Vowel Production in Children and Adults with Williams Syndrome
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Date
2015-05
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Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Williams Syndrome (WS) is a genetic condition that typically causes mild to severe learning and cognitive disabilities. This study examines the extent to which individuals with WS have atypical uses of segmental aspects of speech production—specifically, the acoustic characteristics of individual vowels compared to vowels produced by typically developing children and typical adults. The main interest of the study was in whether individuals with WS acquired the salient characteristic features of their regional dialect. Six participants who had been diagnosed with WS participated in a word-picture naming test. The set of isolated words produced and recorded represented high-frequency English monosyllabic words which included 11 basic monophthongal vowel phonemes and 3 true diphthongs. Three regional varieties of American English were tested: the dialect spoken in Central Ohio (Columbus area), Northern Ohio (Cleveland area), and in West Virginia (Huntington area). The results show that individuals with WS acquire only some features of their regional variety and show highly variable production patterns.
Description
Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Scholarship
Keywords
williams syndrome, vowel production, dialect, monophthongs, diphthongs