How to meet the neighbors: Modality effects on phonological generalization

Abstract

Long-term auditory priming of words from dense neighborhoods has been posited as a learning mechanism that affects change in the phonological structure of children's lexical representations. An apparent confound associated with the modality of priming responsible for structural change has been introduced in the literature, which challenges this proposal. Thus, our purpose was to evaluate prime modality in the treatment of children with phonological delay. Nine children were assigned to auditory–visual, auditory, or visual priming of words from dense neighborhoods prior to the treatment of production as the independent variable. The dependent variable was phonological generalization. Results showed that auditory priming (with or without visual input) promoted greater generalization on an order of magnitude of 3:1. Findings support the theoretical significance of auditory priming for phonological learning and demonstrate the applied utility of priming in clinical treatment.