Perception and production of approximant consonants by normal and articulation-delayed preschool children

Disagreement exists concerning the relationship between the perception of phonetic contrasts and their production by both normal and articulation-delayed children. The perception of three approximant consonant contrasts (/w/-/r/, /w/-/l/, /r/-/l/) was examined in two groups of 3-year-old children: normal children who did and did not articulate /r/ and /l/ correctly and articulation-delayed children who misarticulated /r/ and /l/. Perception was assessed in a two-choice forced-choice identification task in which the subjects heard a word and pushed a button lighting a picture corresponding to the word. In general, normally developing children were highly accurate in their perception of all three contrasts, but there was more variability in /w/-/l/ perceptual performance among the children who neutralized the /w/-/l/ contrast. Articulation-delayed children displayed a wider range of production patterns and were more variable in their perceptual performance than normally developing children. Results suggest than normally developing children learn to perceive approximant contrasts prior to 3 years of age. However, some but not all articulation-delayed 3-year-old children may still make errors in the perception of approximants.