Fine-grained auditory discrimination and performance on tests of receptive vocabulary and receptive language

This research investigated the relation between children's performance on two measures of receptive language and children's auditory discrimination of consonant-vowel sounds having frequency and temporal acoustic differences. The measures of fine-grained auditory discrimination produced significant multiple regression coefficients against both receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised) and receptive language (Token Test for Children) scores. Validation analyses conducted by predicting receptive vocabulary and language scores for a new sample of children and relating them to the actual scores led to significant outcomes. It was concluded that fine-grained auditory discrimination is particularly important in the relatively early stages of language learning.