Perception of Voiceless Fricatives by Children with a Functional Articulation Disorder

The two studies presented here examine the relationship between speech perception and speech production errors in children who have a functional articulation disorder. In both experiments, speech perception was assessed with a word identification test, based upon a synthesized continuum of speech stimuli, contrasting the specific phonemes that were associated with production errors in our sample of articulation-disordered subjects. Experiment 1 required subjects to identify words that contrasted the phonemes /s/ and /S/. In this test, adults, normal speaking 5-year-olds, and some articulation-disordered 5-year-olds identified the words seat and sheet appropriately and reliably. However, a subgroup of articulation-disordered children were unable to identify the test stimuli appropriately. Experiment 2 required a second group of subjects to identify words that contrasted the phonemes /s/ and /theta/. Although both adults and normal speaking children responded appropriately to the words sick and thick, in this test, none of the articulation-disordered children was able to identify these words appropriately. It is concluded that, for a subgroup of children who have a functional articulation disorder, production errors may reflect speech perception errors.