Articulatory Complexity, Ambient Frequency, and Functional Load as Predictors of Consonant Development in Children

Abstract

The notion of a universal pattern of phonological development, rooted in basic physiological constraints, is controversial, with some researchers arguing for a strong environmental (ambient language) influence on phonological development or an interaction of both physiological constraints and ambient language effects. This research examines the relative value of articulatory complexity, ambient frequency, and functional load as predictors of consonant development in children. Three languages are investigated: Cantonese, American English, and Dutch. Regression analyses revealed that functional load accounted for 55% of the variance in age of emergence of consonants in 7 English-speaking children (8-25 months), while frequency of consonants in the ambient language accounted for 63% of the variance in age of emergence of consonants in 51 Cantonese-speaking children (15-30 months). Articulatory complexity accounted for 40% of the accuracy of production of consonants in 40 English-speaking children (25 months), and frequency accounted for 43% of the variance in accuracy of production of consonants in 5 Dutch-speaking children (24 months). Given cross-linguistic differences, further research is required.

Consonant Age-of-Acquisition Effects in Nonword Repetition Are Not Articulatory in Nature

“…Although CAoA typically has been associated with articulatory complexity (e.g., Kent, 1992;Stokes & Surendran, 2005), a purely articulationbased view of the CAoA effect seems to be inconsistent with both the findings reported here and previous work examining articulatory and motoric demands in NWR performance (e.g., Archibald et al, 2013;Archibald & Gathercole, 2006;Edwards & Lahey, 1998). In the current study, the CAoA effect persisted across lexical-access tasks that minimized articulatory, short-term-memory, and auditory-perceptual demands.…”

“…Evidence against this explanation is demonstrated in work showing that frequency of phoneme occurrence in English does not account for significant variance in the emergence or mastery of consonant sounds (Mader, 1954;Mines, Hanson, & Shoup, 1978;Stokes & Surendran, 2005). Further, a significant effect of CAoA has been observed in college students (Moore et al, 2010), whereas the phonotactic-probability manipulation has been shown to attenuate with age (Munson, 2001).…”

“…Although CAoA typically has been associated with articulatory complexity (e.g., Kent, 1992;Stokes & Surendran, 2005), there are several reasons to favor a central phonological view over an articulatory view of the CAoA effect in NWR. For instance, it is unexpected to observe developmental effects of articulation in highly skilled adult speakers, yet the CAoA effect has been robust across three different groups of subjects (i.e., Experiments 1 and 2, and Moore et al, 2010).…”

“…Moore, Tompkins, and Dollaghan (2010) explored the use of this CAoA manipulation with the goal of increasing task difficulty and thus avoiding ceiling effects when administering NWR to adolescents and adults. CAoA has been associated with articulatory complexitythat is, the motoric demands involved in speech sound production (e.g., Kent, 1992;Stokes & Surendran, 2005). The original motivation for use of the experimental manipulation by Moore et al (2010), therefore, was to increase the articulatory complexity of the stimuli.…”

Frequency of consonant articulation errors in dysarthric speech

“…Tjaden and Sussman (2006) provided evidence for integrated speech perception theories, showing that listeners were tuned to similar types of coarticulatory information in speech produced by speakers with Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis, or normal speakers. Finally, as previously mentioned, Stokes and Surendran (2005) have demonstrated that articulatory complexity plays a primary role in determining the route and age of phoneme acquisition for normally-developing children. Together with their finding, the current study provides evidence of a key characteristic shared by dysarthric speech and normal speech at the motor execution stage of the utterance: i.e., sounds requiring fine, complex control of the articulators are more likely to be misarticulated in both dysarthric speech and the speech of normally-developing children during phonological acquisition.…”