There is a classic example of child production errors called the “fiss” problem,

Question

There is a classic example of child production errors called the “fiss” problem, in which a child talks to a parent about a “fiss.” When the parent tries to correct the child by saying it’s a “fish” not a “fiss”, the child appears to understand but continues to mispronounce the word. At some point, the parent starts calling the fish a “fiss”, and the child responds: “That’s not a fiss, it’s a FISS!” What does the “fiss” example suggest about children's perception abilities at this age versus their production abilities? What process accounts for the child's actual production?

Explanation / Answer

Children's perception abilities at this age versus their production abilities -

At a young age, the children cannot associte words with ideas which leads to speech errors. However, these children can monitor speech. Correct language production requirs the speech errors to be corrected after they are detected. Correction happend as the children grow. Therefore at an young age, the children are usually able to detect and perceive the speech errors but are not able to correct and repair these semantic errors leading to a faulty speech production as stated in the FISS example.

Child's actual production -

The actual language production in children is associated with the articulation of words. Children articulate words as perceived by them. They can realise the difference in speech and words articulation between theirs and the adults. but even if they perceive this difference , they are unable to correct the fault in their speech. The perception is precceded by the speech production involving an interval between the two. The actual production in children is often associated with speech sounds. the young children have a short term memory and hence they try to ease the burden on their motor coordination. Also the young children have a relatively immature sound system and a fewer vocabulary as compared to the adults which leads to mispronunciation of words.

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