Are phonological representations feature based?

1. Are phonological representations feature based? Do children think “tug” and “bus” sound similar? Dr Julia Carroll Joanne Myers Department of Psychology University of Warwick, UK

2. Phonological Awareness • Pre-school children struggle with awareness of phonemes (Morias et al, 1974) • They have better performance on rhyme and syllable tasks • They have phonological sensitivity but not awareness (Carroll et al, 2003) What form could this sensitivity take?

3. ‘Fuzzy’ or ‘underspecified’ representations • Elbro (1998): • Children and adults with dyslexia have phonological representations which are not fully specified • Walley (1993) • Typically developing children have ‘global’ representations • What form could these representations take? • Organised by phonetic features rather than phonemes

4. Feature based representations? • Many feature based errors in early speech • Storkel (2002) • Children are likely to classify words together if they share manner of articulation • Only true in sparse phonological neighbourhoods • Jusczyk et al (1999) • Nine month olds show sensitivity to: • Word onsets • Shared manner in word onsets • Varying results so far – small samples, single tasks

5. Current Research • 125 children tested: • 59 from Reception (m= 4;11 years) • 66 from Nursery (m = 4;0 years) • Five measures used, four focused on: • Explicit classification: • Forced Choice (based on Storkel, 2002) • Sound Families • Implicit memory • Word Production • Memory confusions

6. Hypotheses • Young children code words according to phonetic features – particularly manner of articulation • Therefore, they are more likely to say words are similar if they share manner of articulation. • They are likely to be confused by words sharing phonetic features in priming or memory tasks

7. Forced Choice classification tug Same Phoneme Manner Place Different Onset + nucleus tug tough bus son mum mud young mum Rime tug hug Based on Storkel (2002)

8. Forced choice n = 93 • Main effect of relationship to target (F(4,368) = 197.7, p<.01, η2 = .68 • Interaction between word type and relationship (F(4,368) = 11.5; p < 0.01. η2 = .11) • Main effect of neighbourhood density (F(1,92) = 10.6, p < .01, η2 = .10)

9. Forced Choice • Significant effect of relationship • Children are more likely to classify words as similar if they share manner of articulation • Interaction with manner matching being particularly common in the rime • Significant effect of neighbourhood; with more same ratings given for sparse words. • Words are less fully represented in sparse neighbourhoods?

10. Sound families – shared body “beach” “beam” “beak” “bead” “bean” Vowel = same Vowel = different Same Manner Place Different Manner Place Different Onset + nucleus beep team meat read cot food shirt

11. Sound Families – shared rime “bat” “chat” “sat” “cat” “that” Vowel = same Vowel = different Same Manner Place Different Manner Place Different Nucleus + rime pat map gas ham mop wheel ring

12. 81.1% shared a vowel 62.2 % were rhyming words 16.8% shared vowel and manner in the coda Only 2% shared a vowel without shared manner in coda Can you tell me words that sounds like… ? You can even make up words! Only CVCs were analysed Word Production - Coda (n = 79) “Bed” “Nut” “Shop” “That”

13. 81.1% shared a vowel 4.0 % shared onset and vowel 11.6% shared onset with a different vowel 36.9% shared some phonetic features and vowel 39.8% shared vowel but no phonetic features in onset Can you tell me words that sounds like… ? You can even make up words! Only CVCs were analysed Word Production - Onset (n = 79) “Bed” “Nut” “Shop” “That”

14. Memory confusions: Treiman & Breaux, 1982 “[bis]” • Children and adults taught three name – animal associations • Two words share a common phoneme • Two words share ‘global similarity’ • Which pair are most likely to be confused? • Adults – common phoneme pair • Children – globally similar pair “[bun]” “[diz]”

15. Memory Confusions “[mern]” “[moab]” “[vit]” Mern and moab share one phoneme Mern and vit share place of articulation (broadly) 1 manner and phoneme 1 place and phoneme 1 manner and place Time A Time B = 24 hours later

16. Memory Confusions At both time points, 63% of all errors were confusions At both times, distribution of the confusions differs from the random distribution: Time 1: χ2 (3) = 18.01, p < .01 Time 2: χ2 (3) = 81.22, p < .01

17. Summary • Explicit classification • Words sharing manner are more likely to be classified as similar • This is particularly strong word finally • Implicit tasks • Children seem to regard rhyming words as the primary ‘sounds similar’ response • Shared manner is important in the coda in word production • Children make higher levels of manner based and lower levels of anomalous confusions than expected.

18. Conclusions • Young children do represent phonetic features within words • More evidence for manner than place • More common word finally • This is true in implicit and explicit tasks • The effect is not just a learnt strategy but present in representations • This may be why pre-literate children have sound sensitivity, but not phoneme awareness