Perception/production relationships in the development of the vowel duration cue to final consonant voicing.

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to assess: (a) the development of identification in children for the vowel duration cue to final consonant voicing and (b) the perception/production relationships in children for the vowel duration cue to final consonant voicing. Subjects were 30 children divided equally into three age groups, and 10 adults. Productions consisted of 15 repetitions of two target syllables (beet, bead) analyzed acoustically for vowel duration. From these were calculated category boundary, category separation, and variability in production for each subject. Perceptual data were collected using a synthesized speech continuum that varied vowel duration. Identification responses were used to calculate category boundary, category separation (slope/boundary width) and variability (response consistency) for each subject. Mean percentage correct discrimination was derived by using two-step and three-step two-pair same-different paradigms. The results were as follows: (a) category boundary and category separation in production were adult-like by 8 years of age, (b) variability in production was not adult-like by 10 years of age, (c) perception categorization (category boundary and category separation) was adult-like at 5 years of age, (d) perceptual consistency was not adult-like until 10 years of age, (e) percentage correct discrimination was not adult-like by 10 years of age, (f) correlations between comparable perception and production measures were nonsignificant, and (g) a pairwise comparisons analysis indicated that perception was consistently more advanced than production.