Children's perception of their synthetically corrected speech production

A survey of Swedish speech-language pathologists' practices regarding assessment of speech sound disorders

PURPOSE

To explore Swedish clinical practice regarding assessment of suspected Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) in children.

METHODS

A web-based questionnaire, regarding assessment of SSD in children 4;6-6;11 (years; months), was distributed to Swedish speech-language pathologists (SLPs) through social media and online forums. The questions concerned the frequency and manner of assessment for seven assessment components, chosen based on a review of international recommendations for SSD assessment.

RESULTS

A total of 131 SLPs responded to the questionnaire. The results show that Swedish SSD assessment practices vary with regards to the frequency and manner of assessment for many components. Speech output is frequently assessed while speech perception, phonological awareness and oral-motor function are assessed less frequently. A variety of manners of assessment, for example, standardised tests, non-standardised material, and informal assessment procedures, such as observation, are utilized by respondents.

CONCLUSIONS

Swedish SSD assessment practices are variable. The present paper reveals areas for development within SLP practice and education programmes, and provides a new perspective on present praxis with regards to the assessment of suspected SSD in Sweden.

Clinical Considerations for Speech Perception in School-Age Children With Speech Sound Disorders: A Review of the Current Literature

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to synthesize the methodological variability in the speech perception literature for school-age children with residual speech sound disorder (RSSD), with the primary intention of using the existing knowledge to inform clinical decisions and optimize treatment outcomes for children.

METHOD

Ten electronic databases were systematically searched to identify articles examining the speech perception skills of school-age children with RSSD. A total of 11 articles met inclusion criteria, reporting of methodological characteristics was rated and compared across studies, and findings were summarized.

RESULTS

The majority of studies reviewed here confirmed the presence of a perceptual deficit for a subset of children with RSSD. However, marked variability across study methodologies limits clinical interpretation and application of the findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite limited research in children with RSSD and wide variability across study procedures, stimulus type, perception type, and task type emerged as potential key factors that provide critical insight into a child's perceptual skill. The current evidence suggests that deficits in speech perception may significantly impact acquisition of accurate phoneme production for children with RSSD. Furthermore, these findings suggest that assessment and treatment of speech perception may be a critical component of an intervention program for school-age children, although further research is needed to determine effective clinical procedures.

Implementing Speech Perception and Phonological Awareness Intervention for Children With Speech Sound Disorders

PURPOSE

Children with speech sound disorders have more difficulties producing speech sounds accurately than same-age peers. In addition, they often have difficulties with speech perception, and weaker phonological awareness skills than their peers and are at risk for negative long-term academic and socio-emotional outcomes. In this tutorial, we describe ways in which clinicians can target speech perception and/or phonological awareness within the context of speech production practice.

METHOD

First, we briefly describe the speech perception and phonological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders and summarize previous intervention studies that targeted speech production and speech perception and/or phonological awareness skills. Next, we demonstrate how clinicians may incorporate speech perception and phonological awareness intervention in speech therapy through example instructional objectives and activities and include a case study.

CONCLUSION

Incorporating speech perception and phonological awareness into speech production intervention may improve speech and literacy outcomes for children with speech sound disorders.

Perception of Correctly and Incorrectly Produced Words in Children With and Without Phonological Speech Sound Disorders

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of correctly and incorrectly produced words in children with and without phonological speech sound disorder (SSD) with similar vocabulary and language skills. Method Thirty-six monolingual English-speaking children aged 4 and 5 years, half with SSD and half with typical speech and language skills, participated in this study. Participants completed standardized speech and language tests as well as a mispronunciation detection task targeting omissions and substitutions of the phonemes /k, s, ɹ/ in five word positions/shapes. Results The children with SSD obtained significantly lower perceptual accuracy than the children with typical development. There was no statistically significant effect for phoneme. Omissions were more likely to be detected by both groups of participants compared with substitutions, and children with SSD had greater difficulty identifying substitutions as incorrectly produced words. Conclusions Speech perception difficulties may be a distinguishing feature of children with phonological SSD and without concomitant language difficulties. Further research is needed to investigate specific speech contexts in which perception predicts accurate production in children with SSD.

Phonemic discrimination and reproduction in 4-5-year-old children: Relations to hearing

OBJECTIVE

The long-term objective of this research is to highlight the importance of speech perception assessment in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and to investigate how hearing contributes to speech and language skills. As a first step in fulfilling this aim, the present study explored relations between phonemic discrimination and reproduction, and sensitive measures of hearing in young healthy children.

METHODS

The American Listen-Say test was developed and served as speech perception tool. This test reports speech discrimination of phonemic contrasts quantitatively for both quiet and in noise conditions, along with reproduction scores, all measured within one session. Speech tokens were perceptually homogenized in noise. Forty-one 4-5-year-old American children participated. Phonemic discrimination (quiet and speech shaped noise) and phonemic reproduction, audiometric thresholds in the conventional (1-8 kHz) and extended high frequency (EHF; 10-16 kHz) range, and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were examined.

RESULTS

All children had normal hearing thresholds within the conventional range (mean PTA bilaterally 8.6 dB HL). Ten (24.3%) of the children had elevated EHF thresholds (> 20 dB HL) for one or more frequencies or ears, and six (14.6%) had DPOAE signal to noise ratios (SNR) < 6 dB. EHF thresholds and DPOAE SNRs were significantly associated. Children's phonemic discrimination was impaired in noise, relative to quiet. There was a moderate, significant correlation between overall phonemic discrimination in noise and EHF audiometric thresholds.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the present study showed that sensitive hearing measures enabled the detection of subtle hearing difficulties in young healthy children. In particular, phonemic discrimination in noise showed associations with hearing. Implications of including sensitive hearing measures in children with DLD are discussed.

Speech Perception Skills of Children With Speech Sound Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate whether preschool- and early school-age children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) have difficulties with speech perception. Method Systematic searching of 8 electronic databases identified 73 eligible studies across 71 articles examining the speech perception skills of children with SSDs. The findings and methodological characteristics of each study were reviewed, and the reporting of methodological information in each article was rated. A meta-analysis was conducted with studies that used the most common type of speech perception assessment task-lexical and/or phonetic judgment tasks. Results Across 60 of 73 studies, some or all children with SSDs were reported to have difficulties with speech perception. The meta-analysis showed a significant difference between children with SSDs and children with typically developing speech on lexical and/or phonetic judgment tasks. Conclusion Results from the meta-analysis demonstrate that children with SSDs have difficulties with speech perception. This appears to be the case for some but not all children with SSDs. The findings from this systematic review and meta-analysis also provide insight into the complex range of methodological issues involved in the study of speech perception in children with SSDs and the need for further research. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.9808361.

Perception of Sibilants by Preschool Children With Overt and Covert Sound Contrasts

Purpose This study explores the role of overt and covert contrasts in speech perception by children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Method Three groups of preschool-aged children (typically developing speech and language [TD], SSD with /s/~/ʃ/ contrast [SSD-contrast], and SSD with /s/~/ʃ/ collapse [SSD-collapse]) completed an identification task targeting /s/~/ʃ/ minimal pairs. The stimuli were produced by 3 sets of talkers: children with TD, children with SSD, and the participant himself/herself. We conducted a univariate general linear model to investigate differences in perception of tokens produced by different speakers and differences in perception between the groups of listeners. Results The TD and SSD-contrast groups performed similarly when perceiving tokens produced by themselves or other children. The SSD-collapse group perceived all speakers more poorly than the other 2 groups of children, performing at chance for perception of their own speech. Children who produced a covert contrast did not perceive their own speech more accurately than children who produced no identifiable acoustic contrast. Conclusion Preschool-aged children have not yet developed adultlike phonological representations. Collapsing phoneme production, even with a covert contrast, may indicate poor perception of the collapsed phonemes.

Toddlers' sensitivity to phonetic detail in child speech

Young language learners acquire their first language(s) from the speech they are exposed to in their environment. For at least some children (e.g., those in daycare), this environmental speech includes a large quantity of speech from other children. Yet, we know little about how young learners process this type of speech and its status as a source of input. Across two experiments, we assessed 21- to 23-month-olds' processing of a child's speech using the preferential looking paradigm. We found that toddlers processed the child speaker's productions as well as those of an adult and with the same level of sensitivity to phonetic detail previously shown for adult speakers. Although the amount of experience toddlers had interacting with other children outside the home had little influence on their processing of familiar words, only toddlers with high levels of experience with other children outside the home showed a disambiguation response after hearing novel labels. Whether this is truly due to the number or variety of other child speakers or to other correlated aspects of toddlers' language environments is unclear and remain intriguing questions for future research. Overall, these findings demonstrate that child speech may represent useful input for young language learners.

Working memory in school-age children with and without a persistent speech sound disorder

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to explore the role of working memory processes as a possible cognitive underpinning of persistent speech sound disorders (SSD).

METHOD

Forty school-aged children were enrolled; 20 children with persistent SSD (P-SSD) and 20 typically developing children. Children participated in three working memory tasks - one to target each of the components in Baddeley's working memory model: phonological loop, visual spatial sketchpad and central executive.

RESULT

Children with P-SSD performed poorly only on the phonological loop tasks compared to their typically developing age-matched peers. However, mediation analyses revealed that the relation between working memory and a P-SSD was reliant upon nonverbal intelligence.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that co-morbid low-average nonverbal intelligence are linked to poor working memory in children with P-SSD. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The speech perception skills of children with and without speech sound disorder

PURPOSE

To investigate whether Australian-English speaking children with and without speech sound disorder (SSD) differ in their overall speech perception accuracy. Additionally, to investigate differences in the perception of specific phonemes and the association between speech perception and speech production skills.

METHOD

Twenty-five Australian-English speaking children aged 48-60 months participated in this study. The SSD group included 12 children and the typically developing (TD) group included 13 children. Children completed routine speech and language assessments in addition to an experimental Australian-English lexical and phonetic judgement task based on Rvachew's Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System (SAILS) program (Rvachew, 2009). This task included eight words across four word-initial phonemes-/k, ɹ, ʃ, s/.

RESULTS

Children with SSD showed significantly poorer perceptual accuracy on the lexical and phonetic judgement task compared with TD peers. The phonemes /ɹ/ and /s/ were most frequently perceived in error across both groups. Additionally, the phoneme /ɹ/ was most commonly produced in error. There was also a positive correlation between overall speech perception and speech production scores.

CONCLUSIONS

Children with SSD perceived speech less accurately than their typically developing peers. The findings suggest that an Australian-English variation of a lexical and phonetic judgement task similar to the SAILS program is promising and worthy of a larger scale study.

Perception of Speech Sounds in School-Aged Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Children with speech sound disorders may perceive speech differently than children with typical speech development. The nature of these speech differences is reviewed with an emphasis on assessing phoneme-specific perception for speech sounds that are produced in error. Category goodness judgment, or the ability to judge accurate and inaccurate tokens of speech sounds, plays an important role in phonological development. The software Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System, which has been effectively used to assess preschoolers' ability to perform goodness judgments, is explored for school-aged children with residual speech errors (RSEs). However, data suggest that this particular task may not be sensitive to perceptual differences in school-aged children. The need for the development of clinical tools for assessment of speech perception in school-aged children with RSE is highlighted, and clinical suggestions are provided.

Acoustic and perceptual evaluation of category goodness of /t/ and /k/ in typical and misarticulated children's speech

This investigation explores perceptual and acoustic characteristics of children's successful and unsuccessful productions of /t/ and /k/, with a specific aim of exploring perceptual sensitivity to phonetic detail, and the extent to which this sensitivity is reflected in the acoustic domain. Recordings were collected from 4- to 8-year-old children with a speech sound disorder (SSD) who misarticulated one of the target plosives, and compared to productions recorded from peers with typical speech development (TD). Perceptual responses were registered with regards to a visual-analog scale, ranging from "clear [t]" to "clear [k]." Statistical models of prototypical productions were built, based on spectral moments and discrete cosine transform features, and used in the scoring of SSD productions. In the perceptual evaluation, "clear substitutions" were rated as less prototypical than correct productions. Moreover, target-appropriate productions of /t/ and /k/ produced by children with SSD were rated as less prototypical than those produced by TD peers. The acoustical modeling could to a large extent discriminate between the gross categories /t/ and /k/, and scored the SSD utterances on a continuous scale that was largely consistent with the category of production. However, none of the methods exhibited the same sensitivity to phonetic detail as the human listeners.