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Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
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Influence of mothers' slower speech on their children's speech rate

B Guitar1, L Marchinkoski

  • 1Department of Communication Sciences, The University of Vermont, Burlington 05405-0010, USA. bguitar@zoo.uvm.edu

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR
|August 28, 2001
PubMed

This study investigated the effects on children's speech rate when their mothers talked more slowly. Six mothers and their normally speaking 3-year-olds (3 girls and 3 boys) were studied using single-subject A-B-A-B designs. Conversational speech rates of mothers were reduced by approximately half in the experimental (B) conditions. Five of the six children appeared to reduce their speech rates when their mothers spoke more slowly. This was confirmed by paired t tests (p < .05) that showed significant decreases in the 5 children's speech rate over the two B conditions. These findings suggest that when mothers substantially decrease their speech rates in a controlled situation, their children also decrease their speech rates. Clinical implications are discussed.

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