Phonological development from babbling to speech: Common tendencies and individual differences

ABSTRACTTaking as a point of departure Locke's biological model for the origins of phonological development, this study encompasses analyses of phonetic tendencies, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns. Data from 10 children aged 9 to 16 months are drawn from four lexically defined points covering the period from no word use to a cumulative vocabulary of 50 words. Individual differences are found to prevail from the start in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. Furthermore, the phonological processes typical of development from age 1 to 3 or 4 years are found to be rooted in the phonetic tendencies of the prelinguistic period.

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The role of production practice in lexical and phonological development – a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's ‘Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children’*

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000910000504 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 41-45 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

MARILYN VIHMAN ◽

TAMAR KEREN-PORTNOY

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Young Children ◽

Current Work ◽

Phonological Development ◽

Phonological Learning ◽

Production Practice ◽

The Relationship

Carol Stoel-Gammon has made a real contribution in bringing together two fields that are not generally jointly addressed. Like Stoel-Gammon, we have long focused on individual differences in phonological development (e.g. Vihman, Ferguson & Elbert, 1986; Vihman, Boysson-Bardies, Durand & Sundberg, 1994; Keren-Portnoy, Majorano & Vihman, 2008). And like her, we have been closely concerned with the relationship between lexical and phonological learning. Accordingly, we will focus our discussion on two areas covered by Stoel-Gammon (this issue) on which our current work may shed some additional light.

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Consistency of Use of Phonological Processes by a Sample of Educable Mentally Impaired Children

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.1992.74.1.211 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

pp. 211-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marie May Watson ◽

Julann Hiipakka

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Connected Speech ◽

Phonological Process ◽

Phonological Processes ◽

Mentally Impaired ◽

Impaired Children

A group of 10 educable mentally impaired children ( M age = 10 yr., 4 mo.) were assessed for use of phonological process under three speaking conditions: production of single words, imitated sentences, and connected speech samples. Only the process of gliding showed significant differences in use among conditions. Results generally indicated that any of those three speaking conditions were viable for eliciting use of phonological processes by such subjects. Results are also discussed in terms of individual differences.

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Phonological development in lexically precocious 2-year-olds

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716406060310 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 355-375 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

BRUCE L. SMITH ◽

KARLA K. MCGREGOR ◽

DARCIE DEMILLE

Keyword(s):

Chronological Age ◽

Phonological Development ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Phonological Processes ◽

Spontaneous Language ◽

Phonological Abilities

To examine interactions between young children's vocabulary size and their phonological abilities, spontaneous language samples were collected from 24-month-olds with precocious lexicons, their age mates (24-month-olds with average-sized lexicons), and their vocabulary mates (30-month-olds with average-sized lexicons). Phonological ability was measured in a variety of ways, such as the number of different consonants that were targeted, the number of different consonants produced correctly, the percentage of consonants produced correctly, and the occurrence of phonological processes. The lexically precocious 24-month-olds were similar to their vocabulary mates on most measures of phonological ability, and both of these groups were generally superior to the 24-month-olds with smaller lexicons. These findings supported a hypothesized relationship between lexicon size and phonological performance, and demonstrated that 2-year-olds' phonological development is more closely related to size of the lexicon than chronological age.

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The phonological and grammatical status of Murui ‘word’

Phonological Word and Grammatical Word ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198865681.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 121-146

Author(s):

Katarzyna I. Wojtylak

Keyword(s):

Vowel Length ◽

Phonological Processes ◽

Phonological Word ◽

Segmental Phonology ◽

Word Boundaries ◽

Nominal Compounds ◽

Fixed Order ◽

Morphological Processes ◽

Key Indicators

Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely phonological principles. Its key indicators include prosody (stress) and segmental phonology (vowel length). A phonological word is further produced by applying relevant phonological processes within it and not across its word boundaries. The further criterion is moraicity which requires that the minimal phonological word contains at least two moras. A grammatical word, determined entirely on grammatical principles, consists of one lexical root to which morphological processes (affixation, cliticization, and reduplication) are applied. The components of a grammatical word are cohesive and occur in a relatively fixed order. Although Murui grammatical and phonological words mostly coincide, the ‘mismatches’ include nominal compounds (that is, one phonological word consisting of two grammatical words), verbal root reduplication (one grammatical but two phonological words), and clitics.

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Developmental Phonology

Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders ◽

10.1044/jshd.5302.125 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 125-130 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Debra A. Preisser ◽

Barbara W. Hodson ◽

Elaine P. Paden

Keyword(s):

Preschool Children ◽

Age Groups ◽

Clinical Applications ◽

Chronological Age ◽

Phonological Development ◽

Phonological Process ◽

Phonological Processes ◽

Middle Group ◽

Cluster Reduction

Utterances of 60 normally developing children, who were within 6 months of their second birthdays, were analyzed for occurrences of phonological processes. The subjects were divided equally into three chronological age groups: (a) 1:6–1:9, (b) 1:10–2:1, and (c) 2:2–2:5. The most prevalent phonological processes evidenced by all three groups were cluster reduction and deviations involving liquids (e.g., gliding). Phonological process percentage-of-occurrence means were considerably lower for the middle group than for the youngest group, with the most dramatic differences occurring for syllable reduction and postvocalic singleton omission. Potential clinical applications of the data for ascertaining what constitutes disordered phonological development in preschool children are discussed, as well as implications for specifying remediation priorities.

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A Neural Basis for Phonological Awareness? An Oscillatory Temporal-Sampling Perspective

Current Directions in Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0963721417727520 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 56-63 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Usha Goswami

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Phonological Awareness ◽

Theoretical Perspective ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Phonological Development ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Spelling Development ◽

Neural Excitability ◽

Speech Encoding ◽

Temporal Sampling

Individual differences in phonological awareness, or speech-sound awareness, between children predict reading and spelling development across languages. Recent advances in our understanding of the neural basis of speech encoding suggest one possible sensory and neural basis for these individual differences. This article describes an oscillatory theoretical perspective based on sampling of the speech stream by networks of cells that vary in excitability at different temporal rates. These variations in neural excitability (oscillations) may align to similar energy variations (such as amplitude modulations, AMs) in speech, helping to encode the signal. Indeed, cell networks in auditory cortex form an oscillatory hierarchy, which mirrors an AM hierarchy found in rhythmic speech. Mappings between these hierarchies may support parsing of the speech signal into phonological units. Oscillations at approximately 2 Hz may help identify stressed syllables, used to convey meaning in all languages, while oscillations at approximately 5 Hz may help identify syllables. Behavioral research suggests that the rhythmic patterning of stressed syllables may provide an acoustic “skeleton” for phonological development across languages. As well as helping to explain individual differences, an oscillatory framework offers new targets for improving children’s phonological development, for example, via multimodal rhythmic activities.

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A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Stop Consonant Production in Normal and Down's Syndrome Children

Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders ◽

10.1044/jshd.4802.114 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 114-118 ◽

Cited By ~ 52

Author(s):

Bruce L. Smith ◽

Carol Stoel-Gammon

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

Down's Syndrome ◽

Stop Consonant ◽

Down’S Syndrome ◽

Phonological Development ◽

Normal Children ◽

Phonological Processes ◽

Sound Patterns

In order to compare phonological development in normal and Down's syndrome children, longitudinal observations were made of four normal children from 18 to 36 months of age and five Down's syndrome children from 3 to 6 years of age. Singleton stops and stop clusters were analyzed to determine if the Down's syndrome children evidenced phonological processes and other sound patterns similar to those of the normal children. Although quite similar patterns were observed for the two groups, the Down's syndrome children showed considerable delay in comparison to the normally developing children.

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The concept and status of trait in research on temperament

European Journal of Personality ◽

10.1002/per.412 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. 311-325 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Jan Strelau

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Complex Nature ◽

Personality Structure ◽

Environmental Determinants ◽

Personality Research ◽

Temperament Traits ◽

The Many ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Individual ◽

Point Of Departure

The aim of the paper is to show that research on temperament is inescapably bound with the concept of trait as applied in personality research. It is the individual differences approach on which temperament studies are based, and traits are the basic units by means of which these differences are described. Taking as a point of departure the definition of trait understood as a relatively stable and individual‐specific generalized tendency to behave or react in a certain way expressed in a variety of situations, the hypothetical status of temperament traits is discussed. Special attention is paid to states and behaviour by means of which temperament traits are inferred as well as to the biological and environmental determinants of these traits. Temperamental traits constitute only a part of the personality structure viewed from the perspective of individual differences and this perspective is only one of the many from which the complex nature of personality should be viewed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Temperament and the Psychobiology of Childhood Stress

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.90.3.483 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 90 (3) ◽

pp. 483-486

Author(s):

W. Thomas Boyce ◽

Ronald G. Barr ◽

Lonnie K. Zeltzer

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Developmental Psychobiology ◽

Childhood Stress ◽

Future Studies ◽

Childhood Morbidity ◽

Conceptual Overview ◽

Point Of Departure

This paper provides a conceptual overview of recent research on the developmental psychobiology of childhood stress. We propose that the construct of temperament can be regarded as an organizing principle in children's responses to environmental adversity, and we review three physiologic "windows" through which such responses can be usefully examined. It is concluded that individual differences between children in their psychobiologic reactivity to stressors may constitute an important and novel point of departure for future studies of stress and childhood morbidity.

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