Articulatory Skills in Three-year-old Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to describe the articulation performances of three-year-old children and to observe the relationship between articulation and intelligenec as well as that between articulation and the socioeconomic status of parents. The subjects were 100 children ranging in age from 3 years to 3 years and 11 months, and eneolled in 5 kindergartens and 3 nursery schools in Kyoto city. Screening hearing tests (15 dB, 500-2000 cps) were administered and the hearing of all the subjects fell within normal range. Information on parents occupations was obtained through the questionnaire made by the author. The Suzuki-Binet Intelligence Test and the Kyoto-Binet Intelligence Test were used. The articulation test designated for this study consists of 52 pictures in which 31 phonemes appear once in the initial and the medial positions respectively except /p/ /η/ /ηi/ /g/ /gi/ /mj/ /bj/ /pj/ /çi/ and /rj/. (Some phonemes appear in the final position, but they are omitted since they do not make phonemic differences in Japanese.) At the end of each articulation test, every sound incorrectly produced both in the initial and medial positions during the test was examined again to know whether it would be corrected by the subject following auditory stimulation by the examiner. The results obtained were ; 1. Approximately 80% of all consonants were correctly produced even in the younger half of the subjects ranging in age from 3 years to 3 years and 5 months. 2. No correlation was observed between articulation skill and intelligence. 3. Children of the lower socioeconomic status group showed better articulation than those of the upper socioeconomic status group. 4. In general, the girls tended to indicate better articulation than boys, but the difference was not significant statistically. 5. Most frequent misarticulation was observed in /s/, /ts/ /dz/ next and /ʃ/ /r/ /rj/ in decreasing order. 6. The amount of stimulability of sounds tended to increase among the latter half of the subjects ranging in age from 3 years 6 months to 3 years and 11 months. 7. More inconsistencies of articulation were observed in the latter half of the subjects, but they were limited to only those sounds which are in the process of being learned during this age such as /s/ /dz/ /ʃ/ and /r/. 8. The positions of sounds in words (initial and medial) did not make any striking difference in the difficulty of articulation, but /h/ and /r/ were exceptions.