Effect Of Prolonged Pacifier Use On Speech Articulation

Abstract

The hypothesis of the current research study was that children who frequently use pacifiers past the age of 2 years would display more articulation errors and patterns than children with limited or no pacifier use. The specific research question was whether there was a difference in articulation errors between children who used a pacifier and children who did not use a pacifier for a prolonged duration and frequency. Experimental subjects included seven children who had used a pacifier for at least 2 years and who were either currently using a pacifier or who had discontinued using a pacifier within 6 months. Seven control subjects were matched to within 3 months of each experimental subject's age and had either no history or less than a year of previous pacifier use.

All subjects were administered the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-Second Edition (GFTA-2) (Goldman & Fristoe, 2000). Subtests of the Second Contextual Articulation Tests (S-CAT) (Secord & Shine, 1997) were also administered. The word imitating tasks for the phonemes Isl, /zl, Id/, It/ and /1/ were administered to probe alveolar phoneme articulation. These specific phonemes were evaluated due to expected age emergence of these phonemes. Garber and Reynolds (1994) examined alveolar stop retractions during pacifier use and Van Norman (2001, p. 65) examined "speech distortion of the sibilants Isl and /z/ and lingual alveolar consonants /t/, Id/, and /1/" in children who used pacifiers.

The results showed that the pacifier and non-pacifier users' mean standard scores on the GFTA-2 were within the average range and similar between the groups; however, the pacifier group scored more than 10 percent lower on their mean accuracy of alveolar stops and fricatives on S-CAT probes than the control group. The non-pacifier users as a group consistently obtained greater percent accuracies and standard scores on all articulation tasks (i.e., GFTA-2 and S-CAT probes).

Date of Award	2010
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	Eastern Illinois University