Preschool children’s use of dynamic acoustic information for word recognition.

Abstract

While young children’s ability to use dynamic acoustic information to categorize speech sounds has been studied in some detail [Nittrouer, J. Phon. 20, 1–32 (1992)], relatively little is known about their ability to use dynamic information for word recognition. This study investigates whether preschool children could use dynamic acoustic information to identify familiar words with missing consonants or vowels. A gated series [Elliot et al., Percept. Psychophys. 42, 150–157 (1987)] was used to examine young children’s identification of familiar CVC words with missing final consonants; similarly, a silent center series [Fox et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 35, 892–902 (1992)] was used to examine identification of CVC words with missing vowels. Eighteen typically developing children aged three to five were tested. It was found that even the youngest children did remarkably well at recognizing words with missing final consonants, even at the longest gate when the consonant was deleted 40 ms before stop closure. B...