General language deficits in children with articulation problems.

Abstract

Sixteen 7 year-old children with normal articulation, and sixteen 7 year-old children with defective articulation were compared as to their performance on series of language tests designed to assess the child's knowledge of form class, sentence structure, and phonological composition in English. Results showed that children in the defective articulation group gave significantly fewer paradigmatic responses in a word-association test, were less able to discriminate possible from impossible phoneme sequences in English, and were able to repeat fewer sentences correctly than children in the normal articulation group. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for present articulation therapy, which stresses the production of individual sounds and often provides little or no remedial experience in the wider aspects of language usage such as would seem required by results of the present study.