Spontaneous and Imitated Responses in Articulation Testing

Summary This paper represents a renewed investigation into the question of spontaneous and imitated responses in articulation testing. It first reviews the work done in this field in a critical manner, thereby forming the basis of a new experimental design. The subjects of the experiment were children in the reception classes of two Bolton infant schools. Apart from comparing the two modes of testing, other interactions were also investigated, namely sex, age (c. 4;.9 versus c. 5;.9), and order of testing. The test used was the Edinburgh Articulation Test. This experiment differs from all its predecessors in that it involves British children and a British test: to the best of our knowledge this is the first time this has been done. The results suggested that there is a significant difference between the two modes, that older children perform better on both modes when given the imitation test first, and that girls of this age are overall slightly better articulators than boys. We conclude that elicitation of responses by imitation should be avoided if at all possible.