Abstract
Purpose This study aimed to investigate the intelligibility of children's atypical speech in relation to listeners' language background. Method Forty-eight participants listened to and transcribed isolated words repeated by children with speech sound disorders. Participants were divided into, on the one hand, a multilingual group (n = 29) that was further divided into subgroups based on age of acquisition (early, 0-3 years; intermediate, 4-12 years; and late, > 12 years) and, on the other hand, a monolingual comparison group (n = 19). Results The monolingual listeners obtained higher intelligibility scores than the multilingual listeners; this difference was statistically significant. Participants who acquired Swedish at an older age (> 4 years) were found to have lower scores than other listeners. The later the age of acquisition, the less of the atypical speech was decoded correctly. A further analysis of the transcriptions also revealed a higher level of nonwords among the incorrect transcriptions of the multilinguals than that of the monolinguals who used more real words, whereas both groups were equally prone to using blanks when they did not perceive a word. Conclusions This indicates a higher risk of communicative problems between late acquirers of Swedish and children with speech sound disorders. Clinical implications, such as involving communication partners in the intervention process, are discussed as well as possible linguistic explanations to the findings. This study could be seen as a starting point in the field of research regarding the relations between the language background of the listener and the ability to perceive atypical speech.
Highlights
M igration continuously influences the demographic structure of many of the world’s countries
The L2 is defined as the language that is acquired after the first language (L1) has been fully or partially established and for which learning takes place in an environment where the language is used in natural communication (SavilleTroike, 2017)
Beneficial individual factors may compensate for a later age of acquisition (AoA), earlier AoA is generally associated with higher levels of L2 proficiency in adults
Summary
M igration continuously influences the demographic structure of many of the world’s countries. Variation in the L2 proficiency level, cannot be attributed to AoA alone Factors such as language use and relative lifetime residence in the L2-speaking environment may play a role as described in the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 1995, 2007), together with more general factors such as language and general ability of the individual (Birdsong, 2009). For individuals not exposed to an L2 until after 5 years of age, the perceptual phonetic categorization instead involves higher level, top-down, cognitive processes (Aschila-Suerta et al, 2012) These different perceptual learning mechanisms employed in earlier and later language acquisitions may explain the AoA effect in the perceptual processing of the L2 (White, Hutka, Williams, & Moreno, 2013). Differences and similarities between L1 and L2 affect the phonological processing of the L2, and an earlier AoA can be expected to benefit L2 phonological perception later in life
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