Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of categorical perception of phoneme boundaries. A seven‐step adult /R‐W/ continua was synthesized via the Klatt cascade/parallel software program. The acoustic tokens varied according to the second (F2)‐ and third (F3)‐formant onset frequencies and second (F2)‐ and third (F3)‐formant transition rates. Percentage of correct responses on an identification task was computed to yield a measure of phonemic boundary location for adults and children of 3, 4, and 5 years of age. The phonemic boundaries fell between stimuli 3 and 4, at stimulus 4 and 5 for 3‐, 4‐, and 5‐year‐old children and adults, respectively. The finding that there was a shifting and increasing steepness in the phonemic boundaries as a function of age is supportive of previous research and moreover, of the theory that a child's phonological system is not inherently different than that of an adult but rather is just a simpler or less precise version of the mature system.
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