Perception of Medial Consonants by Preschoolers With and Without Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose This study compared perception of consonants in medial position by preschoolers, with and without speech sound disorder (SSD), with similar vocabulary and language skills. In addition, we investigated the association between speech perception and production skills. Method Participants were 36 monolingual English-speaking children with similar vocabulary and language skills, half with SSD and half with typical speech and language development (TD). Participants completed a speech perception task targeting phonemes /p, k, s, ɹ/ in /aCa/ disyllables and a comprehensive battery of speech and language measures. Results Children with SSD were significantly less accurate in perceiving speech sound distinctions relative to peers with TD. The phoneme /p/ was perceived significantly more accurately than the three other target phonemes. The correlation between overall perceptual accuracy and overall production accuracy was significant. Furthermore, perceptual accuracy of targets /k, s, ɹ/ was significantly correlated with production accuracy of these phonemes. Conclusions Many children with SSD have greater difficulty perceiving the specific speech sounds they misarticulate. Nonetheless, most children with SSD present with broader perceptual difficulties than peers with TD with similar vocabulary and language skills.