PHONEME--SOUND GENERALIZATION AS A FUNCTION OF PHONEME SIMILARITY AND VERBAL UNIT OF TEST AND TRAINING STIMULI.

Abstract

Phoneme generalization as a function of phoneme similarity and the verbal unit in which the phonemes appeared was investigated. Subjects were children from the first and second grades. For all ten pretraining trials correct responses were reinforced. The test trial was presented on the eleventh trial. For all conditions the test and training stimuli were presented as part of a syllable and in some cases the syllables were words. Test and training stimuli were formed by altering the initial consonant of the syllables. For all conditions the training stimuli were either /c/ or /θ/ and the test stimuli were one of the following: /t∫/, /s/, /θ/, and /t/. The results indicated that stimulus generalization occurred with the test stimuli /t∫/ and /s/. The verbal unit of the test and training stimuli was found to influence generalization, although the findings were not consistent for the experimental sounds employed in the present study. It was also found that stimulus generalization can, for the most part, be maintained with reinforcement.