A STUDY OF OBSTRUENT SOUNDS IN SCHOOL-AGE-CHILDREN WITH SPEECH DISORDERS USING ELECTROPALATOGRAPHY

In this study EPG was used to investigate the articulatory characteris tics of voiceless coronal obstruent targets/s, integral, tintegral/ in ten children with functional articulation disorders. Perceptually bas ed judgements of /s, integral, tintegral/ revealed a variety of distor tions, including palatal, lateralised and dental articulations. Their productions of /t/ were judged to be acceptable. From the EPG data, it was observed that individual children produced abnormal and often idi osyncratic tongue-palate contact for sounds which were heard as distor ted. Some common trends were identified, for example, palatal fricativ es and affricates were produced with constriction and a groove configu ration in the posterior region of the palate. Lateralised articulation s were generally associated with complete contact across the palate, i ncreased tongue-palate contact and, for some children, incomplete late ral seal was observed. Place of articulation (as revealed by EPG) vari ed for coronal targets heard as lateralised. Some children produced th ese sounds with contact in the alveolar region, others had palatal con tact and one child had contact in the velar region. These differences in place of articulation had not been identified from an auditory-base d analysis. One child was heard to produce dental fricatives and affri cates, and the EPG patterns were found to have an asymmetrical groove configuration in the anterior region of the palate. The clinical impli cations of the findings are discussed.