The Effect of Sampling Condition on Children’s Productions of Consonant Clusters

An investigation was conducted to compare the effects of single word and connected speech sampling conditions on the production of consonant clusters. Speech samples were obtained from 40 children with speech sound impairments who were aged 3 years: 6 months to 5 years. The children's productions of 36 commonly occurring consonant clusters were compared across the two sampling conditions. Overall children's productions were more similar than different. Differences between the sampling conditions were apparent for three of the eight phonological processes studied, namely, cluster reduction, final consonant deletion, and epenthesis. Of 12 fine phonetic variations, only aspirated stops showed a significant difference between the sampling conditions. There was a wide range of individual variation.