Tongue-palate contact of perceptually acceptable alveolar stops

Abstract

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 target 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 target /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.

Keywords:

• electropalatography
• alveolar stops
• speech sound disorders
• children

Acknowledgements

Part of the findings of this study was presented at the 14th Meeting of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, Cork, Ireland, June 27–30, 2012. Some of the work reported in this study constituted a final-year honours project “An investigation on whether tongue-to-palate contact amount for perceptually acceptable alveolar stop productions differentiates typical from disordered articulation” by Cliona O'Donovan, University College Cork, Ireland, 2011.

Declarations of Interest: The authors report no conflict of interest.