The influence of syllabic stress on children's speech reception thresholds

One tape exemplar of each words cowboy, baseball, airplane, cupcake, popcorn, and hotdog spoken with natural (trochaic) and again with unnatural (spondaic) stress were selected from a pool to collect monaural SRTs by earphone in children. There were no significant differences due to type of stress, nor between boys and girls. Older children (N: 16, aged 5.0--6.0 yrs; SRT = --0.2 db HL) exhibited lower SRTs than younger (N: 16, aged 3.0--4.0 yrs; SRT = 3.2 db HL). It was informally observed that response, especially in younger Ss, tended (even when correct) to be at a slower rate, a condition to which the clinician should be alert.