Vowel Perception in Children With and Without Language Impairment

Abstract

Twenty-four children with language impairment (LI) and 22 children without language impairment (LN) participated in a study of discrimination, identification, and serial ordering of the highly dissimilar vowels /a/ versus /i/, and the highly similar vowels /ε/ versus /æ/. The vowel pairs were presented to the subjects in long- and short-duration sets. Both groups had greater difficulty in identifying /ε/ versus /æ/ than /a/ versus /i/. Neither group had greater difficulty with the short- than the long-duration vowel sets. The LI children were less efficient than the LN in identifying /a/ versus /i/, but could identify them accurately. They were significantly less accurate than the LN in identifying /ε/ versus /æ/. The majority of the children who could identify the /a/ and /i/ vowels were able to order them serially as well, although this second task appeared to be more difficult than identification. Fewer LI than LN children were able to proceed to the serial ordering task with /ε/ and /æ/. The children who could not identify the vowels within a set were almost always able to discriminate them. It was concluded that LI children have an auditory perceptual learning deficit and consequently a less robust central representation for steady state vowels than LN.

Children With Specific Language Impairments Perceive Speech Most Categorically When Tokens Are Natural and Meaningful

“…Explanations of these potential processing difficulties range from slower processing across all perceptual modalities (Leonard, 1998;Leonard, McGregor, & Allen, 1992;Miller, Kail, Leonard, & Tomblin, 2001) to a deficit in processing rapidly changing auditory information characteristic of speech (Tallal & Piercy, 1973,1974Tallal, Stark, Kallman, & Mellits, 1981). These children are hypothesized to have inadequately specified phonological representations in long-term memory (Stark & Heinz, 1996a, 1996b, which would make extracting linguistic generalizations more difficult (Joanisse & Seidenberg, 1998) or make encoding information in phonological working memory less efficient (Gathercole, 1999).Coady, Kluender, and Evans (2005) hypothesized that these putative perceptual deficits do not result from a deficit in auditory processing per se, but rather from increased sensitivity to task demands used to examine auditory processing in children with SLI. Previous studies that have provided evidence taken to be indicative of an auditory processing deficit showed that children with SLI perform relatively poorer when tested with synthetic versions of nonsense syllables in tasks with high memory demands (Elliott & Hammer, 1988;Elliott, Hammer, & Scholl, 1989;Evans, Viele, Kass, & Tang, 2002;Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000;Leonard et al, 1992;McReynolds, 1966;Stark & Heinz, 1996a, 1996bSussman, 1993Sussman, , 2001Tallal & Piercy, 1974Thibodeau & Sussman, 1979).…”

“…Explanations of these potential processing difficulties range from slower processing across all perceptual modalities (Leonard, 1998;Leonard, McGregor, & Allen, 1992;Miller, Kail, Leonard, & Tomblin, 2001) to a deficit in processing rapidly changing auditory information characteristic of speech (Tallal & Piercy, 1973,1974Tallal, Stark, Kallman, & Mellits, 1981). These children are hypothesized to have inadequately specified phonological representations in long-term memory (Stark & Heinz, 1996a, 1996b, which would make extracting linguistic generalizations more difficult (Joanisse & Seidenberg, 1998) or make encoding information in phonological working memory less efficient (Gathercole, 1999). Coady, Kluender, and Evans (2005) hypothesized that these putative perceptual deficits do not result from a deficit in auditory processing per se, but rather from increased sensitivity to task demands used to examine auditory processing in children with SLI.…”

“…These children are hypothesized to have inadequately specified phonological representations in long-term memory (Stark & Heinz, 1996a, 1996b, which would make extracting linguistic generalizations more difficult (Joanisse & Seidenberg, 1998) or make encoding information in phonological working memory less efficient (Gathercole, 1999).…”

The importance of rapid auditory processing abilities to early language development: Evidence from converging methodologies

“…A large and growing literature suggests that impaired perception and discrimination of auditory stimuli that involve two or more rapidly presented, transient elements may hinder development of normal language and reading abilities (Godfrey, Syrdal-Lasky, Millay, & Knox, 1981;Kraus, McGee, Carrell, Zecker, Nicol, & Koch, 1996;McAnally & Stein, 1997;Nagarajan et al, 1999;Reed, 1989;Snowling, Goulandris, Bowlby, & Howell, 1986;Stark & Heinz, 1996a, 1996bWerker & Tees, 1987;Wright et al, 2000). Children with deficits in RAP hear normally and can sequence sounds, but are selectively impaired in their ability to both perceive and produce those speech sounds which are characterized by brief or rapidly changing temporal cues (for reviews, see Fitch, Miller, & Tallal, 1997;Tallal & Benasich, in press).…”

Increased Response to Altered Auditory Feedback in Dyslexia: A Weaker Sensorimotor Magnet Implied in the Phonological Deficit

“…Many studies on speech perception point to reduced abilities to identify and discriminate between phonemes, both in optimal (De Weirdt, 1988;Godfrey, Syrdal-Lasky, Millay, & Knox, 1981) and in adverse listening conditions (Ziegler, Pech-Georgel, George, Alario, & Lorenzi, 2005;Ziegler et al, 2009). Although many studies focused on deficiencies in perceiving consonants, the perception and production of vowels is also less precisely defined (Bertucci, Hook, Haynes, Macaruso, & Bickley, 2003;Stark & Heinz, 1996). Although a large number of studies showed perception deficits in DD, it should be noted that speech perception deficits were not always found in the majority of people with DD (Manis et al, 1997), not for all phonetic contrasts (Cornelissen, Hansen, Bradley, & Stein, 1996), and not always in silent (Ziegler et al, 2009) or in noise conditions (Hazan, MessaoudGalusi, & Rosen, 2012;Law, Vandermosten, Ghesquiere, & Wouters, 2014).…”