Purpose: Place and manner of articulation in American English-learning children's salient consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]V) target words (e.g., "baby," "bunny," and "cookie") were compared with their actual productions of these words. We hypothesized that target words with repeated place…

Purpose: Consonant repetitions within words are a well-attested speech error pattern in children's early speech acquisition. We investigated the role of intervening vowel context in understanding speech forms containing consonant repetitions in early words. Intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and…

The goal of this study was to investigate non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In the spontaneous speech of eighteen participants, target words with a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into…

Purpose: Attaining speech accuracy requires that children perceive and attach meanings to vocal output on the basis of production system capacities. Because auditory perception underlies speech accuracy, profiles for children with hearing loss (HL) differ from those of children with normal hearing (NH). Method: To understand the impact of auditory…

Purpose: To consider interactions of vocal tract change with growth and perceived output patterns across development, the influence of nonuniform vocal tract growth on the ability to reach acoustic-perceptual targets for English vowels was studied. Method: Thirty-seven American English speakers participated in a perceptual categorization…

This article evaluates the "Frames, then Content" hypothesis for speech acquisition, which sees babbling as a direct result of producing syllabic "frames" by rhythmic mandibular oscillation with little of the "content" seen under mandible-independent control. Analysis of 6,659 utterances of 6 normally developing…

The availability of cochlear implants in younger children has provided the opportunity to evaluate the relative impact of the production system, or the sounds young children can say, and the auditory system, or the sounds children can hear, on early vocal communication. Limited access to the acoustic properties of speech results in differences in…

Purpose: Vocalization development has not been studied thoroughly in infants with early-identified hearing loss who receive hearing aids in the 1st year of life. This study sought to evaluate the relationship between auditory sensitivity and prelinguistic vocalization patterns in infants during the babbling stage. Method: Spontaneous…