DURATIONAL ANALYSIS OF STRIDENCY ERRORS IN CHILDREN WITH PHONOLOGICALIMPAIRMENT

This study investigated children's knowledge, evidenced acoustically, of contrasts involving stridents as related to treatment progress. Dur ational measures (VOT) were used to examine possible acoustic markers of /s/ + stop clusters vs. stop singleton contrasts and initial fricat ive vs. stop contrasts in six pre-school children with phonological im pairment. Other aspects of the children's phonological knowledge were examined for their correspondence to acoustic findings and to treatmen t progress. One of three stopping subjects produced a durational acous tic distinction between stop and fricative targets prior to treatment. This subject, who also had more knowledge of the fricative class, req uired the shortest treatment period to establish a contrast between in itial stops and fricatives in comparison to two subjects who had less knowledge of fricatives and no acoustic distinction. All three cluster subjects produced long lag VOTs in stops that replaced /s/ + stop clu sters; one of these children displayed a weak significant difference i n VOT means for /s/ + stop cluster and singleton targets, but was not the subject with the lowest number of treatment sessions. Results are discussed in reference to the utility of acoustic measures and the con vergence of those measures with other sources of knowledge as it relat es to treatment outcomes.