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KMID : 0921420120170030403
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Korean Journal of Communication Disorders
2012 Volume.17 No. 3 p.403 ~ p.413
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A Study of Articulatory Variation in Typically Developing Children between 2 and 4 Years of Age
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Hwang Jin-Kyung
Ha Seung-Hee
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Abstract
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Background & Objectives : Inconsistency of articulation is a hallmark of early child speech. As children grow older, their word productions become more consistent. However, children with speech disorders, particularly childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) tend to show a symptom called inconsistency of articulation. The present study investigated the developmental patterns of articulatory variation in typically developing children between 2 and 4 years of age.
Methods: The participants in this study were 50 typically developing children divided into 5 age groups (6-month intervals, 10 children per group). The articulatory variation task was used to obtain productions of 6 target words. The task consisted of 2- to 4-syllable words that were systematically manipulated for syllable structures. Children produced each target word first in isolation and then in sentence levels. Three measures, proportion of articulatory errors, articulatory variation, and articulatory error variation were obtained.
Results: 1) As children grew older, articulatory variation and articulatory error variation improved. The improvement in articulatory variation and articulatory error variation increased drastically between 2 and 3 years of age, and the performance became stable at 4 years of age. 2) Articulatory variation in terms of utterance length conditions were different in the 2- to 3-year-old groups, but not in the 4-year-old group.
Discussion & Conclusion: The articulatory variation task effectively elicited responses from the participants 2 to 4 years of age, and developmental changes in their articulatory variation were observed. In this study, the results show articulatory skills improved as the children grew up and articulatory consistency became stable at 4 years of age in both isolation and sentence levels. The present study provides fundamental data that can be used to identify speech impairments in young children.
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KEYWORD
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proportion of articulatory errors, articulatory variation, articulatory error variation, typically developing children
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