Tongue-palate contact of perceptually acceptable alveolar stops.

Increased tongue-palate contact for perceptually acceptable alveolar stops has been observed in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). This is a retrospective study that further investigated this issue by using quantitative measures to compare the target alveolar stops /t/, /d/ and /n/ produced in words by nine children with SSD (20 tokens of /t/, 13 /d/ and 11 /n/) to those produced by eight typical children (32 /t/, 24 /d/ and 16 /n/). The results showed that children with SSD had significantly higher percent contact than the typical children for target /t/; the difference for /d/ and /n/ was not significant. Children with SSD generally showed more contact in the posterior central area of the palate than the typical children. The results suggested that broader tongue-palate contact is a general articulatory feature for children with SSD and its differential effect on error perception might be related to the different articulatory requirements.