This report presents a comprehensive review of efficacy studies for minimal contrasts therapy and maximal oppositions therapy. The target population was defined as children with phonological disorders who had no co-occurring impairments in hearing, receptive language, speech articulation, or oral-motor structure and function. Thirty three minimal contrasts studies from 1981 to 2008 and six maximal oppositions studies from 1990 to 2008 were identified. No studies from 2009 to 2012 were found. The majority of the studies were either Level III (descriptive studies, 34.2%) or Level IIb (quasi-experimental studies, 57.9%). Twenty three studies reported treatment duration, which ranged from six to 58 hours. Based on reports of treatment success and generalization to new linguistic and communicative contexts, it was found that minimal contrasts therapy has greater support in the literature. Additional studies using a uniform methodology will be needed to establish the validity of maximal oppositions therapy. Recommendations are made for future studies of minimal contrasts and maximal oppositions. / text

A phonological disorder is a communication disorder of the speech sound system characterized by an impaired ability to use developmentally expected speech sounds and sound patterns to communicate with others (Bauman-Waengler, 2004). This impairment affects the clarity of a child's speech and how easily a child's speech can be understood. As stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), difficulties with speech sound production may interfere with academic achievement, social communication, or future occupational achievement. Children with phonological impairments are generally viewed as being at risk for reading difficulties (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2001).Clinicians and researchers in speech-language pathology agree that efficient treatment of children who have moderate to severe phonological disorders is critical. Although imitation and structured practice are primary strategies employed by speech- language pathologists for practicing speech production, using communicative tasks to facilitate generalization during phonological intervention has been suggested in the literature.The purpose of this study was to determine if communication-centered phonological intervention would be effective in improving speech production in preschool children with moderate to severe phonological disorders. A single subject multiple probe across subjects research design (Horner andamp; Baer, 1978) was used to assess the effectiveness of communication-centered phonological intervention with three preschool children. The communication-centered phonological intervention in this investigation consisted of the combined application of focused stimulation of key words during joint storybook reading and interactive practice of key words using communicative feedback.All three subjects demonstrated some type of phonological improvement following the communication-centered intervention. Two out of the three subjects demonstrated improvement in the use of the target phonological patterns during theintervention sessions with one of these participants demonstrating generalization of the target phonological pattern to conversational speech. Although the third subject did not demonstrate improvement during the intervention period, follow-up testing revealed some system-wide changes in his phonology that may be attributed to the intervention. Further investigation of communication-centered phonological intervention is warranted.

Orientador: Luiz Carlos Cagliari / Banca: Paula Tavares Pinto Paiva / Banca: Larissa Cristina Berti / Resumo: O presente trabalho de mestrado refere-se a um estudo acústico de pronúncia, que tem como principal objetivo verificar e analisar, por meio de registros de fala de professores brasileiros, de alunos de língua inglesa em nível intermediário e avançado, e de falantes nativos americanos, a maneira como esses indivíduos realizam os pares mínimos vocálicos /i/ e /I/, /E/ e /Q/. O primeiro critério de análise foi a aplicação de um questionário aos professores e alunos participantes; por meio dele, foi possível traçar as competências dos docentes e definir a atuação dos discentes como alunos de inglês; ademais, foi possível encaixá-los nos níveis de proficiência determinados pela escola onde os dados foram coletados. Com relação aos critérios acústicos, foram utilizados os seguintes parâmetros: o valor das freqüências de F1 e F2 das vogais produzidas pelos sujeitos participantes, sendo possível verificar o movimento de avanço / recuo e levantamento / abaixamento do corpo da língua durante a articulação dos segmentos; a diferença formântica entre F1 e F2, parâmetro que melhor define o grau de posterioridade de um som vocálico; e, por fim, a duração dos segmentos, parâmetro acústico essencial para a distinção entre as vogais analisadas. Sobre a metodologia de pesquisa, foram gravados 28 sujeitos: dois americanos nativos, dois professores brasileiros de inglês e 24 alunos brasileiros de uma escola de idiomas localizada em São José do Rio Preto (SP). Foi pedido para que cada indivíduo repetisse os pares de palavras cheap / chip e beg / bag três vezes (nesses vocábulos, realizam-se as vogais /i/ e /I/, /E/ e /Q/). Por meio das gravações, foi possível realizar a medição da freqüência dos formantes F1 e F2 das vogais produzidas por eles, bem como a medição da duração de cada som vocálico. A repetição por três vezes dos pares mínimos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This master paper is an acoustic study of pronunciation, whose main goal is verify and analyze, through speech data of Brazilian teachers, intermediate and advanced students of English, and American native speakers, the way these people produce the vocalic minimal pairs /i/ and /I/, /E/ and /Q/. The first criterion of analysis was related to a questionnaire answered by the teachers and the students; this questionnaire allowed the researcher to define the teachers' competences and the learners' behavior as English students; besides, it was possible to fit them into the levels of proficiency determined by the school where the data was collected. Regarding the acoustic criteria, the following fundamental parameters were taken into consideration: F1 and F2 frequency values of vowels produced by the participants, in which it was possible to verify the tongue movements, associated with advancement and height, during the segmental articulation; the formant differences between F1 and F2, which better defines the posterior position of a vowel; and, finally, the segmental duration, which is an important acoustic parameter to distinguish the analyzed vowels. Concerning the research methodology, 28 people were recorded: two native Americans, two Brazilian English teachers and 24 Brazilian students from a language school located in São José do Rio Preto (SP). Each person had to repeat the pair of words cheap / chip and beg / bag for three times (in such words, the vowels /i/ and /I/, /E/ and /Q/ are expected to occur). With the recordings, it was possible to measure F1 and F2 frequencies of the vowels produced by the participants, as well as the duration of each vocalic sound. In the analyses, the absolute values of the formants and duration were not taken into consideration but an arithmetic average of the values from the three utterances of each case. It was concluded that the Brazilian... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Il y a (au moins) deux questions fondamentales que l’on est amené à se poser lorsqu’on étudie le langage: comment acquiert-on le langage? —le problème d’apprentissage —et pourquoi les langues du monde partagent certaines propriétés mais pas d’autres? —le problème typologique. Dans cette thèse, j’entreprends de relier ces deux domaines en me focalisant sur le lexique, l’ensemble des mots de notre langue et leur sens associés, en posant les questions suivantes: pourquoi le lexique est-il tel qu’il est? Et est-ce que les propriétés du lexique peuvent être (en partie) expliquées par la façon dont les enfants apprennent leur langue? Un des aspects les plus frappants du lexique est que les mots que nous utilisons sont ambigus et peuvent être confondus facilement avec d’autres. En effet, les mots peuvent avoir plusieurs sens (par exemple, les homophones) et sont représentés par un ensemble limité de sons qui augmentent la possibilité qu’ils soient confondus (par exemple, les paires minimales). L’existence de ces mots semble présenter un problème pour les enfants qui apprennent leur langue car il a été montré qu’ils ont des difficultés à apprendre des mots dont les formes sonores sont proches et qu’ils résistent à l’apprentissage des mots ayant plusieurs sens. En combinant une approche computationnelle et expérimentale, je montre, quantitativement, que les mots du lexique sont, en effet, plus similaires que ce qui serait attendu par chance, et expérimentalement, que les enfants n’ont aucun problème à apprendre ces mots à la condition qu’ils apparaissent dans des contextes suffisamment distincts. Enfin, je propose que l’étude des mots ambigus permet de révéler des éléments importants du mécanisme d’apprentissage du langage qui sont actuellement absents des théories actuelles. Cet ensemble d’études suggère que les mots ambigus et les mots similaires, bien que présents dans le langage, n’apparaissent pas arbitrairement dans le langage et que leur organisation reflète (en partie) la façon dont les enfants apprennent leur langue. / Modern cognitive science of language concerns itself with (at least) two fundamental questions: how do humans learn language? —the learning problem —and why do the world’s languages exhibit some properties and not others? —the typology problem. In this dissertation, I attempt to link these two questions by looking at the lexicon, the set of word-forms and their associated meanings, and ask why do lexicons look the way they are? And can the properties exhibited by the lexicon be (in part) explained by the way children learn their language? One striking observation is that the set of words in a given language is highly ambiguous and confusable. Words may have multiple senses (e.g., homonymy, polysemy) and are represented by an arrangement of a finite set of sounds that potentially increase their confusability (e.g., minimal pairs). Lexicons bearing such properties present a problem for children learning their language who seem to have difficulty learning similar sounding words and resist learning words having multiple meanings. Using lexical models and experimental methods in toddlers and adults, I present quantitative evidence that lexicons are, indeed, more confusable than what would be expected by chance alone. I then present empirical evidence suggesting that toddlers have the tools to bypass these problems given that ambiguous or confusable words are constrained to appear in distinct context. Finally, I submit that the study of ambiguous words reveal factors that were currently missing from current accounts of word learning. Taken together this research suggests that ambiguous and confusable words, while present in the language, may be restricted in their distribution in the lexicon and that these restrictions reflect (in part) how children learn languages.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-03-15Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:23:47Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 martins_mj_me_arafcl.pdf: 1892200 bytes, checksum: 364a6a751bd333f35160a4a97600eee8 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O presente trabalho de mestrado refere-se a um estudo acústico de pronúncia, que tem como principal objetivo verificar e analisar, por meio de registros de fala de professores brasileiros, de alunos de língua inglesa em nível intermediário e avançado, e de falantes nativos americanos, a maneira como esses indivíduos realizam os pares mínimos vocálicos /i/ e /I/, /E/ e /Q/. O primeiro critério de análise foi a aplicação de um questionário aos professores e alunos participantes; por meio dele, foi possível traçar as competências dos docentes e definir a atuação dos discentes como alunos de inglês; ademais, foi possível encaixá-los nos níveis de proficiência determinados pela escola onde os dados foram coletados. Com relação aos critérios acústicos, foram utilizados os seguintes parâmetros: o valor das freqüências de F1 e F2 das vogais produzidas pelos sujeitos participantes, sendo possível verificar o movimento de avanço / recuo e levantamento / abaixamento do corpo da língua durante a articulação dos segmentos; a diferença formântica entre F1 e F2, parâmetro que melhor define o grau de posterioridade de um som vocálico; e, por fim, a duração dos segmentos, parâmetro acústico essencial para a distinção entre as vogais analisadas. Sobre a metodologia de pesquisa, foram gravados 28 sujeitos: dois americanos nativos, dois professores brasileiros de inglês e 24 alunos brasileiros de uma escola de idiomas localizada em São José do Rio Preto (SP). Foi pedido para que cada indivíduo repetisse os pares de palavras cheap / chip e beg / bag três vezes (nesses vocábulos, realizam-se as vogais /i/ e /I/, /E/ e /Q/). Por meio das gravações, foi possível realizar a medição da freqüência dos formantes F1 e F2 das vogais produzidas por eles, bem como a medição da duração de cada som vocálico. A repetição por três vezes dos pares mínimos... / This master paper is an acoustic study of pronunciation, whose main goal is verify and analyze, through speech data of Brazilian teachers, intermediate and advanced students of English, and American native speakers, the way these people produce the vocalic minimal pairs /i/ and /I/, /E/ and /Q/. The first criterion of analysis was related to a questionnaire answered by the teachers and the students; this questionnaire allowed the researcher to define the teachers’ competences and the learners’ behavior as English students; besides, it was possible to fit them into the levels of proficiency determined by the school where the data was collected. Regarding the acoustic criteria, the following fundamental parameters were taken into consideration: F1 and F2 frequency values of vowels produced by the participants, in which it was possible to verify the tongue movements, associated with advancement and height, during the segmental articulation; the formant differences between F1 and F2, which better defines the posterior position of a vowel; and, finally, the segmental duration, which is an important acoustic parameter to distinguish the analyzed vowels. Concerning the research methodology, 28 people were recorded: two native Americans, two Brazilian English teachers and 24 Brazilian students from a language school located in São José do Rio Preto (SP). Each person had to repeat the pair of words cheap / chip and beg / bag for three times (in such words, the vowels /i/ and /I/, /E/ and /Q/ are expected to occur). With the recordings, it was possible to measure F1 and F2 frequencies of the vowels produced by the participants, as well as the duration of each vocalic sound. In the analyses, the absolute values of the formants and duration were not taken into consideration but an arithmetic average of the values from the three utterances of each case. It was concluded that the Brazilian... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)