FORMANT TRANSITION DURATION AND PLACE PERCEPTION IN MISARTICULATING CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

The explanation of articulatory problems as an output speech disorder does not preclude the possibility that auditory processing problems ar e associated. Identification of brief auditory spectral cues in a plac e-of-articulation continuum was studied in children with articulation problems. First, it was shown that formant transition durations smalle r than 20.0 ms dramatically decreased phonemic identification rates fo r alveolar stop consonants in control subjects. Identification tasks b ased on two place-of-articulation continua /p alpha k/-/t alpha k/ wit h F2/F3 transition durations of 52 and 20 ms were administered to grou ps of misarticulating children and adolescents and two control groups (children and adults). For all subject groups there was poorer phoneti c processing with shorter transition durations of F2 and F3. The misar ticulating subjects demonstrated poorer phonetic processing of formant transitions than did the control subjects. Shortening F2/F3 transitio n duration did not differentially influence perceptual behaviour betwe en the experimental and the control groups. In determining the causal link between perception and production, an explanation of perception p receding production was favoured. It was argued that, in addition to a ssessing the specificity between perception and production mechanisms, assessment of perception of formant transitions may have potential as a clinical tool for evaluating phonetic processing.