Explicit speech segmentation and syllabic onset structure: developmental trends

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech Science

Background:

• The hierarchical theory of syllable structure is applied to understand explicit speech segmentation development.
• Previous research suggests initial consonant isolation ease depends on syllable onset complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the developmental trajectory of speech segmentation in young children.
• To test the prediction that complete syllable onsets (CVCC) facilitate initial consonant isolation more than cluster onsets (CCVC).

Main Methods:

• Children from kindergarten to second grade were tested on initial consonant deletion and comparison tasks using CVCC and CCVC syllables.
• A puppet game with pretraining was used for kindergarteners in a follow-up experiment.

Main Results:

• First and second graders showed better performance on CVCC material for consonant deletion but not for comparison tasks.
• Kindergarteners performed poorly initially but showed significant improvement with the puppet game intervention for CVCC syllables.
• Results indicate a developmental precedence of onset segmentation over phoneme segmentation.

Conclusions:

• Syllable onset structure significantly impacts early speech segmentation abilities.
• Developmental improvements in speech segmentation are evident from kindergarten to second grade.
• Play-based learning can enhance segmentation skills in younger children, supporting the role of onset segmentation in phoneme segmentation development.