pictures; 3 trials where subjects chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word ; I trial where a subject chose either of the other two pictures.
2 2
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
Experiment XI The problem arising from the results of the first experiment was why subjects could understand tape recordings of an unfamiliar adult’s speech better than they could understand their own recorded speech. When subjects made an error in response to recordings of their own speech, they frequently chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word; perhaps the subjects were using some of the acoustic features of the mispronounced forms in making a response. That is, when the deviant phonological forms produced by the subjects shared enough common acoustic features with the adult form, they could be recognized. If this were true, another group of children, tested on the same recordings as those used in Experiment I, should have an error pattern similar to children already tested on recordings of their own speech. Then, those words which both groups of children could not understand should be less similar to the adult form, and therefore have more articulatory errors per syllable, than those words which both of groups children could identify correctly.
Subjects Fourteen subjects were chosen randomly in a nursery class in inner London. They were aged between 3 years o months and 4 years 9 months. All used English as their native language.
Procedure The test procedure was followed as described in session two of Experiment I ; with the exception that the subjects were tested in a quiet room in the school building. The stimuli were the recordings of the test words produced by children who took part in Experiment I, and the correct rendering of the same words by an adult. Thus each child in Experiment I1 was tested on 20 words, 10from one of the children in the previous experiment, and the same 10words pronounced correctly by an adult.
Results Subjects made significantly more errors in identifying pictures named by children who took part in Experiment I, than they did in identifying pictures named by an unfamiliar adult (see Table 111).
UNDERSTANDING OF PHONOLOGICAL FORMS
169
TABLE 111 Error scores for childrens' understanding of other childrens' and adult speech Childrens' speech Mean errors Range
* U = z P
ISSN: 0033-555X (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pqje19
Children's understanding of their own phonological forms Barbara Dodd To cite this article: Barbara Dodd (1975) Children's understanding of their own phonological forms, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27:2, 165-172, DOI: 10.1080/14640747508400477 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640747508400477
Published online: 29 May 2007.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 41
View related articles
Citing articles: 14 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=pqje19 Download by: [University of Florida]
Date: 05 November 2015, At: 13:49
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (1975) 27, 165-172
CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR OWN PHONOLOGICAL FORMS BARBARA DODD
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
MRC Developmental Psychology Unit,Drayton House, Gordon Street, London WCI , U.K. The ability of young children to understand their own and other children’sdeviant phonological forms was tested. Children were better at understanding an unfamiliar adult’s speech than they were at understanding their own or other childrens’speech. Their understanding was found to be related to the degree to which the deviant speech resembled the adult phonological form. It was concluded that children do not store their own deviant phonological forms for recognition in the same way that they store adult forms.
Introduction Theories of phonological acquisition often assume a link between articulatory performance and auditory perceptual performance (Pollack and Rees, 1972). One theory holds that an auditory feedback loop, established during babbling activity, allows children to modify their articulatory movements to more closely approximate the adult forms, through repeated imitation and continuous practice (Fry, 1966). I n contrast, Waterson (1971) suggested that a child reproduces only those sounds which he “perceives as clearest out of the whole utterance and which he recognizes as functional”. Both hypotheses necessitate a link between articulatory performance and auditory perceptual performance that would allow children to understand their own developing phonological forms. The auditory feedback loop theory requires simultaneous monitoring of the acoustic consequences of articulatory movements which must be compared with the appropriate adult form. The prosodic theory states that a child’s articulatory performance is equivalent to his perception and discrimination of adult forms. Smith found that the subject of his case study could understand both imitations and tape recordings of his own phonological forms; although his understanding was reluctant and he was aware of his inability to pronounce the word correctly (Morton and Smith, 1974). There is some evidence that expressive and receptive processes are separate and that they develop differentially. Research on infant speech perception shows that infants can discriminate contrasts which they cannot produce (Morse, 1974). Jakobson (1964) describing the phonemic typology of aphasics pointed out that “efferent aphasia” led to difficulties in using phoneme clusters, constructing syllables, and in making the transition from phoneme to phoneme, whereas ‘%ensory
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
I 66
B. DODD
aphasia” led to an inability to utilize certain phonemic constituents. Aphasia, then, can result in loss or impairment of either predominantly expressive or predominantly receptive phonemic functions. Guess (1969) demonstrated that retarded children, when taught a grammatical rule receptively, could not use that rule expressively, and vice versa. H e presented this evidence in support of the “possibility that receptive language and productive speech may be dissociated from one another”. Smith(1973) gives an example of an incorrect phonological form used by his son that could not be an imitation of a heard adult form. When pluralizing cloth (pronounced [kht]) he produced [kbt~d],presumably an attempt at cloth-es, not the accepted cloths. Smith describes several other phenomena (e.g. restructuring, puzzle phenomena) concerning the relationship between perception and production, and concluded that when a child begins to speak he uses the adult surface phonemic system as an input to his phonological system. T h e following experiments were carried out to examine the link between articulatory and auditory perceptual performance in terms of developmental phonology, and to test Smith’s (1973) conclusion that children internalize the adult phonological form.
Experiment I Subjects
There were 14 subjects, 10 males and 4 females. T h e mean age was 3 years 2 months, with a standard deviation of 8 months and a range from z years 3 months to 4 years 7 months. All children lived in inner London, none were attending school. English was the native language of all subjects; one subject had some receptive knowledge of Hindi. Procedure All subjects were seen twice. Both sessions were conducted in a sound-proof room. Session one consisted of a pretest, in which each child’s ability to understand and respond to a tape-recorded voice was tested by asking him to point to pictures named by a taped adult voice. Subjects were then asked to name coloured pictures of familiar objects shown on 10 X 10cm flash cards. Twelve pictures which elicited consistent articulation errors were selected (for types of errors made see Table I). The consistent nature of the articulation errors made by each subject was determined by selecting all those pictures which had elicited an articulatory error on their first presentation, and asking each subject to name
TABLE I Frequency of different types of articulation errors Type Consonant substitution Omission of a consonant Substitution of a vowel Omission of an unstressed or initial syllable Intruding sounds
Frequency 90 71
8 I9 9
Example [dzml forjum [ne~k]for snake [su:lza] for soldier [lu:n] for balloon [dgiraeft] for girufs.
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
UNDERSTANDING OF PHONOLOGICAL FORMS
167
them a second time. A third example of each child’s articulation of the selected 12 words was gained when the subject’s naming of these pictures was recorded on a Uher Royal stereophonic tape recorder. Later, each subject’s tape was edited to leave 10easily audible “test words”. The 10words on each subject’s tape varied, but were drawn from a total of 40 different words. Following each subject’s naming of the 10test words, a female adult recorded the same 10 words using correct articulation patterns. Session z occurred between 4 and 7 days after the first session. Subjects were told that they would hear a girl/boy saying the name of one of the pictures placed in front of them. For each trial four pictures were placed on a table side by side in front of the subject. There was the picture which had elicited the test word, a picture whose name rhymed with the adult form of the test word, and two other pictures whose names were of the same number of syllables as the test word (e.g. snake, cake, hat, boat). The position of the picture corresponding to the test word was randomized. Before each of the 10trials, the children were given the instruction: “Show me the picture (s)he says”. The child’s previously recorded response to the test stimulus was then played to him. If there was no response the word was played a second and a third time, accompanied by a repeated instruction. If there was still no response the trial was counted as an error. After 10trials using the subject’s own naming as stimuli, the test procedure was repeated using the taped adult voice naming the same pictures. The subjects’ understanding of their own naming was tested first in all cases, since a pilot study had indicated that subjects would have no difficulty understanding the adult naming, and they might rely on memory, if they realized the same picture were being named in both conditions.
Results Subjects made significantly more errors in identifying pictures named by themselves, than in identifying pictures named by an unfamiliar adult (see Table 11). TABLE I1 Error scores of subjects’ understanding of pre-taped stimuli of own and adult speech Subjects’ own speech Mean errors Range IL
5286* 3-9 errors
Adult speech 0.571 0-2
errors
U = o P < 0.001. Max. no. errors possible = 10.
T h e 74 errors made in response to the subjects’ own naming as stimuli consisted of the following types : 10refusals
to respond; 9 trials where subjects insisted that the word spoken was not represented by any of the pictures (e.g. the child’s deviant form for skipping was [ k ~ p ~;kwhen ] this was presented as a stimulus the child’s response was to ask “Where’s the picture of the cuckoo?” She apparently interpreted her own deviant form as meaning cucboo) ; 27 trials where subjects chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word; 28 trials where subjects chose either of the other two pictures.
I 68
B. DODD
The 8 errors in response to the adult naming as stimuli consisted of the following types : refusals to respond ; trials where subjects insisted that the word spoken was not represented by any of the pictures; 3 trials where subjects chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word ; I trial where a subject chose either of the other two pictures.
2 2
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 13:49 05 November 2015
Experiment XI The problem arising from the results of the first experiment was why subjects could understand tape recordings of an unfamiliar adult’s speech better than they could understand their own recorded speech. When subjects made an error in response to recordings of their own speech, they frequently chose the picture whose name rhymed with the test word; perhaps the subjects were using some of the acoustic features of the mispronounced forms in making a response. That is, when the deviant phonological forms produced by the subjects shared enough common acoustic features with the adult form, they could be recognized. If this were true, another group of children, tested on the same recordings as those used in Experiment I, should have an error pattern similar to children already tested on recordings of their own speech. Then, those words which both groups of children could not understand should be less similar to the adult form, and therefore have more articulatory errors per syllable, than those words which both of groups children could identify correctly.
Subjects Fourteen subjects were chosen randomly in a nursery class in inner London. They were aged between 3 years o months and 4 years 9 months. All used English as their native language.
Procedure The test procedure was followed as described in session two of Experiment I ; with the exception that the subjects were tested in a quiet room in the school building. The stimuli were the recordings of the test words produced by children who took part in Experiment I, and the correct rendering of the same words by an adult. Thus each child in Experiment I1 was tested on 20 words, 10from one of the children in the previous experiment, and the same 10words pronounced correctly by an adult.
Results Subjects made significantly more errors in identifying pictures named by children who took part in Experiment I, than they did in identifying pictures named by an unfamiliar adult (see Table 111).
UNDERSTANDING OF PHONOLOGICAL FORMS
169
TABLE 111 Error scores for childrens' understanding of other childrens' and adult speech Childrens' speech Mean errors Range
* U = z P
