Phonological development is affected by speech discrimination skills in typically developing children

Abstract

In early language development accurate auditory discrimination is necessary for building phonological representations to mental lexicon. However, little is known about the connections between phonological development and auditory discrimination in noise in children at the age of 3;6 years. The aim of this study is to clarify the associations between phonological skills and auditory perception of 3;6 aged children (N = 65) acquiring Finnish. Phonological skills were assessed using Finnish Phonology Test (FPT) that has been normed previously. Auditory discrimination skills were assessed using a recognizing task which was created for the present study (ADT). In the task, children recognize and point from pictures (6-8 pictures in 5 subtasks) phonological neighbour words in babble noise (signal-to-noise ratio 13 dB). The results show that FPT and ADT scores correlated moderately (Spearman, r = 0.32, p = 0.01). Results support the view that auditory discrimination skills and phonological skills are associated ...