Our study suggests that words, syllables, and phonemes may all contribute to the definition of speech motor commands. In addition, the observation of a serial order effect raises new questions related to the connection between psycholinguistic models and speech motor control approaches.
Reading acquisition is strongly intertwined with phoneme awareness that relies on implicit phoneme representations. We asked whether phoneme representations emerge before literacy. We recruited two groups of children, 4 to 5-year-old preschoolers (N=29) and 7 to 8year-old schoolchildren (N=24), whose phonological awareness was evaluated, and one adult control group (N=17). We altered speakers' auditory feedback in real time to elicit persisting pronunciation changes, referred to as auditory-motor adaptation or learning. Assessing the transfer of learning at phoneme level enabled us to investigate the developmental time-course of phoneme representations. Significant transfer at phoneme level occurred in preschoolers, as well as schoolchildren and adults. In addition, we found a relationship between auditorymotor adaptation and phonological awareness in both groups of children. Overall, these results suggest that phoneme representations emerge before literacy acquisition, and that these sensorimotor representations may set the ground for phonological awareness.
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