A Preliminary Study of Verbal Style among Normal and Speech Defective Children

Abstract

This study was concerned with oral language style of children. The Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (CMMS) was administered to three matched groups of 16 Ss who varied in their ability to articulate phonemes correctly. Utilizing Jakobson’s similarity-contiguity model, each child’s explanations for his nonverbal choices were classified. The 48 children showed a marked preference for nominative-type rationale when presented with the “easier” items (1–50) and for contiguity when the more difficult cards (51–80) were given. Although speech handicapped children used a higher percentage of contiguity utterances, the differences between groups were not significant. The Ss who scored in the lower 50th percentile of the CMMS made significantly greater use of contiguity than those children who were in the upper 50th percentile. An alternate system for classifying children diagnosed as having functional articulation defects was suggested.