Bye-Bye Bunny: Place and Manner Sequences in Children's CVCV-Shaped Words.

Purpose: Place and manner of articulation in American English-learning children's salient consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) target words (e.g., , , and ) were compared with their actual productions of these words.

The development of tonal duration in Mandarin-speaking children.

Developmental changes in suprasegmental tonal duration were investigated in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children. Tone durations were acoustically measured in five- and eight-year-old children and adults. Children's tone duration and variability decreased with age.

Relationship between the target word form and children's productions: place of articulation in Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words in American English.

The aim of the present study was to investigate relationships between characteristics of children's target words and their actual productions during the single-word period in American English. Word productions in spontaneous and functional speech from 18 children acquiring American English were analyzed. Consonant sequences in 3,328 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) target words were analyzed in terms of global place of articulation (labials, coronals, and dorsals).

Vowel Context Effects on Consonant Repetition in Early Words.

Purpose Consonant repetitions within words are a well-attested speech error pattern in children's early speech acquisition. We investigated the role of intervening vowel context in understanding speech forms containing consonant repetitions in early words. Intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) forms containing consonant repetitions were analyzed to evaluate whether children's lack of independent movement control for the tongue in word-level sequences might contribute to these observed speech patterns.

Non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in English target words during the first-word period.

The goal of this study was to investigate non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In the spontaneous speech of eighteen participants, target words with a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C1VC2) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into nine types, categorized by place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal) of initial and final consonants (e.

A phonetic approach to consonant repetition in early words.

The goal of this study was to evaluate movement-based principles for understanding early speech output patterns. Consonant repetition patterns within children's actual productions of word forms were analyzed using spontaneous speech data from 10 typically developing American-English learning children between 12 and 36 months of age. Place of articulation, word level patterns, and developmental trends in CVC and CVCV repeated word forms were evaluated.

Increasing social interaction using prelinguistic milieu teaching with nonverbal school-age children with autism.

Purpose: Children with autism display marked deficits in initiating and maintaining social interaction. Intervention using play routines can create a framework for developing and maintaining social interaction between these children and their communication partners.

Method: Six nonverbal 5- to 8-year-olds with autism were taught to engage in social interaction within salient play routines.

The influence of phonetic complexity on stuttered speech.

The primary purpose of this study was to re-examine the influence of phonetic complexity on stuttering in young children through the use of the Word Complexity Measure (WCM). Parent-child conversations were transcribed for 14 children who stutter (mean age = 3 years, 7 months; SD = 11.20 months).

Accuracy of consonant-vowel syllables in young cochlear implant recipients and hearing children in the single-word period.

Purpose: Attaining speech accuracy requires that children perceive and attach meanings to vocal output on the basis of production system capacities. Because auditory perception underlies speech accuracy, profiles for children with hearing loss (HL) differ from those of children with normal hearing (NH).

Method: To understand the impact of auditory history on emergence of speech capacities, the authors compared consonant-vowel (CV) syllable accuracy in early words in 4 NH children and 4 children with HL who received cochlear implantation (CI) before age 2 years.

Producing American English vowels during vocal tract growth: a perceptual categorization study of synthesized vowels.

Purpose: To consider interactions of vocal tract change with growth and perceived output patterns across development, the influence of nonuniform vocal tract growth on the ability to reach acoustic-perceptual targets for English vowels was studied.

Method: Thirty-seven American English speakers participated in a perceptual categorization experiment. For the experiment, an articulatory-to-acoustic model was used to synthesize 342 five-formant vowels, covering maximal vowel spaces for speakers at 5 growth stages (from 6 months old to adult).

Segmental distribution patterns of English infant- and adult-directed speech.

This study compared segmental distribution patterns for consonants and vowels in English infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). A previous study of Korean indicated that segmental patterns of IDS differed from ADS patterns (Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008). The aim of the current study was to determine whether such differences in Korean are universal or language-specific.

The emergence of segmental accuracy in young cochlear implant recipients.

In the first steps toward intelligible speech, children must match sounds they can produce with salient word targets from their environment. Differences in auditory history between normal-hearing children (NH) and children receiving cochlear implants (CI) before the age of 24 months afford examination of the production system and auditory perceptual effects on the emergence of early segmental accuracy. Consonant and vowel inventories, accuracy and error patterns during the single-word period were examined in four NH and four CI children.

English speech sound development in preschool-aged children from bilingual English-Spanish environments.

Purpose: English speech acquisition by typically developing 3- to 4-year-old children with monolingual English was compared to English speech acquisition by typically developing 3- to 4-year-old children with bilingual English-Spanish backgrounds. We predicted that exposure to Spanish would not affect the English phonetic inventory but would increase error frequency and type in bilingual children.

Method: Single-word speech samples were collected from 33 children.

Segmental properties of input to infants: a study of Korean.

Segmental distributions of Korean infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared. Significant differences were found in both consonant and vowel patterns. Korean-speaking mothers using IDS displayed more frequent labial consonantal place and less frequent coronal and glottal place and fricative manner.

Frame dominance in infants with hearing loss.

Purpose: According to the frames then content (f/c) hypothesis (P. F. MacNeilage & B.

Characteristics of the rhythmic organization of vocal babbling: implications for an amodal linguistic rhythm.

Vocal babbling involves production of rhythmic sequences of a mouth close-open alternation giving the perceptual impression of a sequence of consonant-vowel syllables. Petitto and co-workers have argued vocal babbling rhythm is the same as manual syllabic babbling rhythm, in that it has a frequency of 1 cycle per second. They also assert that adult speech and sign language display the same frequency.

Message and medium: Lowly and action-related origins.

Hurford presents a much-needed lowly origins scenario for the evolution of conceptual precursors to lexical items. But more is still needed on action, regarding both the message level of lexical concepts and the medium. We summarize our complementary action-based lowly origins (frame/content) scenario for the vocal auditory medium of language, which, like Hurford's scenario, is anchored in a phylogenetically old neurological dichotomy.

Auditory sensitivity and the prelinguistic vocalizations of early-amplified infants.

Purpose: Vocalization development has not been studied thoroughly in infants with early-identified hearing loss who receive hearing aids in the 1st year of life. This study sought to evaluate the relationship between auditory sensitivity and prelinguistic vocalization patterns in infants during the babbling stage.

Method: Spontaneous vocalizations of 15 early-identified infants with varying degrees of hearing sensitivity, from normal to profound hearing loss, were audiotaped and perceptually transcribed.

Consonant and syllable structure patterns in childhood apraxia of speech: developmental change in three children.

Unlabelled: Changes in consonant and syllable-level error patterns of three children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) were investigated in a 3-year longitudinal study. Spontaneous speech samples were analyzed to assess the accuracy of consonants and syllables. Consonant accuracy was low overall, with most frequent errors on middle- and late-developing sounds.

Token-to-token variability in developmental apraxia of speech: three longitudinal case studies.

Variability in the speech production patterns of children with developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) was investigated in a three-year longitudinal study of three children with DAS. A metric was developed to measure token-to-token variability in repeated word productions from connected speech samples. Results suggest that high levels of total token and error token variability and low levels of word target stability and token accuracy characterize the disorder.

Early sound patterns in the speech of two Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

Sound patterns in the speech of two Brazilian-Portuguese speaking children are compared with early production patterns in English-learning children as well as English and Brazilian-Portuguese (BP) characteristics. The relationship between production system effects and ambient language influences in the acquisition of early sound patterns is of primary interest, as English and BP are characterized by differing phonological systems. Results emphasize the primacy of production system effects in early acquisition, although even the earliest word forms show evidence of perceptual effects from the ambient language in both BP children.

Acquisition of serial complexity in speech production: a comparison of phonetic and phonological approaches to first word production.

Comparison was made between performance-based and competence-based approaches to the understanding of first word production. The performance-related frame/content approach is representative of the biological/functional perspective of phonetics in seeking explanations based on motor, perceptual and cognitive aspects of speech actions. From this perspective, intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) co-occurrence patterns and intersyllabic sequence patterns are viewed as reflective of biomechanical constraints emerging from mandibular oscillation cycles.