Speech motor coordination in children with phonological disorders.

Abstract

This study examined the question of whether children with phonological disorders have problems in speech motor coordination. Four children with phonological disorders, four typically developing children matched for age and gender, and four adults were asked to say multiple repetitions of ‘‘bad dog’’ at normal and fast rates of speech. The productions were digitized and formant tracks were obtained using LPC analysis. Standard deviations were calculated over the second‐formant values frame by frame along the four 50‐ms spans of the CV and VC transitions. The F2 tracks of the adults were much less variable than those of both groups of children. The F2 tracks of the phonologically disordered children were more variable than those of their typical age peers for three of the four transitions; however, the F2 tracks of the phonologically disordered children were less variable than their age peers for the initial ‘‘ba’’ transition, the only transition in which the tongue was not involved in both the consonant and the vowel articulation. This result suggests that children with phonological disorders may have difficulty in rapidly sequencing gestures that involve conflicting configurations for the same articulator.