Perception of Sibilants by Preschool Children With Overt and Covert Sound Contrasts

The Effect of Somatosensory Input on Word Recognition in Typical Children and Those With Speech Sound Disorder

PURPOSE

Recent work suggests that speech perception is influenced by the somatosensory system and that oral sensorimotor disruption has specific effects on the perception of speech both in infants who have not yet begun to talk and in older children and adults with ample speech production experience; however, we do not know how such disruptions affect children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Response to disruption of would-be articulators during speech perception could reveal how sensorimotor linkages work for both typical and atypical speech and language development. Such linkages are crucial to advancing our knowledge on how both typically developing and atypically developing children produce and perceive speech.

METHOD

Using a looking-while-listening task, we explored the impact of a sensorimotor restrictor on the recognition of words whose onsets involve late-developing sounds (s, ʃ) for both children with typical development (TD) and their peers with SSD.

RESULTS

Children with SSD showed a decrement in performance when they held a restrictor in their mouths during the task, but this was not the case for children with TD. This effect on performance was only observed for the specific speech sounds blocked by the would-be articulators.

CONCLUSION

We argue that these findings provide evidence for altered perceptual motor pathways in children with SSD.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21809442.

Speech Error Variability and Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers

PURPOSE

The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness.

METHOD

This article begins with a narrative review of the theoretical interpretation of speech error variability. The post hoc exploratory analysis of the relationship between speech error variability and phonological awareness included 40 children: 20 with typical speech and language and 20 with speech sound disorder and typical language. Groups were matched on gender, age, maternal education, receptive and expressive vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and expressive morphosyntax. Multiple regression was used to identify the best fit model for the relationship between vocabulary, speech errors, and phonological awareness.

RESULTS

Segmental variability was associated with poor phonological awareness in preschool-aged children.

CONCLUSION

Children with high levels of segmental variability have poor phonological awareness, likely due to unstable phonological representations.

Development of the voiceless sibilant fricative contrast in three-year-olds: an ultrasound and acoustic study

The study analysed spectral and tongue shape dynamics of voiceless alveolar and postalveolar fricatives produced by ten children learning Scottish English. Synchronised ultrasound tongue imaging data and acoustic data were used to characterise children's productions of the phonemic contrast. Six children had consistently accurate productions of both fricative targets, with some cross-consonant phonetic differences in the direction previously demonstrated for older children and adults, as well as some immature acoustic and articulatory dynamic patterns. Instrumental analyses made it possible to describe tongue shape for phonemic errors and phonetically distorted realisations. There was some evidence of articulatory contrast in production preceding contrast in perception. The observed patterns can be explained by the complex articulatory demands on the fricative production, in combination with the developing control of articulators. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the results for phonological theory and for speech therapy practice.

Associations Between Speech Perception, Vocabulary, and Phonological Awareness Skill in School-Aged Children With Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose Prior studies report conflicting descriptions of the relationships between phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and speech perception in preschoolers with speech disorders. This study sought to determine the nature of these relationships in a sample of school-aged children with residual speech sound errors affecting /ɹ/. Method Participants included 110 children aged 7;0-17;4 (years;months) with residual errors impacting /ɹ/. Data on perceptual acuity and perceptual bias in an /ɹ/ identification task, receptive vocabulary, and PA were obtained. A theoretically and empirically motivated path model was constructed with vocabulary mediating the relationship between two measures of speech perception and PA. Model parameters were determined through maximum likelihood estimation with standard errors that were robust to nonnormality. Monte Carlo simulation was used to examine achieved power at the current sample size. Results The saturated path model explained 19% of the variance in PA. The direct path between age-adjusted perceptual acuity and PA was significant, as was the direct path between vocabulary and PA. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no evidence in the current sample that vocabulary skill mediated the relationship between speech perception and PA. Each individual path was adequately powered at the current sample size. Conclusions The overall model provided evidence for a continued relationship between speech perception, measured by perceptual acuity of the sound in error, and PA in school-aged children with residual speech errors. Thus, measures of speech perception remain relevant to the assessment of school-aged children and adolescents in this population. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13641275.

Perception of Medial Consonants by Preschoolers With and Without Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose This study compared perception of consonants in medial position by preschoolers, with and without speech sound disorder (SSD), with similar vocabulary and language skills. In addition, we investigated the association between speech perception and production skills. Method Participants were 36 monolingual English-speaking children with similar vocabulary and language skills, half with SSD and half with typical speech and language development (TD). Participants completed a speech perception task targeting phonemes /p, k, s, ɹ/ in /aCa/ disyllables and a comprehensive battery of speech and language measures. Results Children with SSD were significantly less accurate in perceiving speech sound distinctions relative to peers with TD. The phoneme /p/ was perceived significantly more accurately than the three other target phonemes. The correlation between overall perceptual accuracy and overall production accuracy was significant. Furthermore, perceptual accuracy of targets /k, s, ɹ/ was significantly correlated with production accuracy of these phonemes. Conclusions Many children with SSD have greater difficulty perceiving the specific speech sounds they misarticulate. Nonetheless, most children with SSD present with broader perceptual difficulties than peers with TD with similar vocabulary and language skills.

Identification of Foreign-Accented Words in Preschoolers With and Without Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of preschoolers with speech sound disorder (SSD) and with typical speech and language development (TD) to understand foreign-accented words, providing a window into the quality of their underlying phonological representations. We also investigated the relationship between vocabulary skills and the ability to identify words that are frequent and have few neighbors (lexically easy words) and words that are less frequent and have many neighbors (lexically hard words). Method Thirty-two monolingual English-speaking children (16 with SSD, 16 with TD), ages 4 and 5 years, completed standardized speech and language tests and a two-alternative forced-choice word identification task of English words produced by a native English speaker and a native Korean speaker. Results Children with SSD had more difficulty identifying words produced by both talkers than children with TD and showed a larger difficulty identifying Korean-accented words. Both groups of children identified lexically easy words more accurately than lexically hard words, although this difference was not significant when including receptive vocabulary skills in the analysis. Identification of lexically hard words, both those produced by the native English speaker and the nonnative English speaker, increased with vocabulary size. Conclusion Considering the performance of the children with SSD under ideal listening conditions in this study, we can assume that, as a group, children with SSD may experience greater difficulty identifying foreign-accented words in environments with background noise.