Abstract
Imitative performance on an assembly task consisting of six sentences, four to nine words in length, in which words in the sentences were separated by one of four conditions of pause-time (silent intervals of 125, 250, 500, and 750 msec), was compared to performance on the same six sentences spoken normally (N). Tape recordings of these five conditions were played to 75 preschool children instructed to repeat them. Results suggest that insertion of silent intervals in sentences does not overwhelm the child’s perceptual mechanism. Children are able to encode the disrupted stimulus with normal intonation prosodic patterns. Error patterns vary regularly with sentence length and lexical item-type in normal and interrupted sentences. Segmented sentences, as he perceives and reproduces them, do reflect upon a child’s knowledge of grammar. Silent intervals do make echoic behavior more difficult.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
