Abstract:

The production of tongue twisters has been used to study the planning and organization of speech production in both adults and children. In general, temporal measures have differed as a function of age with older children (10+ yr) showing more adult-like productions than much younger children. In this study, five children, 8 years of age, were audio-tape recorded producing tongue twisters and control stimuli following Smith [B. Smith, Appl. Psycholinguist. 11, 131--144 (1990)]. Phonetic transcriptions of the children's productions will be presented. Measures of VOT, stop consonant closure, and vowel duration will also be presented. Preliminary analysis of VOT, stop consonant closure, and vowel duration will also be presented. Preliminary analysis of VOT measures show that the twister VOT means were longer than the corresponding control VOT means, as have been reported for adults. These results will be compared to the data reported by Smith.