A DEVELOPMENTAL-STUDY OF VOWEL PERCEPTION FROM BRIEF SYNTHETIC CONSONANT-VOWEL SYLLABLES

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptual role of brief s ynthetic consonant-vowel syllables as cues for vowel perception in chi ldren and adults. Nine types of consonant-vowel syllables comprised of the stops [b d g] followed by the vowels [i a u] were synthesized. St imuli were generated with durations of 10, 30, or 46 ms, and with or w ithout formant transition motion. Eight children at each of five age l evels (5, 6, 7, 9, and Il years) and a control group of eight adults w ere trained to identify each vowel in a three-alternative forced-choic e (3AFC) paradigm. The results showed that children and adults extract ed vowel information at a generally high level from stimuli as brief a s 10 ms. For many stimuli, there was little or no difference between t he performance of children and adults. However, developmental effects were observed. First, the accuracy of vowel perception was more influe nced by the consonant context for children than for adults. Whereas pe rception was similar across age levels for stimuli in the alveolar con text, the youngest children perceived vowels in the labial and velar c ontexts at significantly lower levels than adults. Second, children we re more affected by variations in stimulus duration than were adults. This finding was particularly prominent for the syllable [ga], where t he dependency on duration decreased with age in a nearly linear fashio n. These findings are discussed in relation to current hypotheses of v owel perception in adults, and hypotheses of speech perception develop ment. (C) 1996 Acoustical Society of America.