Effects of age, hearing loss, and phonological neighborhood density on children's perceptual confusions

Abstract

Age, hearing loss, and phonological neighborhood density have been shown to substantially affect the accuracy of productions in a word imitation task [VanDam, et al., 161st ASA Meeting]. Older children (7 years of age) are more accurate than younger children (4 years of age), normal hearing children are more accurate than children with mild- to severe hearing loss, and words from sparse phonological neighborhoods are produced more accurately than are words from dense neighborhoods. In an ongoing series of analyses, we extend these findings by analyzing how patterns of perceptual confusion vary as a function of age, hearing status (normal hearing versus hearing loss), and phonological neighborhood structure. Multilevel cognitive models fit to confusion data provide detailed quantitative descriptions of perceptual space and response bias and enable analysis of between- and within-group variability. Results shed light on the organization of the lexicon in young children with both normal hearing and hearing loss, and add to our understanding of the relationship between speech production and speech perception in children.