Late development of the categorical perception of speech sounds in pre-adolescent children
- While the perilinguistic child is endowed with predispositions for the categorical perception of phonetic features, their adaptation to the native language results from a long evolution from the end of the first year of age up to the adolescence. This evolution entails both a better discrimination between phonological categories, a concomitant reduction of the discrimination between within-category variants, and a higher precision of perceptual boundaries between categories. The first objective of the present study was to assess the relative importance of these modifications by comparing the perceptual performances of a group of 11 children, aged from 8 to 11 years, with those of their mothers. Our second objective was to explore the functional implications of categorical perception by comparing the performances of a group of 8 deaf children, equipped with a cochlear implant, with normal-hearing chronological age controls. The results showed that the categorical boundary was slightly more precise and that categorical perception was consistently larger in adults vs. normal-hearing children. Those among the deaf children who were able to discriminate minimal distinctions between syllables displayed categorical perception performances equivalent to those of normal-hearing controls. In conclusion, the late effect of age on the categorical perception of speech seems to be anchored in a fairly mature phonological system, as evidenced the fairly high precision of categorical boundaries in pre-adolescents. These late developments have functional implications for speech perception in difficult conditions as suggested by the relationship between categorical perception and speech intelligibility in cochlear implant children.
Author: | Victoria Medina, Willy Serniclaes |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309375 |
URL: | http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/190.html?&L=1%2527%252band%252bchar%28124%29%25252Buser%25252Bchar%28124%29%25253D0%252band%252b%2527%2527%25253D%2527 |
ISSN: | 1435-9588 |
ISSN: | 0947-7055 |
Parent Title (English): | Papers in phonetics and phonology / Ed.: Christian Geng ..., Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, 2001; ZAS papers in linguistics Vol. 42 |
Publisher: | Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung |
Place of publication: | Berlin |
Document Type: | Part of a Book |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2013/11/14 |
Year of first Publication: | 2005 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2013/11/14 |
GND Keyword: | Sprachverstehen; Kind; Spracherwerb; Hörstörung; Cochlear-Implantat; Patholinguistik; Auditive Phonetik; Französisch |
Volume: | 42 |
Page Number: | 19 |
First Page: | 13 |
Last Page: | 31 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 381234398 |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 4 Sprache / 44 Französisch, romanische Sprachen allgemein / 440 Romanische Sprachen; Französisch |
Sammlungen: | Linguistik |
Linguistik-Klassifikation: | Linguistik-Klassifikation: Spracherwerb / Language acquisition |
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Phonetik/Phonologie / Phonetics/Phonology | |
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Klinische Linguistik/Neurolinguistik / Clinical linguistics/Neurolinguistics | |
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte: | ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 42 = Papers in Phonetics and Phonology |
: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306844 |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |