Children's Speech Acquisition Research Articles

Phonological acquisition in Vietnamese-speaking children with central dialect

ABSTRACTThe current study investigated the phonological development in 3 to 7-year-old Vietnamese-speaking children with central dialect. Previous studies of speech development in Vietnamese-speaking children have focused on northern and southern dialects. The central Vietnamese dialect has distinct dialectal features. Therefore, it is essential to examine speech acquisition in children with central dialect to diagnose speech sound disorders accurately. Speech samples were collected from 80 children. Two native Vietnamese speakers transcribed children's speech productions independently using IPA symbols. The percentage of consonants correct, the percentage of initial consonants correct, the percentage of final consonants correct, the percentage of semivowels correct, and the percentage of vowels correct were calculated for age and sex groups. Ages of acquisition of individual consonants and phonological patterns were also identified. Overall, central Vietnamese-speaking children showed similar speech acquisition patterns compared to children with northern and southern Vietnamese dialects and other languages (e.g., vowels and semivowels were acquired early, and bilabials were acquired earlier than retroflex sounds). However, several differences from other dialects were also found in the age of acquisition for individual consonants (e.g., initial consonants /v/, /c/ and final consonants /k/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/). Central Vietnamese-speaking children produced initial /b/, /j/, /s/, /r/ and final /k/, /ŋ/ as dialectal variants for initial /p/, /z/, /ʂ/, /ʐ/ and final /t/, /n/, respectively. The current study's findings help us obtain a more comprehensive understanding of speech acquisition patterns in Vietnamese children and Vietnamese dialectal variants.

Multilingual Speech Acquisition by Vietnamese-English-Speaking Children and Adult Family Members.

This article presents a large-scale example of culturally responsive assessment and analysis of multilingual Vietnamese-English-speaking children and their family members using the VietSpeech Protocol involving (a) examining all spoken languages, (b) comparing ambient phonology produced by family members, (c) including dialectal variants in the definition of accuracy, and (d) clustering participants with similar language experience. The VietSpeech participants (N = 154) comprised 69 children (2;0-8;10 [years;months]) and 85 adult family members with Vietnamese heritage living in Australia. Speech was sampled using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (Vietnamese) and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (English). Children's Vietnamese consonant accuracy was significantly higher when dialectal variants were accepted (percentage of consonants correct-dialect [PCC-D]: M = 87.76, SD = 8.18), compared to when only Standard Vietnamese was accepted as the correct production (percentage of consonants correct-standard [PCC-S]: M = 70.34, SD = 8.78), Cohen's d = 3.55 (large effect). Vietnamese voiced plosives, nasals, semivowels, vowels, and tones were more often correct than voiceless plosives and fricatives. Children's Standard Australian English consonant accuracy (PCC-S) was 82.51 (SD = 15.57). English plosives, nasals, glides, and vowels were more often correct than fricatives and affricates. Vietnamese word-initial consonants had lower accuracy than word-final consonants, whereas English consonant accuracy was rarely influenced by word position. Consonant accuracy and intelligibility were highest for children with high proficiency in both Vietnamese and English. Children's consonant productions were most similar to their mothers' than other adults or siblings' productions. Adults' Vietnamese consonants, vowels, and tones were more likely to match Vietnamese targets than their children's productions. Children's speech acquisition was influenced by cross-linguistic, dialectal, maturational, language experience, and environmental (ambient phonology) factors. Adults' pronunciation was influenced by dialectal and cross-linguistic factors. This study highlights the importance of including all spoken languages, adult family members, dialectal variants, and language proficiency to inform differential diagnosis of speech sound disorders and identify clinical markers in multilingual populations. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23290055.

LABELS: Laboratoř behaviorálních a lingvistických studií

The Laboratory of Behavioural and Linguistic Studies is a joint project of the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Currently, our laboratory is mainly concerned with vision science, language and speech acquisition in children, language processing in adults and cognition in children and adults in general, but it is also open to to other types of projects.

Connections between Speech Acquisition and the Jazz Language

The jazz language is an important part of an improvising musician's knowledge, and while many jazz educators and performers agree that the jazz language exists, there is little discussion on how and why it is considered a language. The jazz language closely correlates to imitation in speech, especially in speech acquisition in children. Imitation in speech patterns is a part of the learning process and is very similar to the process of obtaining a rich jazz vocabulary. The focus of this review was to compare the process of obtaining a jazz vocabulary with speech acquisition in children and how children learn to speak through imitation. This research also supports the idea that using imitation in jazz, as in spoken language, can successfully facilitate creativity and originality. Understanding the connections between speech acquisition and the jazz language better prepares the music educator to clearly and effectively transfer the musical vocabulary to the student.

Влияние системы альтернативной коммуникации PECS на проявления вокальной речи у детей с аутизмом

This article describes the positive effect of teaching the PECS (Picture exchange communication system) alternative communication system on vocal speech acquisition in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Materials from an empirical study of three children with ASD and other mental disorders aged 2—4 years are presented. Measurements were made of the number of communication initiatives in children, in the form of requests using PECS pictures for three months. As a result of teaching communication using the PECS system, two out of three children had vocalization responses, in the form of words and phrasal speech. All three children demonstrated a decrease in the number of challenging behavior episodes as they learned functional communication. It was found out that learning to ask with the help of PECS has a positive effect on the vocalizations in children with autism and other mental disorders. Children trained to communicate using the PECS alternative communication system demonstrate less challenging behavior, acquire functional communication skills, which, in general, improves the quality of life of the child’s family

Vietnamese-Speaking Children's Acquisition of Consonants, Semivowels, Vowels, and Tones in Northern Viet Nam.

Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of Vietnamese speech sounds. Method Participants were 195 children aged 2;2-5;11 (years;months) living in Northern Viet Nam who spoke Vietnamese as their 1st language. Single-word samples were collected using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (Phạm, Le, & McLeod, 2016) to measure accuracy of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones. Results Percentage of consonants correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 46.39 (SD = 7.95) and increased to 93.13 (SD = 6.13) for children aged 5;6-5;11. The most difficult consonants were /ɲ, s, z, x/. Percentage of semivowels correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 70.74 (SD = 14.38) and increased to 99.60 (SD = 1.55) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Percentage of vowels correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 91.93 (SD = 3.13) and increased to 98.11 (SD = 2.79) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Percentage of tones correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 91.05 (SD = 1.42) and increased to 96.65 (SD = 3.42) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Tones 1, 2, 5, and 6 were acquired by the youngest age group, whereas Tone 3 (creaky thanh ngã) and Tone 4 (dipping-rising thanh hỏi) did not achieve 90% accuracy by the oldest age group. Common phonological patterns (> 10%) were fronting, stopping, deaspiration, aspiration, and semivowel deletion for children aged 2;0-3;11 and were fronting and deaspiration for children aged 4;0-5;11. Conclusion This is the 1st comprehensive study of typically developing Northern Vietnamese children's speech acquisition and provides preliminary data to support the emerging speech-language pathology profession in Viet Nam.

Language Acquisition in the Light of Rationalist Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language

AbstractThe present study deals with the problem of the acquisition of language in children in the light of rationalist philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. The main objective of the paper is to present the way Gerauld de Cordemoy’s views on the nature of language, including its socio-linguistic aspects, and on the process of speech acquisition in children are reflected in contemporary writings on how people communicate with each other. Reflections on 17th-century rationalist philosophy of mind and the latest research conducted within the field of cognitive abilities of human beings indicate that between those two spheres many similarities could be discerned in terms of particular stages of the development of speech and its physical aspects.

Influence of consonant frequency on Icelandic-speaking children's speech acquisition

Purpose: A developmental hierarchy of phonetic feature complexity has been proposed, suggesting that later emerging sounds have greater articulatory complexity than those learned earlier. The aim of this research was to explore this hierarchy in a relatively unexplored language, Icelandic.Method: Twenty-eight typically-developing Icelandic-speaking children were tested at 2;4 and 3;4 years. Word-initial and word-medial phonemic inventories and a phonemic implicational hierarchy are described.Result: The frequency of occurrence of Icelandic consonants in the speech of 2;4 and 3;4 year old children was, from most to least frequent, n, s, t, p, r, m, l, k, f, ʋ, j, ɵ, h, kʰ, c, , ɰ, pʰ, tʰ, cʰ, ç, , , .Conclusion: Consonant frequency was a strong predictor of consonant accuracy at 2;4 months (r(23) = −0.75), but the effect was weaker at 3;4 months (r(23) = −0.51). Acquisition of /c/, // and /l/ occurred earlier, relative to English, Swedish, Dutch and German. A frequency-bound practice effect on emerging consonants is proposed to account for the early emergence of /c/, // and /l/ in Icelandic.

Novelty and social preference in phonetic accommodation

AbstractPhonetic imitation is the unintentional, spontaneous acquisition of speech characteristics of another talker. Previous work has shown that imitation is strongly moderated by social preference in adults, and that social preference affects children's speech acquisition within peer groups. Such findings have led to the suggestion that phonetic imitation is related to larger processes of sound change in a change-by-accommodation model. This study examines how preferential processing of particular voice types affects spontaneous phonetic accommodation, interpreting the results in the context of how sound change can be propagated through a speech community. To explore this question eight model talkers previously rated as attractive, unattractive, typical, and atypical for each gender were used in an auditory naming paradigm. Twenty participants completed the task, and an AXB measure was used to quantify imitation. Female participants imitated more than male participants, but this varied across model voices. Females were found to rely more on social preference than men, while both groups imitated the atypical voices. The results suggest that females adapt their speech to auditory input more readily, but the nature of the accommodation does not qualify as direct evidence for a change-by-accommodation model given the constrained context of the task.

The impact of extrinsic demographic factors on Cantonese speech acquisition

This study modeled the associations between extrinsic demographic factors and children's speech acquisition in Hong Kong Cantonese. The speech of 937 Cantonese-speaking children aged 2;4 to 6;7 in Hong Kong was assessed using a standardized speech test. Demographic information regarding household income, paternal education, maternal education, presence of siblings and having a domestic helper as the main caregiver was collected via parent questionnaires. After controlling for age and sex, higher maternal education and higher household income were significantly associated with better speech skills; however, these variables explained a negligible amount of variance. Paternal education, number of siblings and having a foreign domestic helper did not associate with a child's speech acquisition. Extrinsic factors only exerted minimal influence on children's speech acquisition. A large amount of unexplained variance in speech ability still warrants further research.

Acquisition of /s/ clusters in English-speaking children with phonological disorders

Two member onset consonant clusters with /s/ as the first member (#sC onsets) behave differently from other double onset consonant clusters in English. Phonological explanations of children's consonant cluster production have been posited to predict children's speech acquisition. The aim of this study was to consider the role of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), homorganicity, headedness, and factorial typology in the explanation of productions of consonant clusters by children with phonological disorders. Thirty monolingual English-speaking children with phonological disorders produced words commencing with #sC: /s/+stop (/sT/), /s/+nasal (/sN/), /sl/, and /sw/. There was wide individual variation between participants. Overall, there was an increase in accuracy of consonant cluster production as the sonority indices of the second element of the cluster increased: there was significantly greater accuracy of /sl/ than /sN/ and significantly greater accuracy of /sN/ than /sT/. However, /sw/ targets only followed the SSP for phonologically accurate (but not phonetically accurate) productions. Correct renditions justified the binary grouping of the SSP-following vs SSP-violating separation. Homorganicity of the cluster was not a factor in determining relative accuracy of the targets. The percentage of correct renditions justified the /s/+[−continuant] vs /s/+[+continuant] binary separation. There were several counterexamples of predictions of the headedness approach. Thus, sonority and factorial typology were found to be useful in predicting /s/ consonant cluster acquisition of children with phonological disorders.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Seizures, and Childhood Apraxia of Speech

Associations between obstructive sleep apnea and motor speech disorders in adults have been suggested, though little has been written about possible effects of sleep apnea on speech acquisition in children with motor speech disorders. This report details the medical and speech history of a nonverbal child with seizures and severe apraxia of speech. For 6 years, he made no functional gains in speech production, despite intensive speech therapy. After tonsillectomy for obstructive sleep apnea at age 6 years, he experienced a reduction in seizures and rapid growth in speech production. The findings support a relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and childhood apraxia of speech. The rather late diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea, especially in light of what was such a life-altering outcome (gaining functional speech), has significant implications. Most speech sounds develop during ages 2-5 years, which is also the peak time of occurrence of adenotonsillar hypertrophy and childhood obstructive sleep apnea. Hence it is important to establish definitive diagnoses, and to consider early and more aggressive treatments for obstructive sleep apnea, in children with motor speech disorders.

Intensive dynamic temporal and tactile cueing appears effective for treating some children with severe childhood apraxia of speech1

Does intensive dynamic temporal and tactile cueing treatment facilitate early speech acquisition in children with severe childhood apraxia of speech? 1 Abstracted from: Strand, E. Stoeckel, R., & B...

Are oral-motor exercises useful in the treatment of phonological/articulatory disorders?

The utility of oral-motor exercises in the remediation of children's speech acquisition delays continues to be a controversial issue. There are few empirical evaluations of the efficacy of these nonspeech activities in effecting speech changes, although much can be learned from investigations in related fields. The purpose of this article is to review the extant studies of the relation between oral-motor exercises and speech production in children as well as to examine the motor learning literature to gain a broader perspective on the issue. Results of this examination lead to questions about the procedures that are currently applied as well as to suggestions for future development of nonspeech activities in the treatment of children's phonological/articulatory disorders.

Metaphors in Children's Speech Acquisition

Metaphors in Children's Speech Acquisition