Browsing by Person "Waters, Daphne"

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Gradient change in the acquisition of phonology.
(Informa Healthcare, 2004) Hewlett, Nigel; Waters, Daphne
The prevailing view of phonological development is that changes in pronunciation are driven by phonological changes. This view (it is argued here) derives from the particular form of the data that has most often been used in studies of phonological development, namely broad phonetic transcriptions. Transcribing an earlier pronunciation with one phoneme symbol and a later pronunciation with a different symbol encourages the interpretation that the child has made a flip from one category to another. However, broad transcriptions may have misrepresented the facts of speech development. We review some auditory-based studies which have used a more fine-grained phonetic transcription and discuss the significance of findings on the development of long-lag plosives. We argue that gradient change is the typical fashion in which children's speech output development progresses; that it is therefore not appropriate to use rules of the sort that are employed for morphophonemic alternations in adult phonology to explain revisions over time in children's pronunciations; and that a child's speech output is not the best guide to their phonology.
Measuring speech motor skills in normally developing and phonologically disordered pre-school children
(1999) Cohen, Wendy; Waters, Daphne
Normally developing and phonologically disordered 3 and 4year -old children (groups N and P) were compared on measures of articulation rate in imitated and spontaneous connected speech and in diadochokinetic (DDK) tasks. The P group exhibited significantly slower mean articulation rates than the N group in the connected speech samples. There was no significant difference between the group means for DDK rates. However, the P subjects, when required to articulate at maximum speed in the DDK task, were more likely than the N subjects to make pronunciation errors additional to those observed in their spontaneous and imitated speech. Implications of the findings for the clinical evaluation of speech motor abilities in young children are discussed. 1. INTRODUCTION Children who present with disordered speech development in the absence of known pathology, usually labeled phonologically disordered, may have a variety of deficits underlying their surface speech errors. Their difficulties may b...
The Influence of Phonemic Awareness Development on Acoustic Cue Weighting Strategies in Children's Speech Perception
(2003-10) Mayo, Catherine; Scobbie, James M.; Hewlett, Nigel; Waters, Daphne
In speech perception, children give particular patterns of weight to different acoustic cues (their cue weighting). These patterns appear to change with increased linguistic experience. Previous speech perception research has found a positive correlation between more analytical cue weighting strategies and the ability to consciously think about and manipulate segment-sized units (phonemic awareness). That research did not, however, aim to address whether the relation is in any way causal or, if so, then in which direction possible causality might move. Causality in this relation could move in 1 of 2 ways: Either phonemic awareness development could impact on cue weighting strategies or changes in cue weighting could allow for the later development of phonemic awareness. The aim of this study was to follow the development of these 2 processes longitudinally to determine which of the above 2 possibilities was more likely. Five-year-old children were tested 3 times in 7 months on their cue weighting strategies for a /so/-/So/ contrast, in which the 2 cues manipulated were the frequency of fricative spectrum and the frequency of vowel-onset formant transitions. The children were also tested at the same time on their phoneme segmentation and phoneme blending skills. Results showed that phonemic awareness skills tended to improve before cue weighting changed and that early phonemic awareness ability predicted later cue weighting strategies. These results suggest that the development of metaphonemic awareness may play some role in changes in cue weighting.
Using input processing strengths to overcome speech output difficulties
(Whurr Publishers, 2000) Waters, Daphne; Stackhouse, Joy; Wells, Bill