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Abstract:
This speech perception study reports behavioral response
patterns for children with specific language impairment (SLI) who
previously demonstrated reduced amplitude at left temporal sites
and increased amplitude at the homologous right sites to words in
an electrophysiological investigation. The purpose of this study
was to examine the use of vowel duration, the use of word
knowledge, and their interaction as cues to final consonant (C)
voicing in children with SLI. Twenty-one children ages 6;0-9;0
years, served as subjects: 7 with SLI and 14 with typical language
(TLD). Four identification tasks used CVC pairs with contrasted
final C (FEET-FEED; ZEET - ZEED; CHEAT - CHEED; REET - READ) and
differences in lexicality (word-word; nonwords-nonword;
nonwords-word; word-nonword). Vowel duration varied along continua
in thirteen 20ms steps from 110ms to 350ms. The SLI children
demonstrated less response certainty overall, more bias toward real
word responses in word-nonword pairs, and the greatest level of
uncertainty in the nonword-nonword pair. No differences were
observed between groups for the word-word pair. We hypothesize that
the reduced left temporal amplitude and increased right temporal
amplitude relate to diminished reliance on phonetic information and
enhanced reliance on lexical information for SLI children.
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