Phonemic errors of deaf children on a nonsense syllable test.

A closed response nonsense syllable test was developed to assess the reception of gross phonemic contrasts by deaf children. Test items were composed of V, VC, and CV syllables with the vowels /i,a,u/ and the consonants /m,s,g/. The test was administered over a two-year period (1975 and 1976) to one hundred 12-14 year old deaf children enrolled in schools for the deaf throughout New York State. Percentile plots showed improvement in overall performance over the two-year period. Greatest improvements were for vowels. Results indicated a pattern of errors similar to those reported by previous investigators for adults and adolescents [Pickett et al., in Speech Communication Ability and Profound Deafness, 119-133 (1970)]. These included: (1) scores for vowels were consistently higher than those for consonants, (2) scores for /u/ and /a/ were roughly the same and were in turn higher than the scores for /i/, (3) scores for the initial consonants were higher than scores for final consonants except for the nasal in which the reverse was true. [Work supported by Cooperative Research Endeavors in Education of the Deaf (CREED), Bureau for Special School Supervision, Office for Education of Children with Handicapping Conditions]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]