The effects of different masking noises on children with /s/ or /r/ errors

Children with /s/ or /r/ misarticulations were administered an articulation test for their target phoneme in three conditions. In the first condition, the children spoke in quiet. In the second condition, half of the children spoke while hearing an 80 dB SPL s-noise (high pass 2000 Hz) and the other half spoke under 80 dB of r-noise (low pass 1250 Hz). In the third condition, the noises were switched. It was assumed that a noise selected to overlap with the frequency range of the target phoneme would be most disruptive to articulation in the final stages of phoneme mastery. The hypothesis was borne out for the children with /s/ errors. These children had more errors under the s-noise than the r-noise. However, both noises caused a breakdown of articulation among children with /r/ errors. Though a feedback explanation can be adduced in both instances, there does seem to be a difference between these two speech defective populations.