The impact of impaired vocal quality on children's ability to process spoken language

This paper investigated the effect of voice quality on children's ability to process spoken language. A group of 24 children, mean age 11 years 5 months, listened to a series of recorded short passages, half spoken by a female with normal voice and half spoken by a female with a classic vocal impairment (dysphonic voice). The children were tested for their ability to recall words and to draw a final target inference. Children performed better on both preceding indices when listening to the normal voice. The implications of the findings are discussed, with particular reference to the classroom situation.