Purpose: Many communication disorders result in speech sound errors that listeners perceive as phonemic errors. Unfortunately, manual methods for calculating phonemic error frequency are prohibitively time consuming to use in large-scale research and busy clinical settings. The purpose of this study was to validate an automated analysis based on a…

When acquiring a second language, learners must become able to perceive the difference between novel sounds ("discrimination") and also associate strings of sounds with distinct vocabulary items ("lexical encoding"). Recent research has questioned whether discrimination is a sufficient or necessary condition for encoding, and…

Although research on cognitive correlates of spelling has been conducted, these studies generally do not distinguish between different types of targets that need to be spelled. Arguably, the contributions of these skills differ for words opposed to pseudowords and for targets that can be spelled on the basis of phoneme-to-grapheme conversion…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…

Students beyond the primary grades who struggle with reading lack basic word attack ability and are thus unable to read new words with accuracy. However, there has been little research that reveals the specific word attack errors students exhibit. In this study, 123 struggling adolescent readers receiving special education services were given the…

Many children who neutralize phonemic contrasts in production exhibit diminished perception of the same contrasts. It is usually difficult to determine whether the perception deficit caused the production error, or vice versa; however, the direction of causation has implications for treatment planning. This study examines perception-production…

The central purpose of this three-paper dissertation was to explore the ability of school-age children with and without language-learning disabilities (LLD) to apply sound/word level structure knowledge when performing speaking, spelling, and reading tasks. Data came from a larger investigation that used stratified sampling to create two ability…

Studies investigating voicing onset time (VOT) production by speakers with aphasia have shown that nonfluent aphasics show a deficit in the articulatory programming of speech sounds based on the range of VOT values produced by aphasic individuals. If the VOT value lies between the normal range of VOT for the voiced and voiceless categories, then…

Non-word repetition (NWR) was investigated in adolescents with typical development, Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Autism Plus language Impairment (ALI) (n = 17, 13, 16, and mean age 14;4, 15;4, 14;8 respectively). The study evaluated the hypothesis that poor NWR performance in both groups indicates an overlapping language phenotype…

We statistically examined the oral reading fluency of 295 adults with low literacy by analyzing total words read per minute and word error rates. We identified four fluency-ability groupings based on standardized assessments of reading-related skills (phonemic awareness, word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension, and general ability). Our…

The nature and frequency of speech production errors in neurodegenerative disease have not previously been precisely quantified. In the present study, 16 patients with a progressive form of non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) were asked to tell a story from a wordless children's picture book. Errors in production were classified as either phonemic,…

Neighborhood density influences adult performance on several word processing tasks. Some studies show age-related effects of density on children's performance, reflecting a developmental restructuring of the mental lexicon from holistic into segmental representations that may play a role in phonological awareness. To further investigate density…

The authors studied the acquisition of nine #sC clusters in 30 Croatian-speaking phonologically disordered children, aged between 3;8-7;0 years, by analysing their renditions of target words elicited in response to visual stimuli presented on a computer screen. Results did not support the idea that a greater jump in sonority from C1 to C2 would…

This study provides detailed descriptions of the reading impairments in four 10-year-old Norwegian children with dyslexia. In all four cases reading comprehension was well in advance of the children's slow and inaccurate word-recognition skills. Phonological decoding (as assessed by pseudohomophone and nonword reading) appeared relatively…