Speech perception and children with speech sound disorder: An assessment of non-errored speech sounds

Abstract

Previous studies assessing speech perception in children with speech sound disorder (SSD) suggest inconsistent, if any, differences from typically-developing peers (TD). However, others suggest that children with SSD perceive inaccurate productions as acceptable variants of a sound. Currently, limited research explores speech perception of non-errored sounds in children with SSD compared to TD peers. This study assesses how distributional characteristics of naturally produced child speech stimuli, collected from six 2–3-year-old English-speaking children, might impact listening behavior of children with SSD for non-errored sounds. Stimuli included six exemplars per speaker and VOT categories of short-lag /b d/, short-lag /p t/, long-lag /b d/, long-lag /p t/. For each POA and VOT group, /b d/ and /p t/ VOTs were bimodally distributed (shorter for voiced targets), separated by a minimum 5 ms gap. We will compare perception results for TD children and children with SSD (ages 6;0–10;11). Earlier findings showed high accuracy in adults and TD children for targets with appropriate VOT values with adults slightly outperforming children. We hypothesize that children with SSD will demonstrate similar accuracy levels between groups when VOT values are appropriate for the target, and slightly greater response variability and group differences for inappropriate VOTs.