Hesitations and relative proeminence in prosodic constituents in children's speech.
Cristyane de Camargo Sampaio Villega, Lourenço Chacon
PMID 35019076WHAT IT FOUND
In 24 typical children, hesitations were more often in less prominent parts of speech units than in prominent parts, but they also appeared in prominent parts.
Key findings
01Hesitation events were more frequent in weak positions than in strong positions across all four prosodic constituents.
02Hesitations also occurred in strong positions, not only in weak positions.
03The reported weak-position percentages were 71.63% for phonological utterance, 79.36% for intonational phrase, 83.63% for phonological phrase, and 84.80% for clitic group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The children were screened, and those with deviating patterns were excluded, so the results describe typical speech rather than children with fluency problems. The data came from one age group with an average age of 5.7 years and one discourse genre, an interview. The analysis did not relate each hesitation type individually to the prosodic constituents. The study did not consider pragmatic or interpersonal roles between the interviewer and the child.
Declared interests
The funding and conflicts section reports support from CAPES. It does not state additional conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hesitations in prominent parts of speech are abnormal. Prominent-position hesitations were observed in typical children, and children with deviating screening patterns were excluded.