The Inference of Speech Perception in the Phonologically Disordered Child. Part II: Some Clinically Novel Procedures, Their Use, Some Findings

Abstract

Several procedures used to assess speech perception of children with disorders at the phonological level of language are described. In most cases of segmental substitution, children discriminated target and substitution phonemes regardless of whether both were spoken by an adult, or one form was produced by an adult and the other was the child's internal representation of the target phoneme. However, in about a third of the cases there was consistent failure to discriminate the target phoneme from the substituted phoneme. Perceptual approaches to the treatment of sound production problems are questioned when perception is inferably differential. Certain phonetic effects, and their implications for theories of phonological acquisition and disorder, are discussed.