The perception of correctly and incorrectly produced /r/

Area of Science:

• Speech-Language Pathology
• Phonological Disorders
• Auditory Perception

Background:

• Children with phonological disorders often exhibit difficulties producing specific speech sounds.
• The /r/ sound is frequently challenging for children to master.
• Understanding the relationship between speech perception and production is crucial for effective intervention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the auditory perception abilities of children and adolescents with /r/ production errors.
• To determine if individuals with phonological disorders can accurately perceive their own speech errors.
• To explore the connection between speech perception and speech production in this population.

Main Methods:

• Twenty-six children and adolescents with /r/ articulation errors participated.
• A listening task involved 200 words with /r/ in various contexts.
• Stimuli included self-produced and other-speaker utterances, both correct and incorrect /r/ sounds.

Main Results:

• Participants performed significantly worse when judging their own incorrect /r/ utterances compared to others.
• When evaluating their own corrected /r/ sounds, participants were better at judging correctness than speaker identity.
• Performance varied across different contexts and types of /r/ errors.

Conclusions:

• Findings support a relationship between speech perception and production in individuals with phonological disorders.
• Difficulties in perceiving one's own speech errors may contribute to persistent production problems.
• These results have implications for targeted auditory-perceptual training in speech therapy.