electropalatography, alveolar stops, speech sound disorders, children
Increased
tongue-palate contact for perceptually acceptable alveolar stops has been
observed in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). This is a retrospective
study that further investigated this issue by using quantitative measures to
compare the alveolar stops /t/, /d/, and /n/ produced in words by nine children
with SSD (20 tokens of /t/, 13 /d/, and 11 /n/) to those produced by eight
typical children (32 /t/, 24 /d/, and 16 /n/). The results showed that children
with SSD had significantly higher percent contact than the typical children for
/t/; the difference for /d/ and /n/ was not significant. Children with SSD
generally showed more contact in the posterior central area of the palate than
the typical children. The results suggested that broader tongue-palate contact
is a general articulatory feature for children with SSD and its differential
effect on error perception might be related to the different articulatory
requirements.