Gierut / Learnability Project

Permanent link for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/20061

The Learnability Project was founded in 1985 by Judith A. Gierut, Professor Emerita of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University. Through funding from the National Institutes of Health, the project served as a test site in evaluation of the efficacy of clinical treatment for preschool children with functional (nonorganic) phonological disorders. Children who enrolled contributed longitudinal descriptive phonological samples for linguistic analysis. They also received clinical treatment, designed as single-subject experiments, to establish the optimal teaching conditions to promote phonological learning. Experimental studies were based on the triangulation of theoretical models of linguistics, psycholinguistics, and speech-language pathology, with the aim of bridging theory with application and science with best practices. The Learnability Project collections accord with the data sharing plan of the National Institutes of Health and are intended for broad use by scientists, clinicians, and students interested in language and learning.

Key Personnel
Judith A. Gierut, Professor Emerita of Speech and Hearing Sciences
Daniel A. Dinnsen, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
Michele L. Morrisette, Associate Research Scientist of Speech and Hearing Sciences

Learnability Project Bibliography

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 76

Age of word acquisition effects in treatment of children with phonological delays
(Cambridge University Press, 2012) Gierut, Judith A.; Morrisette, Michele L.
The effects of the age of acquisition (AoA) of words were examined in the clinical treatment of 10 preschool children with phonological delays. Using a single-subject multiple-baseline experimental design, children were enrolled in one of four conditions that varied the AoA of the treated words (early vs. late acquired) relative to their corresponding word frequency (high vs. low frequency). Phonological generalization to treated and untreated sounds in error served as the dependent variable. Results showed that late acquired words induced greater generalization, with an effect size four times greater than early acquired words, whereas the effects of word frequency were minimized. Results are discussed relative to hypotheses about the role of AoA in language acquisition and the relevance of this variable for phonological learning.
An argument for adjuncts: Evidence from a phonologically disordered system
(Cascadilla Press, 1999) Barlow, Jessica A.
An astronomical opacity effect
(IULC Publications, 2008) Dinnsen, Daniel A.
Clinical application of phonological complexity
(California Speech-Language Hearing Association, 2004) Gierut, Judith A.
Commentary: Contributions of evidence-based practices to clinical treatment
(California Speech-Language Hearing Association, 2005) Gierut, Judith A.
Comparability of lexical corpora: Word frequency in phonological generalization
(Informa Healthcare, 2007) Gierut, Judith A.; Dale, Rachel A.
Statistical regularities in language have been examined for new insight to the language acquisition process. This line of study has aided theory advancement, but it also has raised methodological concerns about the applicability of corpora data to child populations. One issue is whether it is appropriate to extend the regularities observed in the speech of adults to developing linguistic systems. The purpose of this paper is to establish the comparability of lexical corpora in accounting for behavioural effects of word frequency on children's phonological generalization. Four word frequency corpora were evaluated in comparison of child/adult and written/spoken sources. These were applied post-hoc to generalization data previously reported for two preschool children. Results showed that the interpretation of phonological generalization was the same within and across children, regardless of the corpus being used. Phonological gains were more evident in low than high frequency words. The findings have implications for the design of probabilistic studies of language acquisition and clinical treatment programmes.
Comparative markedness and induced opacity
(Language Education Institute, 2010) Dinnsen, Daniel A.; Gierut, Judith A.; Farris-Trimble, Ashley W.
Results are reported from a descriptive and experimental study that was intended to evaluate comparative markedness (McCarthy 2002, 2003) as an amendment to optimality theory. Two children (aged 4;3 and 4;11) with strikingly similar, delayed phonologies presented with two independent, interacting error patterns of special interest, i.e., Deaffrication ([tIn] 'chin') and Consonant Harmony ([$\text{g}$ↄ$\text{g}$] 'dog') in a feeding interaction ([kik] 'cheek'). Both children were enrolled in a counterbalanced treatment study employing a multiple base-line single-subject experimental design, which was intended to induce a grandfather effect in one case ([dↄ$\text{g}$] 'dog' and [kik] 'cheek') and a counterfeeding interaction in the other ([$\text{g}$ↄ$\text{g}$] 'dog' and [tik] 'cheek'). The results were largely supportive of comparative markedness, although some anomalies were observed. The clinical implications of these results are also explored.
Consonant clusters in phonological acquisition: Applications to assessment and treatment
(California Speech-Language Hearing Association, 2004) Barlow, Jessica A.
Constraints in phonological acquisition
(Cambridge University Press, 2004) Dinnsen, Daniel A.
Context effects in acquisition of fricatives
(Cascadilla Press, 1996) Dinnsen, Daniel A.
The coronal fricative problem
(Elsevier, 2013) Dinnsen, Daniel A.; Dow, Michael C.; Gierut, Judith A.; Morrisette, Michele L.; Green, Christopher R.
This paper examines a range of predicted versus attested error patterns involving coronal fricatives (e.g. [s, z, θ, ð]) as targets and repairs in the early sound systems of monolingual English-acquiring children. Typological results are reported from a cross-sectional study of 234 children with phonological delays (ages 3 years; 0 months to 7;9). Our analyses revealed different instantiations of a putative developmental conspiracy within and across children. Supplemental longitudinal evidence is also presented that replicates the cross-sectional results, offering further insight into the life-cycle of the conspiracy. Several of the observed typological anomalies are argued to follow from a modified version of Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (McCarthy, 2007).
Cumulative faithfulness effects: Opaque or transparent?
(IULC Publications, 2008) Farris-Trimble, Ashley W.
Demographics Archive
(2015-07-10) Gierut, Judith A.
The Demographics Archive provides diagnostic and case information for 280 children with phonological disorders.
Dense neighborhoods and mechanisms of learning: Evidence from children with phonological delay
(Cambridge University Press, 2015) Gierut, Judith A.; Morrisette, Michele L.
There is a noted advantage of dense neighborhoods in language acquisition, but the learning mechanism that drives the effect is not well understood. Two hypotheses–long-term auditory word priming and phonological working memory–have been advanced in the literature as viable accounts. These were evaluated in two treatment studies enrolling 12 children with phonological delay. Study 1 exposed children to dense neighbors versus nonneighbors before training sound production in evaluation of the priming hypothesis. Study 2 exposed children to the same stimuli after training sound production as a test of the phonological working memory hypothesis. Results showed that neighbors led to greater phonological generalization than nonneighbors, but only when presented prior to training production. There was little generalization and no differential effect of exposure to neighbors or nonneighbors after training production. Priming was thus supported as a possible mechanism of learning behind the dense neighborhood advantage in phonological acquisition.
Density, frequency and the expressive phonology of children with phonological delay
(Cambridge University Press, 2012) Gierut, Judith A.; Morrisette, Michele L.
The effect of word-level variables on expressive phonology has not been widely studied, although the properties of words likely bear on the emergence of sound structure (Stoel-Gammon, 2011). Eight preschoolers, diagnosed with phonological delay, were assigned to treatment to experimentally induce gains in expressive phonology. Erred sounds were taught using stimulus words that varied orthogonally in neighborhood density and word frequency as the independent variables. Generalization was the dependent variable, defined as production accuracy of treated and untreated (erred) sounds. Blocked comparisons showed that dense neighborhoods triggered greater generalization, but frequency did not have a clear differential effect. Orthogonal comparisons revealed graded effects, with frequent words from dense neighborhoods being optimal for generalization. The results contrast with prior literature, which has reported a sparse neighborhood advantage for children with phonological delay. There is a suggestion that children with phonological delay require greater than usual cue redundancy and convergence to prompt expressive phonological learning.
Descriptive linguistic methods for children's speech
(MIT Press, 2004) Gierut, Judith A.
Developmental Phonologies Archive
(2015-07-10) Gierut, Judith A.
The Developmental Phonologies Archive consists of the longitudinal records from each of 280 children in production of probe words that sampled target English singletons, onset and coda clusters.
Developmental shifts in phonological strength relations
(De Gruyter Mouton, 2009) Dinnsen, Daniel A.; Farris-Trimble, Ashley W.
Do children still pick and choose? The relationship between phonological knowledge and lexical acquisition beyond 50 words
(Informa Healthcare, 2006) Storkel, Holly L.
Previous studies document an influence of phonological knowledge on word learning that differs across development. Specifically, children with expressive lexicons of fewer than 50 words learn words composed of IN sounds more rapidly than those composed of OUT sounds (Leonard, Schwartz, Morris, and Chapman, 1981; Schwartz and Leonard, 1982). In contrast, preschool children with larger expressive lexicons show the reverse effect (Storkel, in press). The goal of the current study was to provide a re-analysis of existing data to determine if this discrepancy across studies may be related to how phonological knowledge has been defined. This study defines knowledge on a continuum from most to more to less. Results showed a continuous inverse relationship between phonological knowledge and word learning by preschool children. Specifically, most phonological knowledge was associated with poorest word learning, more knowledge with intermediate word learning, and less knowledge with best word learning. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Effect size for single-subject design in phonological treatment
(2015-07-20) Gierut, Judith A.; Morrisette, Michele L.; Dickinson, Stephanie
Purpose: To document, validate, and corroborate effect size (ES) for single-subject design in treatment of children with functional phonological disorders; to evaluate potential child-specific contributing variables relative to ES; and to establish benchmarks for interpretation of ES for the population. Method: Data were extracted from the Developmental Phonologies Archive for 135 preschool children with phonological disorders who previously participated in single-subject experimental treatment studies. Standard Mean DifferenceAll with Correction for Continuity was computed to gauge the magnitude of generalization gain that accrued longitudinally from treatment for each child, with the data aggregated for purposes of statistical analyses. Results: ES ranged from 0.09 to 27.83 for the study population. ES was positively correlated with conventional measures of phonological learning and visual inspection of learning data based on procedures standard to single-subject design. ES was linked to children’s performance on diagnostic assessments of phonology, but not other demographic characteristics or related linguistic skills and nonlinguistic skills. Benchmarks for interpretation of ES were estimated as 1.4, 3.6, and 10.1 for small, medium, and large learning effects, respectively. Conclusion: Findings have utility for single-subject research and translation of research to evidence-based practice for children with phonological disorders.

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