Perceptual features from normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children's errors on the NST

Perceptual features for consonants contained in the nonsense syllable test, were evaluated from normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children's errors. One group consisted of 30 normal-hearing children between 6:0 and 12:8 years of age; the other group consisted of 7 hearing-impaired children between 8:0 and 14:8. The subjects provided verbal responses to list A of the nonsense syllable test which was presented at 25, 35, 45, and 55 dB sensation levels regarding each subject's speech reception threshold. Responses were phonetically transcribed, pooled across sensation levels, converted to confusion matrices, and submitted to Symmetric Individual Differences Scaling. Consonants were analyzed for pre- and inter-vocalic positions. Results revealed that features differed across subject groups and consonant positions. Salient features related to place of articulation, voicing, nasality, sonorancy, and sibilancy.