Open Collections

Multisyllabic word production of school-aged children with and without protracted phonological development

University of British Columbia

Few studies exist concerning multisyllabic word development, yet researchers suggest that evaluation of long words is essential for phonological assessment of school-aged children (e.g. Holm, Farrier, & Dodd, 2008; James, 2006). Furthermore, multisyllabic word (MSW) production may be related to literacy development (Carroll & Snowling, 2004). The goal of this thesis therefore was to further study the phonological acquisition of MSWs. The dissertation begins with a meta-analysis (Chapter 2) that examines factors related to word level literacy skills in children with and without protracted phonological development (PPD). Fifty-two eligible studies were evaluated that had measured at least one word level literacy construct. Sixty-four independent samples were generated for evaluation of: Phonological awareness, Decoding, Fluency, Nonword decoding and Spelling. A mean mixed weighted d was compared on the Q-statistic using a random effects model. MSW evaluation was a relevant moderator of literacy for children with PPD as expected and motivated the remainder of the thesis. A pilot study (Chapter 3) evaluated a new MSW metric based on nonlinear phonological and language processing frameworks. Six MSWs were analyzed for ten English-speaking typically developing (TD) 5-year-olds, and eight French-speaking 3- to 4-year-olds with PPD. Mismatches were tallied and ranked, and compared with tallies from Phonological Mean Length of Utterance (Ingram, 2002) and Percent Consonants Correct (Shriberg, Austin, Lewis, McSweeny, & Wilson, 1997). The number of different ranks was significant and systematically higher with the new metric. Chapter 4 examines production of 20 MSWs in three sub-studies: (a) longitudinal: 44 TD children at ages 5 and 8 to 10 years; (b) cross-sectional by age: twelve age-matched 8- to 10-year-olds with and without PPD; and (c) cross-sectional by group: 62 TD 5-year-olds and the 12 8- to 10-year-olds with PPD. Lexical and phonological tallies decreased significantly between ages 5 and 8 years for the TD children. The 8- to 10-year-olds with PPD showed overall scores equivalent to those of the TD 5-year-olds although some different mismatch (error) patterns. In summary, the thesis further examines the link between MSWs and literacy and provides both a new whole-word metric for MSWs and phonological data for school-aged children.

Text

2015-12-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/55983

Audiology and Speech Sciences

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/