Biomedical subjects

M Elbert

Publications and source records attributed to M Elbert.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1981

A study of the voicing distinction associated with omitted, work-final stops.

This study examined the possibility that children who omit word-final stops as a clinical entity may preserve the voicing contrast of those omitted stops by differential durations of the receding vowel. Data bearing on this hypothesis were obtained by constructing a speech sample in which the voicing of word-final stops was systematically manipulated and by having three children produce these utterances under controlled conditions. Acoustic measures of vowel durations showed that for all word-final stops in both isolated words and words in sentence-final position that were judged unanimously by three transcribers to be omitted, two of the children produced vowel durations that were clearly sensitive to the voicing characteristic of the (omitted) final stop. The third child failed to show a consistent difference in vowel duration dependent on the voicing of the final stop. A phonological analysis of spontaneous speech sample showed that the two children who produced the reliable vowel duration difference also showed clear phonetic evidence of medial stops when the form containing the omitted final stop was inflected. The third child, however, omitted stops in both inflected and noninflected forms. These results are discussed in terms of the conditions that may be necessary for a child to use differential vowel durations to mark the voicing of omitted, work-final stops.

Articulation Disorders↗

PubMed1979

Aspects of phonological acquisition during articulation training.

Acquisition of correct /s/ over time was studied in five misarticulating children and compared to data reported for younger children during normal phonological development. Changes in production of /s/ as the children were learning to produce /s/ were examined in untrained syllables session by session. These longitudinal data were explored for patterns reported to occur in normal acquisition. It was found that the misarticulating children typically shifted their responses from correct to incorrect during the acquisition period; this may be attributed to competing rules operating during the early stages of acquisition similar to the rules proposed to be operating during morphological acquisition. The children varied in the time required to acquire correct production which is comparable to the variability reported in normal acquisition. Individual learning strategies were noted in the children's productions of consonant clusters which correspond to the proposed stages of development in normal phonological acquisition.

Articulation Disorders↗

PubMed1978

An experimental analysis of misarticulating children's generalization.

Five children who produced /theta/ for /s/ substitutions as a misarticulation were trained to produce /s/ correctly in three syllables. Untrained exemplars of syllables and words were tested throughout baseline and training. The 60 probe items contained both spontaneous and imitated words and syllables combined with high, low, front, back, vowels, and consonants. A functional analysis reversal design was used, and the gernalization patterns were analyzed. The effect of context was found to be less influential than expected while other factors such as stimulability, amount of training, and subject characteristics appeared as important variables in generalization.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1975

Transfer of /r/ across contexts.

This study was designed to determine if training on any one specific /r/ allophone would result in transfer to other /r/ allophones without specific training. Twelve grade school children who were unable to imitate correctly the /r/, /sigma/, and /gamma/ allophones in 40 stimulus items during baseline served as subjects. A multiple baseline was used: six subjects served as controls while six were trained, after which the first six were trained. Each subject received training on a randomly assigned syllable representing a specific allophone of /r/. After training, generalization to the untrained /r/s was assessed. Since most subjects increased the number of correct responses to items in several allophonic categories regardless of the specific allophone taught, the different allophones of /r/ may be members of the same response class rather than independent of one another.

Child↗

PubMed1972