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

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Understanding consonant perception is crucial for diagnosing speech and hearing disorders in children.
• Previous research has explored perceptual features but often lacks detailed analysis across different hearing statuses and consonant positions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and compare the perceptual features of consonant errors made by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children.
• To identify how consonant features differ based on the child's hearing status and the consonant's position within a syllable (pre- vs. inter-vocalic).

Main Methods:

• Utilized a nonsense syllable test with 30 normal-hearing and 7 hearing-impaired children (ages 6-14).
• Responses were collected at various sensation levels (25-55 dB SL), phonetically transcribed, and analyzed using confusion matrices and Symmetric Individual Differences Scaling.
• Consonants were examined in pre- and inter-vocalic positions.

Main Results:

• Significant differences in perceptual features were observed between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children.
• Consonant features also varied depending on whether the consonant appeared before or between vowels.
• Salient features identified included place of articulation, voicing, nasality, sonorancy, and sibilancy.

Conclusions:

• Perceptual feature differences highlight distinct error patterns in hearing-impaired children's consonant production.
• The analysis provides valuable insights into the acoustic and articulatory characteristics that are most affected by hearing impairment.
• Findings can inform targeted interventions for speech sound disorders in pediatric populations with hearing loss.