| Dissertation |
Thesis (M.Sc.) --NUI, 2016 at Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, UCC. |
| Summary |
Background: This study aimed to learn more about the underlying nature of difficulty experienced by children with speech sound disorder (SSD), specifically the stability, flexibility and accuracy of their phonological representations (phonological knowledge) using a sentence comprehension task incorporating speech variability (accents). To date, no study of this kind has been carried out with children with SSD to examine accent comprehension, and in turn examine the flexibility of their phonological representations. Methodology: Fifteen children with SSD aged between 4;01 and 5;11 years, and 16 typically developing (TD) children matched on language ability, age, gender and cognitive ability participated in the study. All children and their families were monolingual English speakers. A sentence comprehension task was carried out with each child, requiring them to follow instructions of increasing length spoken in three different accents, (a) a local Irish (Cork) accent, (b) a regional North American accent and (c) a non-native Indian English accent. Results: There were no significant group differences and speaker accent did not significantly affect children's performance on the task. There was also no significant interaction between accent and group, indicating that the presence or absence of SSD did not influence whether an accent effect occurred. There was also no significant correlation between accent comprehension ability and speech and language skills. Conclusions: Children with SSD do not experience significant difficulties comprehending different accents in comparison to a language-matched group of TD children, and all participants performed similarly with each accent. Therefore, in line with the current study's interpretation of the accent comprehension task, children with SSD may not have specific deficits in phonological knowledge compared with TD children of the same age. The results also suggest that language ability rather than speech ability is the influential variable in accent comprehension. |
| Subject |
Speech disorders in children.
|
|
Language disorders.
|
| Collection |
Theses Masters (Research)
|
|
Theses Speech and Hearing Sciences Department
|
| Description |
209 pages ; 30 cm. |
|
