Ten children with high scores on an auditory memory span task were significantly better at imitating three non-English phones than 10 children with low auditory memory span scores. An additional 10 children with high scores on an oral stereognosis task were significantly better at imitating two of the three phones than 10 children with low oral stereognosis scores. Auditory memory span and oral stereognosis appear to be important subskills in the learning of new articulations, perhaps explaining their appearance in the literature as “etiologies” of disordered articulation. Although articulation development and the experimental acquisition of non-English phones have certain obvious differences, they seem to share some common processes, suggesting that the sound learning framework may be an efficacious technique for revealing otherwise inaccessible information.
