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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Articulation disorders in children; Speech disorders in children;

Abstract

This investigation was concerned with the generalization which occurred from trained to untrained phonemes in which the process of stopping was operating. Two male subjects aged 5-3 and 4-0, who used the process of stopping, were chosen for this study on the basis of an examination of their articulation errors and the results of ten 15- word deep tests. A 48-item probe test, to assess the frequency of stopping for selected phonemes, was administered three times to establish baseline. Syllable practice was then conducted with four phonemes for each subject alternating between practice on a single phoneme and practice on three phonemes. Subject A was trained with the phonemes /f/, /d3/, and /-/ for three 100-response sessions in Phase 1. Next the phoneme /s/ was trained for three 100 response sessions. At this time a replication of the first and second phases, Phases 3 and 4, was undertaken. The order of training for Subject B counterbalanced that of Subject A with the single phoneme /n/ targeted for syllable practice in Phases 1 and 3 and the phonemes /v/, /8/, and /m/ targeted in Phases 2 and 4. Hospitalization of the investigator forced a two-week hiatus in training. This hiatus required a modification in training following two of the three scheduled sessions in Phase 3. The probe test was readministered after the two-week hiatus, and it was observed that for one of the subjects a return toward baseline levels was recorded. Due to the return, training was reinitiated with three sessions in the Phase 3 condition known as Phase 3 1 • Following each session, the 48-item probe test was administered to probe for generalization from the trained syllables to untrained words for both trained and untrained phonemes. Different results were recorded for the two subjects. The overall results from Subject A indicated a reduction in stopping of 24% on the trained phonemes and a reduction of stopping of 36% on the untrained phonemes. For Subject Ba 4% reduction for the trained phonemes and no change for the untrained phonemes were recorded. The degree of generalization for Subject A varied across phonemes when the percentage of reduction in stopping was examined. Subjects' characteristics, stimulability, length of training phases, and stimulus items were all thought to have influenced the results of this investigation. While the results recorded for one subject indicated that not all phonemes which reflect an error p:ittern need to be trained to remediate an error pattern, the results from the other subject did not confirm these findings. Further research in the area of phoneme generalization is recommended to determine the efficiency of the single- and multi-phonemic approaches for articulation remediation.

Year of Submission

1982

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Communicative Disorders

First Advisor

John Bernthal

Second Advisor

Clifford Highnam

Third Advisor

Marlene Strathe

Comments

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Date Original

1982

Object Description

1 PDF file (84 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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