A methodological study of factors affecting the judgment of misarticulated /s/

Two studies involving judgments of /s/ misarticulation are described. The first involved simultaneous audio and video recordings of three clinically different /s/ misarticulating children. Their recorded /s/ productions, embedded in 54 sentences with varying phonetic contexts, were judged on an acceptable/unacceptable/questionable basis. There was a large proportion of judgments in the questionable category, relatively low interjudge reliability, and few clear enhancing contexts. To better define the problems inherent in using recorded /s/ misarticulations, a second study was undertaken in which six specially chosen /s/ defective and eight normally speaking subjects spoke a set of 12 sentences containing a total of 24 /s/ target words. These productions were judged dichotomously as correct/incorrect under live conditions and from tape recorded conditions. Both normal and /s/ defectives were easily and reliably detected under live speaking conditions; judgments from tape recordings showed a reduction in reliability of judgment and reduced ability to detect the /s/ defective speakers' errors. Examination of the recorded /s/ defective productions revealed that certain phonetic contexts, especially adjacent apical stops, appeared to encourage judgments of correct /s/ productions. Thd discussion includes suggestion concerning techniques for sampling and judging /s/ misarticulations.