Speech perception in children with speech output disorders

Abstract

Research in the field of speech production pathology is dominated by describing deficits in output. However, perceptual problems might underlie, precede, or interact with production disorders. The present study hypothesizes that the level of the production disorders is linked to level of perception disorders, thus lower-order production problems (such as childhood apraxia of speech; CAS) are linked to lower-order perception problems and higher-order production problems (phonological disorder; PD) are linked to higher-order perception problems. For this, various perception tasks were administered (non-word auditory discrimination task, word rhyming task, categorical classification, and discrimination task) in children with CAS, PD, or a mixture. The results show that children with PD only show higher-order perception problems, whereas children with CAS have difficulties on both lower- and higher-order perception tasks. In children with CAS, difficulties at lower-order processes might affect the higher-order processes in development. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between production and perception scores at different levels. Thus, a link between perception and production seems to be evident.

Motor-Based Intervention Protocols in Treatment of Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

“…Given suggestions that CAS involves a deficit in auditory and/or somatosensory feedback processing [89–91] and some indication for impaired auditory perception in CAS [92,93], several recent CAS treatment studies aimed to enhance treatment by supplementing auditory and verbal feedback with visual feedback [94,95•]. The rationale is that children with CAS may utilize feedback provided through a different modality to improve their speech movements.…”

Produção e discriminação do contraste de sonoridade das plosivas nos casos de desvio fonológico

“…Those authors also suggested a possible causal relation between an inability of auditory discrimination and phonological disorders that, however, did not apply to all cases they assessed. This relation was also mentioned by another author 8 . However, there seems to have an inconsistency in the literature regarding the association of deficits in the auditory production and discrimination.…”

“…Before the first words or phonemes begin to be produced, the child perceives and understands a lot more speech than he/she actually produces. Thus, the development of speech is closely related to auditory perception 8 . The auditory perception, in turn, can be subdivided into several components such as: detection, sound sensation, discrimination, location, recognition, understanding, attention and memory 2 .…”

Children’s perception of their synthetically corrected speech production

“…The problems are often systematic across the child's speech and affect phonological patterns rather than single speech sounds. For example, a child can display patterns of devoicing of stops, velar fronting, or consonant cluster reductions (Nijland, 2009). However, the child's phonological problems are rarely limited to the production of speech, but are often accompanied by difficulties in perception (Bird & Bishop, 1992;Rvachew, 1994).…”