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Updated: Jul 23, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Children's categorization of consonants by manner and place characteristics
1University of Arizona.
Abstract:
Ten normal-speaking 5-year-olds and 10 normal-speaking 7-year-olds were required to categorize consonants as "dripping" (stop) or "flowing" (fricative) and as "tongue" (lingual place of articulation) or "lip" (labial place of articulation). Both groups of children performed more accurately than would be expected on the basis of chance alone. However, 5-year-olds performed more poorly than did 7-year-olds, primarily because 5-year-olds were significantly less accurate than 7-year-olds in categorizing according to manner. Children's ability to categorize was evaluated as an indicator of their awareness of feature characteristics of consonants. Their performance does not unambiguously reflect feature awareness but may be related to other variables such as their use of response strategies or the nature of the task.
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