Monitoring and Reinforcement by Parents as a Means of Automating Articulatory Responses: II. Study of Preschool Children

Abstract

To establish articulatory responses on an automatic level 10 preschool children between 4 and 6 yr. of age were given training in production of a training sound out of context and in a set of 10 words. The mother of each child was oriented to a home program by means of a video tape that demonstrated activities to be employed. An audio tape was used to orient the mothers to the identification and evaluation of speech sounds. During the first wk. of home training, each mother was to evaluate her child's articulation of a training sound in an imitative word drill situation and in elicited conversation. Candy or stickers were given to the children for correct responses. During the remaining 4 wk., each mother was to monitor daily her child's spontaneous speech and to evaluate 30 conversational productions of the training sound. Correct responses were rewarded. When an incorrect response was produced, the mother was to have the child imitate the word after her. Each mother kept a record of how many of the 30 responses were correctly articulated each day. That record plus the children's scores on sound-production tasks and talking-tasks constituted the data for analysis. For the group, sound-production task and talking-task measures obtained after training reflected better articulation than did pretreatment scores. Greater gains were made on sounds taught than on other sounds misarticulated by some of the children. Records accumulated by five of the parents also indicated improved articulation.