Vowel perception in 3- and 4-year-old children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptual role of brief synthetic consonant–vowel syllables as cues for vowels in children and adults. The [d] and [g] stop-consonants were synthesized in the context of three vowels, [i u ■], with durations of 10, 30, or 46 ms. These syllables were produced with bursts, and contained formant motions and/or formant onset frequencies appropriate for each stop-consonant place of articulation. Ten adults and ten children in both of the age groups, 3 and 4 years, were trained to identify the vowel as either /i/, /u/, or /■/. The results revealed the following major findings: (1) Across consonant context, vowel identification by adults was significantly higher than vowel identification by 3- and 4-year-olds, and 4-year-olds were significantly higher than 3-year-olds; (2) Vowel identification was significantly higher at each level of duration for the 3-year olds, and the two longer-duration stimuli, were significantly different from the shorter stimulus for the 4-year-olds; and (3) The 3- and 4-year-olds generally identified the high vowels, [i u], at a significantly higher level than the low vowel, [■]. The results support the conclusions that vowel perception in young children interacts with stimulus duration and vowel quality, and that dynamic formant motion is no more important for young children than for adults. [Work supported by NIH and a Vanderbilt University Research Council Grant.]