A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

during the training session, some participants altered the pronunciation and
syllable stress of two words from those presented. As some people with aphasia
have auditory comprehension difficulties and may support their learning using
the written representations of the new words, it was decided to investigate
whether there was a conflict between the written and spoken representations of
the novel words. This was addressed in preliminary study three.
3.4 PRELIMINARY STUDY THREE
As discussed above the aim of this study was simply to investigate and reconcile
any conflict between two of the written novel words used in preliminary studies
one and two and their spoken pronunciations (namely, HAMEKIN and
JUNFLIZ).
3.4.1 Procedure
Ten participants (four male and six female) were chosen randomly from the
researcher’s acquaintances and friends, with the proviso that they had not taken
part in preliminary studies one and two and were not aware of the aims or
details of this preliminary study or the main investigation. The twenty novel
words from preliminary studies one and two were typewritten as a list on an A4
page. Participants were required to read aloud the 20 novel words, as they
would expect them to be pronounced. These pronunciations were transcribed
using broad phonetic transcription.
3.4.2 Results
The two words from preliminary studies one and two that, for some participants,
were in conflict with the original trained pronunciation were the main focus of the
findings (namely, HAMEKIN and JUNFLIZ). Seven of the ten participants read
the word ‘HAMEKIN’ with three syllables i.e. [haməkən] rather than the two
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