The effects of phonetic context and linguistic complexity on /s/ misarticulation in children

The present investigation was designed to examine the effects of phonetic context and linguistic complexity level on /s/ misarticulations in children. The subjects were normal children who misarticulated the /s/ phoneme interdentally in all positions of words. The stimuli were 48 sound-in-context initiative sequences which contained one /s/ phoneme embedded in a C1SC2 frame with all permutations of the phonemes /k,t,n,p/ in the C1 and C2 positions. The 48 sequences were composed of two basic linguistic complexity levels. The simple level consisted of the C1SC2 frame occurring in 16 noun phrases and in the more complex linguistic level seven-word sentences contained the C1SC2 frames in the subject-noun-phrase and object-noun-phrase positions. All presentations of complexity levels were counterbalanced over the three trials for a total of 144 /s/ productions for each child. Results demonstrated that certain phonemes were more facilitory for correct /s/ production than other phonemes. The analysis revealed no position effect. The mean percent correct /s/ productions over three trials did not differ significantly; however, the mean percent correct /s/ productions did vary significantly with linguistic complexity levels by position.