ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06
5pSC28. Production of highly similar vowels by language-impaired children.
June Stealy
Rachel E. Stark
Dept. of Audiol. and Speech Sci., Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN 47907
John M. Heinz
Kennedy--Krieger Inst., Baltimore, MD 21202
It has been shown that language impaired (LI) children have greater
difficulty than language normal (LN) children in identifying the synthesized
vowels /(cursive beta)/ vs /(oe ligature)/, but not /(open aye)/ vs /i/, when
the members of test pairs are of equal duration (240 to 40 ms) [R. E. Stark and
J. M. Heinz, 2360 (A) (1992)]. It was concluded that, when deprived of
the durational cues present in natural speech, LI children were less well able
than LN to rely upon subtle spectral cues. In the present study, children in
both groups (11 LI, 9 LN) were asked to imitate the synthesized vowels
/(cursive beta)/ and /(oe ligature)/. Their responses were recorded,
transcribed, and submitted to spectral analysis. Responses of individual
children that were given to either /(cursive beta)/ or /(oe ligature)/ were
scored as correct, those that were given to both vowels indiscriminately were
not. The scores of the two groups were not significantly different. However,
the LI children's responses were transcribed as more variable, and occupied a
greater range within F[sub 1]-F[sub 2] plots, than those of the LN children.
The results support the hypothesis that LI children have ``fuzzy'' phonological
categories. [Work supported by NIH.]