Speech acoustic-cue discrimination abilities of normally developing and language-impaired children
- 1 February 1981
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- Vol. 69 (2), 568-574
- https://doi.org/10.1121/1.385431
Abstract
The ability of 35 language impaired (LI) and 38 normally developing children between the ages of 5-8 1/2 yr to discriminate between speech stimuli, using an operantly conditioned, nonverbal motor response, was investigated. Six syllable contrasts, [ba] vs. [da], [da] vs. [ta], [.epsilon.], vs. [ae], [dab] vs. [daeb], [sa] vs. [sta] and [sa] vs. [.intg.a], were selected to investigate discrimination of various temporal and spectral cues. The LI group made most errors discriminating syllables which were differentiated by consonants and fewest errors on those differentiated by vowels. The normal group made most errors discriminating between syllables including fricatives and brief vowels and fewest errors on stimuli differentiated by stop consonants or vowels in context. The LI group was significantly poorer than the normals in discriminating all syllables that incorporated brief temporal cues followed rapidly in succession by other acoustic cues. They also were impaired in discriminating [sa] vs. [.intg.a]. They were unimpaired discriminating stimuli differentiated by vowels. Apparently, the particular constraints demonstrated by LI children in their nonverbal and speech processing abilities may be attributed to abnormalities in mechanisms involved in auditory masking.This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Novel Reinforcement Procedure for Use in Perceptual Experiments with Normal and Language-Impaired ChildrenPerceptual and Motor Skills, 1978
- Developmental Aphasia and Brain DamageCortex, 1964