Phonological Development

Phonological Development

1. How children develop ability to use & understand sounds of lang

2. First year

   • Occurs during first year
     • Crying, cooing, babbling, phonemic, expansion & contraction

3. Don't make sweeping gens when talking about later phonological development

4. Order in which vowels & consonants are acquired varies from child to child

5. Sometimes children appear to have mastered a sound in one word, but then not in another

6. General trends

   • Age 2 1/2
     • All vowels & 2/3 of consonants mastered
   • Age 4
     • Diff w/ only few consonants
   • Age 6 - 7
     • Confident use
   • Consonants are first used correctly at beginning of words
   • Consonants at end of words present more diff
     • Example - 'Push' vs 'riP'
   • Frequency
     • Gen, sounds which occur freq in large no of words be acquired before sounds that occur less freq

7. Making words easier (phonemic simplification)

   • Detection
     • Ignore sound exists
   • Final consonants
     • May be dropped
   • Unstressed syllables
     • Often deleted
   • Consonant clusters
     • Reduced
   • Substitution
     • Easier sounds substituted for harder ones
       • R becomes W
       • TH becomes D, N / F
       • T becomes D
       • P becomes B

8. Comprehension is often ahead of speech

   • Same can be true in phonological development

9. Berko & Brown (1960)

   • Child - Fis
     • Adult - This is your fis?
       • Child - No - my fis
         • Adult - Oh, this is your fish
           • Child - Yes my fis
   • Child with indistinguishable pronunciation of
     • Mouse / mouth
     • Cart / Card
     • Jug / Duck
   • Could point to corresponding pics in a comprehension task

10. Intonation

    • As a child gets older, a wider range of meanings is expressed through intonation
      • Example
        • two word stage - 'my car' vs 'MY car'
    • Although intonation patterns can be reproduced from an early stage, understanding of meaning is still developing into teenage yrs

11. Cruttenden (1974)

    • Football results
    • Intonation used in 1st teams score enabled adults to accurately predict home wins away wins / draw
    • Children 7 - 11
      • Youngest = largely unsuccessful & oldest significantly less successful than adults

12. Glossary

    • Phonemic simplification
    • Deletion
    • Substitution