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 this

Redo current item/restart
task/restart
Num
Lock PLAY
Stop subtest/reactivate menu.
Turn-end Type: reading
intonation

Turn-end Type: offering

?   REDO
STOP
Redo from previous item
(questioning) ntonation

Chunking: boundary after 1st

item. Contrastive stress: 1st item
1 2 Sue Peppé
Imitation tasks: fair
imitation.
stressed

Imitation tasks: good

imitation G P  F NULL
Invalid response: press
PLAY skip to next item

Imitation tasks: poor

imitation   A All output tasks:
ambiguous response

Affect: positive affective Affect: negative

intonation affective intonation

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 imitation

In 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 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) responses

Stimulus Response Function-match Intonation mismatch: Judgement
(S) (R) (/x)
 (negative Affect) none G

: (Offering) none G

: (Negative S: fall-rise R: fall F

affect)
: (Reading) S: fall R: level F

: (Reading) R: fall-rise P

: (Reading) none, although child G

says ‘sad’, not ‘salad’
x: (S: Offering, S: fall R: rise (‘Poor’ P
R: Reading) because of intonation,
not because child says
‘hare’ not ‘pear’)

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 Trainee Expert Match/

(R) judgement judgement* mismatch
(G/ F/ P)
poor: S: rise, R:
fall
good: S and R
both falls
fair: S: fall, R:
level
 fair: S: rise-fall,
R: fall
good: S and R
both fall-rise
poor: S: fall-rise,
R: fall
* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 2. Turn End expression

In 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  ? A 
NULL
responses:

How to score
While 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:

Turn-end Type responses

Example Description Function Judgment
wide-range rise, starting low, ending high Offering ?

medium-range fall, starting mid-low, Reading 

ending low
 medium-range rise, starting mid-high, Offering ?
ending high

medium-range fall, starting mid-low, Reading 

ending low
level Ambiguous A

level/narrow rise, ending mid-high: does Ambiguous A

not end high enough to be ‘offering’

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 Trainee Expert judgement* Match/

response judgement mismatch
?//A/Null
offering: wide rise ending high

reading: low fall

ambiguous: narrow rise ending mid-high

offering: narrow rise ending high

ambiguous: narrow rise ending mid-high

reading: 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 Expression
Example Description Implication Judgment
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 Unscorable Null

expresses no affect

You can practise with these:

Score the children’s samples below as , , A or Null.
Child’s Trainee Expert judgement* Match/
response judgement mismatch
(//A/Null)
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 imitation

In 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 responses

Stimulus Example Function: match Prosody mismatch: Judgment
Response (/x/?)
Boundary (after none G
‘biscuits’): 
Stress place: none except in phonemes G
(‘SOCKS’):  (/bu/ for ‘blue’: not
important)
Boundary (after no boundary, no pauses P
‘chocolate’): x
Stress place stress on ‘blue’ P
(socks): x
Stress place slight stress on socks F
(red):x
 Boundary (after ambiguous boundary F
‘buns’): ?

You can practise with these:

Score the children’s samples below as good (G), poor (P) or fair (F).

Stimulus Child’s Trainee Expert judgement* Match/

response judgement mismatch
(G, P, F)
G stress place right

P: boundary after black, and

stress on socks
F: no pause after black

F: boundaries right, wrong

stress on ‘socks’
G: boundaries and stress
right, in spite of re-start
P: stress wrong: on ‘socks’ in
S, on ‘red’ in R
* font is white. To see answers, change font colour

Training subtest 5. Chunking expression

In 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 1
word (‘cream’)
‘cream’ and ‘buns’ grouped together Boundary after 2nd 2
with clear break after them word (‘buns’)
‘pink and red’ grouped together with Boundary after 2
clear break after them 2nd colour
green and’ is separated from ‘black Boundary after 1st 1
and pink’, which are more closely colour (green)
grouped together
colours evenly spaced Ambiguous A

no breaks, no groupings of words Ambiguous A

words ‘socks’ inserted after first Unscorable NULL

colour

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 Trainee Expert judgement* Match/
response judgement: mismatch
1/2/A/null
2: ‘fish’ grouped with ‘fingers’

1: break after 1st colour

A: break after each colour

2: clear break after 1st 2 colours

A: grouping unclear

1: says ‘socks’ after 1st colour, but

restarts making a break after 1st colour
U: 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 responses

Example Implication Judgment
pitch step-up before ‘cow’, louder than Stress on 2
‘red’ animal
pitch step-up before ‘red’, louder than Stress on 1
‘cow’ colour
‘black’ and ‘sheep’ are equally stressed Ambiguous A
(main stress is on ‘ball’)
starts putting stress on white and then Stress on 2
changes to ‘sheep’ (higher and louder) animal
stress on ‘horse’. Name of animal wrong Stress on 2
but correctly stressed animal
the blue one (scorable: stress could be on Stress on 1
‘blue’ or ‘one’) colour

You can practise with these:

Score the children’s samples below as 1 (stress on colour), 2 (stress on animal),
A or Null
Child’s Trainee Expert judgement* Match/
response judgement: mismatch
1/2/A/null
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!