Intra-speaker variability in palatometric measures of consonant articulation

Electropalatometry is a useful clinical and research tool for measuring linguapalatal contact. The goal of this study was to examine intra-speaker variability in performance. Twenty individuals spoke VCV nonsense words using a schwa in the initial position, the 15 palatal consonants, and three corner vowels, /a/, /i/, /u/. A variability index was created to examine speaker consistency. Different aspects of articulation (i.e. place, manner, voicing, coarticulation) were compared. Significant differences for variability were found for place of articulation in the /i/ vowel context and for manner of articulation in the /a/ vowel context. Also for the /a/ vowel, significant differences were found between the commonly misarticulated /l/, /r/, and /s/. The data reveal differences in production variability across sounds within an individual, as well as from one speaker to another. This knowledge of typical performance may guide the interpretation of data from disordered speakers in future studies.

The reader will be able to: (1) Describe how articulatory performance and variability can be assessed with the palatometer; (2) Describe which sounds are typically most or least variable in their production; and (3) Understand the significance of individual speaker differences in normal consonant articulation.