Production of linguistic prosody by normal and speech-disordered children

Abstract

Features associated with the production of linguistic prosody were investigated in seven speech-disordered children and seven children with age-appropriate speech abilities. All subjects were required to imitate 40 stimuli containing either a rising or falling terminal contour. Half of the stimuli were meaningful sentences whereas the other half were nonmeaningful repetitions of a single syllable. Both types of stimuli were produced with the same suprasegmental features. Acoustic analyses were used to measure a variety of prosodic features associated with the intonation ( Fo) and timing characteristics of the imitated stimuli. The primary differences between the two groups of children focused on timing characteristics of the imitated responses. Differences in ( Fo) characteristics also were identified, but in some instances interacted with timing deviations. Results are discussed in reference to potential physiologic and/or linguistic processes that might contribute to dysprosody in speech-disordered children.