CASL
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22
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Item English (Scottish) speech development(Oxford University Press, 2026) Scobbie, James M.; Cleland, Joanne; Lawson, Eleanor; Schaeffler, Sonja; McLeod, SharynneScottish English is primarily spoken in Scotland, U.K. It is a national quasi-standard variety of English with a range of social and geographical variants. It can be characterized as a highly distinctive accent (or accent group) of English, mainly due to its relationship to Scots. Its strongly distinct character may be more phonetic, prosodic and lexical than strictly phonemic and phonological, so for practical reasons it can be assumed that its inventory and consonant phonotactics overlap sufficiently with other varieties for many “British English” clinical resources to be applicable. Scottish English is, however, rhotic in its prestige varieties, which makes it markedly different from non-rhotic Southern Standard British English and other non-rhotic varieties. There are few specific studies of children’s acquisition of Scottish English, though Scottish children are often incorporated in larger studies in the U.K. Research on Scottish English has focused on social variation, speech production, and remediation techniques augmented with real time visual biofeedback, involving children with speech sound disorders and cleft palate. Commonly-used speech assessments and interventions have not been developed specifically for this variety of English.Item 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, DaphneIn 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.