SYNTHETIC SPEECH COMPREHENSION - A COMPARISON OF CHILDREN WITH NORMALAND IMPAIRED LANGUAGE-SKILLS

This study compared the ability of children with normal language (NL) and children with specific language impairment (SLI) to comprehend nat ural speech and DECtalk synthetic speech by using a sentence verificat ion task. The effect of listening practice on subjects' ability to com prehend both types of speech also was investigated. Subjects were matc hed for age and sex. Mean nonverbal intelligence scores of the groups did not differ significantly. Results showed that DECtalk was signific antly more difficult for all subjects to comprehend than was natural s peech and false sentences were significantly more difficult to compreh end than were true sentences. Response latencies shortened significant ly from time 1 to time 2 for all subjects. Subjects with SLI had signi ficantly more difficulty comprehending both natural and synthetic spee ch than did subjects with NL. implications these results might have fo r theories of the underlying cause of specific language impairment are discussed.