TY - JOUR
T1 - Childrens recognition of American English consonants in noise
AU - Nishi, Kanae
AU - Lewis, Dawna E.
AU - Hoover, Brenda M.
AU - Choi, Sangsook
AU - Stelmachowicz, Patricia G.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders under Grant No. R01 DC004300 to P.G.S. and Grant No. P30 DC004662 to Boys Town National Research Hospital. Merry Spratford and Rindy Ito assisted with data collection with support from Grant No. T35 DC008757.
PY - 2010/5
Y1 - 2010/5
N2 - In contrast to the availability of consonant confusion studies with adults, to date, no investigators have compared childrens consonant confusion patterns in noise to those of adults in a single study. To examine whether childrens error patterns are similar to those of adults, three groups of children (24 each in 4-5, 6-7, and 8-9 yrs. old) and 24 adult native speakers of American English (AE) performed a recognition task for 15 AE consonants in //-consonant-// nonsense syllables presented in a background of speech-shaped noise. Three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR: 0, +5, and +10 dB) were used. Although the performance improved as a function of age, the overall consonant recognition accuracy as a function of SNR improved at a similar rate for all groups. Detailed analyses using phonetic features (manner, place, and voicing) revealed that stop consonants were the most problematic for all groups. In addition, for the younger children, front consonants presented in the 0 dB SNR condition were more error prone than others. These results suggested that childrens use of phonetic cues do not develop at the same rate for all phonetic features.
AB - In contrast to the availability of consonant confusion studies with adults, to date, no investigators have compared childrens consonant confusion patterns in noise to those of adults in a single study. To examine whether childrens error patterns are similar to those of adults, three groups of children (24 each in 4-5, 6-7, and 8-9 yrs. old) and 24 adult native speakers of American English (AE) performed a recognition task for 15 AE consonants in //-consonant-// nonsense syllables presented in a background of speech-shaped noise. Three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR: 0, +5, and +10 dB) were used. Although the performance improved as a function of age, the overall consonant recognition accuracy as a function of SNR improved at a similar rate for all groups. Detailed analyses using phonetic features (manner, place, and voicing) revealed that stop consonants were the most problematic for all groups. In addition, for the younger children, front consonants presented in the 0 dB SNR condition were more error prone than others. These results suggested that childrens use of phonetic cues do not develop at the same rate for all phonetic features.
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U2 - 10.1121/1.3377080
DO - 10.1121/1.3377080
M3 - Article
C2 - 21117766
AN - SCOPUS:77956242047
SN - 0001-4966
VL - 127
SP - 3177
EP - 3188
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
IS - 5
ER -