Speech processing performance of Hungarian-speaking twins and singletons

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studying speech processing in twins versus their singleton peers provides opportunities to study both genetic and environmental effects on how children acquire these aspects of their speech and – by extension – their phonological systems. Our study focused on speech processing in typically developing Hungarian-speaking twins and their singleton peers between 5 and 9 years of age. Participants included 384 monolingual Hungarian-speaking children (192 twins, and 192 singletons). Data from four tasks – repetition of synthesised monosyllables, nonsense words, well-formed noisy sentences, and well-formed phonologically complex sentences – were analysed. There was a main effect for birth status, and singletons outperformed their twin peers on the majority of the speech processing tasks. Age and task also had effects on the performance of the participants, and there was a three-way task by age by twin versus singleton status indicating that the speech processing performance of twins versus singletons is interdependent with the type of task and age. Our results also indicate that monolingual Hungarian-speaking twins may be at higher risk for developmental speech delays relative to their singleton peers.