Mapping Mazes: Developing a Taxonomy to Investigate Mazes in Children’s Stories

• Author / Creator

  MacLurg, Amanda R

• Pausing, repeating, revising, and abandoning words and phrases are common characteristics of speech called mazes. Mazes affect the fluency of speech and are thought be related to language ability and language processes. Few relationships between mazes and language ability and language processes have been identified. This is due to methodological differences in how researchers have coded mazes and approached elicitation tasks. The main purpose of this study was to address these methodological challenges by developing a reliable and objective maze taxonomy. Once developed, the maze taxonomy was applied to the stories of Kindergarten and Grade Two students. Stories were elicited from oral and picture tasks to determine age or task effects on maze production. Overall, the Kindergarten and Grade Two students produced mazes at similar rates and used more mazes in stories elicited from oral tasks than picture tasks.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Stories
  • Elicitation tasks
  • Mazes
  • Speech disruptions
  • Maze taxonomy

• Graduation date

  Spring 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Z40X

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.