Verbal transformation patterns in children with articulation defects

If the motor theory of speech perception is at least partially true, children with articulation problems should do relatively poorly in a typical verbal transformation task. Twelve children aged from 6 yrs 10 mo to 8 years 10 mo with misarticulation of /s/ were compared with 12 matched children with normal speech. Since children with articulation errors have difficulty processing time-compressed speech, the two groups were differentiated also on the basis of a speech discrimination task involving time-compressed stimuli. All Ss listened to three 1-min presentations of the nonsense word /sus/ played repeatedly with a 400-msec interstimulus interval; they pressed one of 4 buttons for each stimulus indicating perception of /sus/, /theta us/, /fus/, and "other." There were fewer transformations for the experimental group and different response profiles for the two groups, suggesting a less mature perception-production linkage in those with articulatory problems.