Training Programme for PEPS-C

Introduction The purpose of this training Programme is to help familiarise the examiner with the keypad used to score expressive subtests of PEPS-C, to provide experience of the types of responses children give, and to standardise scoring.

Once PEPS-C is loaded onto your computer, connect the keypad and use it for scoring as follows:

The keypad looks like thisNumLock PLA

Y

? RED

O

STOP

1 2G P

NULL F

A

The Num Lock (top left) key is a “toggle” key. If the Num Lock light on the keypad or the main keyboard comes on at any point during a test, press the Num Lock key to turn it off.

You can judge the practice items following each training subtest and find out how well you agree with expert raters.

Training subtest 1. Short item imitationIn this task children are asked to copy some words from the computer in exactly the same way as they hear them. The examiner must listen to see if the child maintains the function of the target (e.g. does it

Chunking: boundary after 1st item. Contrastive stress: 1st item stressed

Imitation tasks: good imitation

Imitation tasks: poor imitation

Affect: positive affective intonation

Affect: negative affective intonation

All output tasks: ambiguous response

Imitation tasks: fair imitation.

Invalid response: press PLAY skip to next item

Stop subtest/reactivate menu.

Turn-end Type: offering (questioning) ntonation

Redo current item/restart task/restart

Turn-end Type: reading intonation

Redo from previous item

Sue Peppé

sound like negative affect?) and if the child imitates the intonation pattern exactly, partially, or not at all.

The tester should use the keypad and press: G on the keypad for a good response, i.e. a perfect echo of the

intonation of the stimulus. F for a fair response which was not an exact imitation but

maintained the function; e.g. the stimulus was a question and the client used questioning intonation, but not so clearly.

P for a poor or incorrect imitation, e.g. the stimulus was a question but in a slightly different way.

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

Short-item imitation (was Intonation) responsesStimulus (S)

Response (R)

Function-match (/x)

Intonation mismatch:

Judgement

(negative Affect)

none G

: (Offering) none G

: (Negative affect)

S: fall-rise R: fall F

: (Reading) S: fall R: level F

: (Reading) R: fall-rise P

: (Reading) none, although child says ‘sad’, not ‘salad’

G

x: (S: Offering, R: Reading)

S: fall R: rise (‘Poor’ because of intonation, not because child says ‘hare’ not ‘pear’)

P

Note that where function and intonation are mismatched, a poor rating (P) is given. Where one aspect is mismatched, a rating of fair (F) is used and where both intonation and function of child’s response match with the target word, a rating of good (G) is used. If the child says the wrong word or phoneme, no mark is deducted unless the intonation or function is wrong as well.

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as good (G), poor (P) or fair (F).

Stimulus (S)

Response (R)

Trainee judgement(G/ F/ P)

Expert judgement*

Match/ mismatch

poor: S: rise, R: fallgood: S and R both fallsfair: S: fall, R: levelfair: S: rise-fall, R: fallgood: S and R both fall-risepoor: S: fall-rise, R: fall

* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 2. Turn End expressionIn this task, children are asked to produce questioning (offering) and declarative (reading) intonation. If the screen shows someone holding out food on a plate, they should say the word with questioning intonation – in these the intonation ends on a final word or syllable with a high pitch.If the screen shows someone reading from a book they should use declarative intonation as if commenting that they have seen it. In this instance the final word or syllable will be medium or low pitch.

On the keypad the tester will use these buttons on to score the child’s responses:

How to scoreWhile the client proceeds, the tester should avoid looking at the screen.The tester presses:

? for a response that sounds questioning/asking (option ‘O’ - ‘offering’ - in rating procedure)

for a response that sounds affirming/telling (option ‘R’ - ‘reading’ - in rating procedure)

A for ambiguous responses where it’s not clear what the response indicates.

NULL is for when a child indicates the type of item by something other than prosody, e.g. by saying “Have a pear.” (no examples available) when looking at a question-type item. The item is not scored in such cases.

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

? A NULL

Turn-end Type responsesExample

Description Function Judgment

wide-range rise, starting low, ending high

Offering ?

medium-range fall, starting mid-low, ending low

Reading

medium-range rise, starting mid-high, ending high

Offering ?

medium-range fall, starting mid-low, ending low

Reading

level Ambiguous

A

level/narrow rise, ending mid-high: does not end high enough to be ‘offering’

Ambiguous

A

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as ?, , A or Null. If you use the NULL button, remember to press PLAY on the keypad to continue.

Child’s response

Trainee judgement ?//A/Null

Expert judgement* Match/ mismatch

offering: wide rise ending high

reading: low fall

ambiguous: narrow rise ending mid-highoffering: narrow rise ending high

ambiguous: narrow rise ending mid-highreading: low fall

* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 3: Affect expression

In this task children are asked to use their intonation to express their feelings about the food pictured. They should signal if they like the food or not by saying it with positive or negative intonation. (In the test, the happy and sad faces reappear after this and the child clicks on the appropriate one to show his actual feelings.)

On the keypad, the tester selects the face that sounds like the best match for the client’s attitude:

for ‘likes it’ (L in scoring procedure) for ‘doesn’t like it’ (D in scoring procedure) A if response is unclear or ambiguous NULL: some words (e.g. ‘YES’, ‘NO’, ‘UGH’ etc.) indicate feelings without

the need for intonation; where such words occur, the name of the food sometimes carries no affective intonation: if so, items should be counted as Null. If words other than the food-item carry affective intonation this may can be taken as an indication of feelings.

Intonation of Affect responses is as follows:Intonational features that convey positive affect include:

rise-fall wide pitch-range extra loudness

Intonational features that convey negative affect include: narrow pitch range or flat tone reduced loudness

Some clients may use different intonational features and establish a system of contrasts in the course of this task that is still intelligible and therefore scorable.

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

Affect ExpressionExample Description Implicatio

nJudgment

rise-fall Likes

narrow fall Doesn’t like

wide range fall, high starting-pitch Likes

narrow-range fall-rise, bored-sounding

Doesn’t like

quick rise-fall, excited-sounding Likes

slow low narrow fall, creaky Doesn’t like

medium-range fall-rise Ambiguous

A

low level Ambiguous

A

child says ‘yuk’ after word; word itself expresses no affect

Unscorable

Null

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as , , A or Null.Child’s response

Trainee judgement (//A/Null)

Expert judgement* Match/ mismatch

likes: wide rise-fall

doesn’t like: low fall

ambiguous: low level

likes: wide rise-fall

ambiguous: low level

doesn’t like: low fall

says ‘yum’ before ‘cheese’, but ‘cheese’ expresses feelings

* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 4. Long item imitationIn this task children are asked to imitate phrases and the way they are said.

NOTE: The stimuli are intended to elicit nuances of prosody, not merely a 2-way functional distinction, and clients should be encouraged to listen carefully before imitating the stimulus. They should also be encouraged to pay little attention to regional accent differences in the stimuli. They will not be penalised for segmental or lexical errors.

On the keypad, the tester should press: G for a good response (exact imitation); F for a fair response: not exact repetition, i.e. the place of stress or

chunking is exaggerated or minimal compared with stimulus but the function is maintained, i.e. the stress is on the same word as in the stimulus, or the words are chunked as in stimulus.

P for poor/incorrect response (e.g. stress on wrong word, chunking misleading)

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

Long item responsesStimulus

ExampleResponse

Function: match (/x/?)

Prosody mismatch: Judgment

Boundary (after ‘biscuits’):

none G

Stress place: (‘SOCKS’):

none except in phonemes (/bu/ for ‘blue’: not important)

G

Boundary (after ‘chocolate’): x

no boundary, no pauses

P

Stress place (socks): x

stress on ‘blue’ P

Stress place (red):x

slight stress on socks F

Boundary (after ‘buns’): ?

ambiguous boundary F

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as good (G), poor (P) or fair (F).

Stimulus

Child’s response

Trainee judgement (G, P, F)

Expert judgement* Match/ mismatch

G stress place right

P: boundary after black, and stress on socksF: no pause after black

F: boundaries right, wrong stress on ‘socks’G: boundaries and stress right, in spite of re-startP: stress wrong: on ‘socks’ in S, on ‘red’ in R

* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 5. Chunking expressionIn this task children are asked to produce syntactically ambiguous phrases unambiguously. An example of such a phrase is the utterance ‘chocolate biscuits and jam’, which can either indicate 3 separate items (chocolate, biscuits, and jam) or two (chocolate-biscuits and

jam) They do this by prosodically marking boundaries in particular places to group the words of an utterance into different ‘chunks’.

Prosodic features that indicate the end of a chunk of an utterance include:

a pause after the chunk last syllable of the chunk is longer than non-final syllables a rising tone on the final word of the chunk.

For example these are: “pink / and green-and-black socks.”, The speaker can pause after “pink” or lengthen that word to make this meaning clear.

On the keypad, the tester should press: 1 if the client marked the boundary after the first word 2 if the boundary was after the second word A if the boundary was ambiguous NULL if it was unscorable. The client might express three items by saying

“pink SOCKS and black and green socks”, “chocolate AND A cake and jam”, thus indicating 3 items by use of extra words rather than prosody. If the client makes a second attempt, it must be very clear which picture is intended for the item to be scorable.

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

Chunking responses

Example

Description Implication Judg’t

cream long, not grouped with ‘buns’

Boundary after 1st word (‘cream’)

1

‘cream’ and ‘buns’ grouped together with clear break after them

Boundary after 2nd word (‘buns’)

2

‘pink and red’ grouped together with clear break after them

Boundary after 2nd colour

2

green and’ is separated from ‘black and pink’, which are more closely grouped together

Boundary after 1st colour (green)

1

colours evenly spaced Ambiguous A

no breaks, no groupings of words Ambiguous A

words ‘socks’ inserted after first colour

Unscorable NULL

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as 1(boundary after 1st word), 2 (boundary after 2nd word), A, or Null. Child’s response

Trainee judgement:1/2/A/null

Expert judgement* Match/ mismatch

2: ‘fish’ grouped with ‘fingers’1: break after 1st colourA: break after each colour2: clear break after 1st 2 coloursA: grouping unclear1: says ‘socks’ after 1st colour, but restarts making a break after 1st colourU: puts in ‘a’ before ‘chocolate’, doesn’t restart it and correct it

* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 6: Contrastive stress expression (formerly ‘Focus’ task)

In this task children are asked to use contrastive stress to correct errors made by a football commentator when sheep and cows play each other.

For example, if the child says “the green sheep”, they can either place the stress on the adjective (green) or the noun (sheep).

The prosodic features on the stressed wordare: tone (usually falling) pitch step-up before the word extra loudness extra length

On the keypad the tester should press: 1 if the client used contrastive stress on the colour (1st word of noun

phrase) 2 if the contrastive stress was on the animal (2nd word of noun phrase) A if the stress was ambiguous, i.e. hard to tell where it was placed NULL – although no instances of this are available from existing data, one

possible occasion for Null items in this task is when clients stumble over word-choice and correct themselves; the stress on what they then say may (properly) reflect their self-correction. Similarly, if the tester corrects a client who has ‘misread’ the picture (e.g. by introducing an invalid colour or animal), the client may place stress in a way that reflects the tester’s interjection rather than the stimulus. These items should be treated as unscorable (Null). Another type of response occasion that might be thought unscorable is if the client fails to include ‘cow’ or ‘sheep’ and says ’one’ instead. If this occurs, testers should listen for whether stress is placed (correctly) on the colour or (incorrectly) on ‘one’.

Here are some examples of responses and how to rate them:

Contrastive stress responsesExample

Implication Judgment

pitch step-up before ‘cow’, louder than ‘red’

Stress on animal

2

pitch step-up before ‘red’, louder than ‘cow’

Stress on colour

1

‘black’ and ‘sheep’ are equally stressed (main stress is on ‘ball’)

Ambiguous A

starts putting stress on white and then changes to ‘sheep’ (higher and louder)

Stress on animal

2

stress on ‘horse’. Name of animal wrong but correctly stressed

Stress on animal

2

the blue one (scorable: stress could be on ‘blue’ or ‘one’)

Stress on colour

1

You can practise with these:Score the children’s samples below as 1 (stress on colour), 2 (stress on animal), A or NullChild’s response

Trainee judgement:1/2/A/null

Expert judgement* Match/ mismatch

2: stress on ‘sheep’1: stress on ‘red’2: stress on ‘sheep’A: ‘white’ and ‘sheep’ are equally stressed; main stress is on ‘ball’1 stress on ‘blue’A: ‘green’ and ‘cow’ are equally stressed; main stress is on ‘has’

font is white. To see answers, change font colour

That completes the Training Programme. Good luck!