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American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology logoLink to American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
. 2020 Apr 15;29(2):883–889. doi: 10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00062

Perception of Medial Consonants by Children With and Without Speech and Language Disorders: A Preliminary Study

Françoise Brosseau-Lapré a,✉, Jennifer Schumaker a, Keith R Kluender a
PMCID: PMC7842868  PMID: 32293902

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate perception of the early-acquired consonant /p/ and later-acquired consonant /ʃ/ in medial word position by preschoolers with and without speech and language disorders.

Method

Twenty-four children, six with isolated speech sound disorder (SSD-only), six with SSD and concomitant developmental language disorder (SSD + DLD), and 12 with typical speech and language skills (TD) completed a battery of standardized speech and language tests as well as an identification task of /aCa/ disyllables. Targets and foils varied by only one place, manner, or voice feature. Mixed analysis of variance (participant groups × two target consonants) was conducted to compare performance of children in the three groups (between-subjects) and to compare performance on consonants that are early acquired or later acquired (within-subject).

Results

All groups of participants were more accurate in perceiving the early-acquired consonant than the later-acquired consonant. Overall performance by children with SSD-only did not differ significantly from children with TD. As a group, children with SSD + DLD were less accurate than children with TD and children with SSD-only for both target consonants.

Conclusions

Children with SSD + DLD performed less well than peers with SSD-only and with TD with both predictably easy and difficult sound contrasts. Children with SSD-only performed nominally less well than children with TD for the speech sound with which they have difficulty, but this difference did not reach statistical significance for these relatively small group sizes.

Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) represent the largest proportion of cases seen by pediatric speech-language pathologists (Mullen & Schooling, 2010). These children misarticulate more sounds and are less intelligible than expected for their age despite having no sensory, neurological, or psychological conditions that could explain their speech production difficulties (Gierut, 1998). Children with SSD are heterogeneous, presenting varied severities of speech production difficulty, characteristics of their speech errors, cognitive and language abilities, and responsiveness to speech therapy (Dodd, 2011, p. 98). Although there is no consensus on the causes of SSD (Munson & Krause, 2017), three common subtypes of children with SSD have been identified: children with phonological difficulties, who represent the largest subgroup of children with SSD; children with articulation-based difficulties, who typically produce distortion errors; and children with motor speech disorders such as dysarthria or childhood apraxia of speech (CAS; Waring & Knight, 2013). The focus of the current preliminary study is children with phonological SSD. It has been proposed that these children produce more speech errors than same-aged children with typical speech development due to poorly specified phonological representations for words (e.g., Anthony et al., 2010).

Several studies have shown that, as a group, children with SSD have difficulties with speech perception (e.g., Broen et al., 1983; Hoffman et al., 1985; Rvachew & Jamieson, 1989). However, there is disagreement about whether speech perception intervention should be recommended for children with SSD (see Rvachew & Brosseau-Lapré, 2018, for a review). One criticism is that many children with SSD have difficulties perceiving only some speech sounds, particularly the sounds they misarticulate (e.g., Rvachew & Grawburg, 2006). Another reservation is the fact that not all children with SSD have been found to have difficulties perceiving the speech sounds they misarticulate (e.g., Rvachew & Jamieson, 1989). Much remains to be learned about the specific nature of speech perception difficulties of children with SSD and whether specific consonantal contrasts are more difficult for them to perceive (Hearnshaw et al., 2018). Very few studies have investigated perception of earlier-developing compared to later-developing consonants in children with SSD. One exception is the recent study by Cabbage et al. (2016) on the speech perception abilities of children ages 7–9 years with persistent SSD, with typical speech and language development (TD), and with dyslexia. One of their research questions was whether children with persistent SSD would perceive word-initial /r/, produced incorrectly in their own speech, less accurately than word-initial /m/ that they produce accurately. Indeed, the authors found that children with SSD performed as well as their peers with TD for /m/ words, but not for /r/ words.

In addition, children with SSD often present with concomitant developmental language disorder (DLD). In a population-based study, approximately 33% of 6-year-old children with SSD were found to present with concomitant DLD (Shriberg et al., 1999). Rates of comorbid SSD and DLD are even higher on case loads of speech-language pathologists; for instance, in a large clinic-based sample study of 600 children ages 2–16 years referred to a community speech and language hearing clinic, 34% of the children had SSD and 59% of the children had SSD and concomitant DLD (Cantwell & Baker, 1987). Children with DLD have also been found to present with speech perception difficulties (e.g., Ramus et al., 2013; Rosen, 2003). However, it is not known whether children with SSD and concomitant DLD have more difficulties perceiving speech sounds than children with isolated SSD. Answering this question is important because children with concomitant SSD and DLD experience poorer academic and literacy outcomes compared to children with isolated SSD (e.g., Snowling et al., 2000). There is a paucity of studies that directly compare the speech perception abilities of children with SSD with and without concomitant DLD. Hearnshaw et al. (2019) recently conducted a systematic review of the speech perception skills of children with SSD ages 3–7 years. A total of 73 eligible studies were included in their analysis. The authors noted that the language status of participants was uncertain in 26 studies, whereas 21 studies included some children with both SSD and language disorder, but did not analyze results separately for children with and without concomitant language disorder. Results from two studies found that children with SSD and DLD (SSD + DLD), but not those with isolated SSD (SSD-only), had speech perception difficulties. Other studies included children with SSD + DLD but did not include children with SSD-only (e.g., Hoffman et al., 1984).

A recent study conducted by Zuk et al. (2018) investigated speech perception of a series of steps along the /dɑ-ɡɑ/ continuum in five groups of children: children with TD, with CAS with no language impairment, with CAS and language impairment, with language impairment and no speech delay, and with speech delay and no language difficulties. The results indicated that children with CAS and no language impairment demonstrated speech perception skills that were appropriate for their age, whereas the children with CAS and language impairment had poorer speech discrimination than children with TD. Many, but not all, children with speech delay and children with language impairment had speech perception difficulties, with appreciable variability in performance within these two groups of participants. Despite the fact that children with SSD + DLD were not included in their study, the results highlight the importance of accounting for concomitant language disorders in children with SSD since language skills may influence the heterogeneity in profiles and intervention outcomes seen in these children.

Finally, a pervasive limitation of studies concerning perceptual abilities of children with SSD is that they have addressed the least frequent utterance positions in connected speech. Previous studies have focused on speech perception of word-initial consonants (e.g., Hazan & Barrett, 2000; Rvachew, 2007) and, to a lesser extent, word-final consonants (Edwards et al., 2002; Raaymakers & Crul, 1988). Consonants in medial position, however, are much more common than initial or final positions in connected speech. In addition, children with SSD misarticulate speech sounds in many different word positions and contexts (e.g., Rvachew & Brosseau-Lapré, 2018).

The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate perception of medial consonantal contrasts of two subgroups of children with SSD (SSD-only and SSD + DLD) and children with TD. To accomplish this, we investigated perception of two different medial consonants using an identification task that does not require verbal responses from the participants. The first target consonant was /p/, because it is the earliest acquired consonant in terms of accurate production in typical speech development (McLeod & Crowe, 2018), and children with moderate and severe SSD rarely misarticulate this consonant (Shriberg, 1993). The second targeted consonant was /ʃ/, which is acquired later in development and is often mispronounced by both preschoolers with typical speech and children with SSD (e.g., Smit et al., 1990). We addressed the following research questions:

  1. How do children with SSD-only, children with SSD + DLD, and children with TD compare in their perception of early-acquired medial /p/?

  2. How do children with SSD-only, children with SSD + DLD, and children with TD compare in their perception of later-acquired /ʃ/?

Method

Participants

Twenty-four children, ages 4;0–5;11 (years;months) participated in the study, which was approved by Purdue University's institutional review board. Parents provided written informed consent, and children provided verbal assent. Participants were recruited through flyers at local child care centers and through the M.D. Steer Speech and Language Clinic on campus. Children were assigned to one of three groups based on parent report, case history, and performance on a battery of norm-referenced measures as described below. Twelve children were assigned to the TD group (seven girls, five boys); 11 were reported to be White (one Hispanic), and one child was reported to be African American. Six children (three girls, three boys) were in the SSD-only group, and six children (three girls, three boys) were in the SSD + DLD group; all participants with SSD were reported to be White.

All participants were native speakers of Midwestern English. None presented with medical conditions such as autism spectrum disorder or global developmental delay per parental report. All participants passed a hearing screening at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz at 20 dB in each ear, as well as the oral structure component of the Oral Speech Mechanism Screening Examination–Third Edition (St. Louis & Ruscello, 2000). All children included in the two groups with SSD and none of the children included in the TD group had a history of speech-language therapy and/or previous diagnosis of speech delay or SSD. Children assigned to the SSD groups obtained a standard score below 85 on the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation–Third Edition (GFTA-3; Goldman & Fristoe, 2015). Children with SSD-only obtained standard scores above 87 on the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test Preschool–Second Edition (Dawson et al., 2005), and children with SSD + DLD obtained scores below 87, the cutoff reflecting good sensitivity and specificity for DLD (Greenslade et al., 2009). Participants and the SSD-only groups were required to meet or exceed a standard score of 85 on the nonverbal subtest of the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test–Second Edition (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004), and participants with SSD + DLD were required to meet or exceed a standard score of 70 on this test. Participants' receptive and expressive vocabulary were measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and the Expressive Vocabulary Test–Second Edition (Williams, 2007).

Participant characteristics by group are summarized in Table 1. As shown in the table, one-way analysis of variance indicated that there were no significant differences between the three groups of participants with regard to age, mother's level of education, father's level of education, or nonverbal IQ. There were significant differences between the three groups of participants with regard to articulation accuracy, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and expressive language skills. Further investigation of differences between specific groups using Mann–Whitney U test pairwise comparisons revealed that the two groups of participants with SSD did not differ in articulation accuracy, U = 13.00, z = −0.802, p = .485; receptive vocabulary, U = 12.50, z = −0.885, p = .394; or expressive vocabulary, U = 9.00, z = −1.441, p = .180. The group of children with SSD-only did not differ from the group of children with TD in receptive vocabulary, U = 17.00, z = −1.782, p = .083; expressive vocabulary, U = 17.50, z = −1.734, p = .083; or expressive language skills, U = 15.00, z = −1.972, p = .053. The group of children with SSD + DLD differed from the group of children with TD in receptive vocabulary, U = 11.00, z = –2.344, p = .018, and expressive vocabulary, U = 11.00, z = –2.345, p = .018.

Table 1.

Demographic data and test scores for the participants.

Measures TD
(n = 12)		 SSD-only
(n = 6)		 SSD + DLD
(n = 6)		 F(2, 23) p
Age (months) 58.1 ± 6.4
(48–71)		 61.8 ± 6.2
(54–69)		 59.5 ± 5.3
(50–66)		 1.294 .295
Maternal education a (years) 17.0 ± 2.3
(14–20)		 17.0 ± 2.4
(14–20)		 15.7 ± 0.8
(14–16)		 .900 .422
Paternal education a (years) 17.0 ± 2.8
(12–20)		 15.0 ± 3.1
(12–20)		 15.3 ± 2.1
(12–18)		 2.223 .132
KBIT-2 (standard score) 115.25 ± 13.1
(103–143)		 109.3 ± 15.4
(89–128)		 102.8 ± 8.5
(94–116)		 1.936 .169
GFTA-3 (standard score) 97.5 ± 12.1
(87–123)		 62.5 ± 12.3
(46–76)		 56.0 ± 18.3
(40–81)		 23.153 < .001
PPVT-4 (standard score) 127.6 ± 14.8
(102–148)		 115.3 ± 9.6
(105–131)		 110.8 ± 5.2
(105–118)		 4.593 .022
EVT-2 (standard score) 125.5 ± 12.3
(104–141)		 114.5 ± 8.9
(104–129)		 107.2 ± 11.5
(97–128)		 5.674 .011
SPELT-P2 (standard score) 116.4 ± 9.7
(92–127)		 101.7 ± 11.7
(93–120)		 73.2 ± 12.6
(56–87)		 31.646 < .001
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Note. Mean ± standard deviation displayed with range in parentheses, by group. TD = children with typical speech and language skills; SSD-only = children with isolated speech sound disorder; SSD + DLD = children with speech sound disorder and concomitant developmental language disorder; KBIT-2 = Nonverbal Matrices subtest of the Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test–Second Edition (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004); GFTA-3 = Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation–Third Edition (Goldman & Fristoe, 2015); PPVT-4 = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007); EVT-2 = Expressive Vocabulary Test–Second Edition (Williams, 2007); SPELT-P2 = Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test Preschool–Second Edition (Dawson et al., 2005).

a

Years of education reported by parents, with 12 = high school, 14 = associate's degree, 16 = bachelor's degree, 18 = master's degree, and 20 = doctor's degree.

Based on production of all target words of the GFTA-3, all children included in the current study produced /p/ accurately in all word positions (initial, medial, final). Of the 12 children with TD, 10 produced /ʃ/ accurately and two produced /ʃ/→/s/. All children with SSD-only mispronounced /ʃ/ with errors almost exclusively with regard to place (/ʃ/→/s, f/), and with regard to manner in one instance only (/ʃ/→/t/), and all children with SSD + DLD mispronounced /ʃ/ with errors relating to place, manner, and, occasionally, voicing (/ʃ/→/s, z, t, θ, f/).

Procedure

Participants attended three testing sessions each lasting approximately 55 min. Most completed standardized testing in a quiet room used for speech and language research at Purdue University, and some completed testing during the third session in a soundproof booth (Acoustic Systems) prior to completing the experimental task. Norm-referenced, standardized tests were administered according to each examiner's manual. Tasks requiring verbal responses were audio-recorded using a PMD661 MK II Marantz recorder at a 44.1-kHz sample rate. A graduate student in speech-language pathology completed narrow phonetic transcription of all participants' responses to the GFTA-3, and a graduate research assistant completed transcriptions of a third of the samples randomly selected from each group of participants. Interrater agreement of narrow transcription of consonants was 93.2% for children with SSD-only, 90.9% for children with SSD + DLD, and 96.4% for children with TD.

Speech stimuli were disyllables (/aCa/) recorded with 16-bit resolution and 22.05-kHz sampling rate from an adult female talker with upper Midwestern dialect (Alexander, 2016; Alexander et al., 2011). Stimuli were equated for duration (± 10 ms) first by selection from multiple productions followed by precise adjustments by iterating or deleting pitch pulses near vowel nuclei. Stimuli were presented on a Surface tablet at 70 dBA using E-Prime 3.0 (Psychological Software Tools, Inc., 2017). Participants and the examiner wore Beyerdynamic DT 150 headphones throughout the task. A short break was provided following each block of trials.

The experimental speech identification task did not require a verbal response. Children first completed a block of training trials. They were introduced to a cartoon picture of an alien and heard its name /ama/ three times. Children were then told they would see the picture of an alien and hear its name, and they should touch one of two pictures on the following screen, either the picture of /ama/ if they heard its name or the picture of another alien if they heard a different name. Prior to each trial, participants saw and heard the name of the target alien. During practice trials, targets and foils varied by multiple manners, places, and/or voicing features, and three productions each of /ama/, /ata/, /aka/, /asa/, /ala/, or /ara/ were presented semirandomly such that the same disyllable was never presented on two consecutive trials. Feedback was provided during practice trials, and children were required to obtain at least 85% correct performance on the practice block before moving on to the test blocks. Six children, three with SSD-only and three with SSD + DLD, required a second training block to attain this performance threshold as they had performed between 78% and 83%, respectively, on the first practice block. Participants then completed two test blocks during which no feedback was provided, and target and foil names varied by only one or two places, manners, or voice features. All participants completed a block of 18 trials with target /apa/ with /ata/, /aka/, /afa/, /ama/, and /aba/ foils, and a block of 15 trials with target /aʃa/ with foils /ata/, /afa/, /asa/, and /aʒa/. Order of presentation of the two test blocks was counterbalanced such that, within each group, half the children first completed /apa/ and half first completed /aʃa/.

Results

We conducted a mixed 3 (participant group) × 2 (target consonant) analysis of variance to compare performance of the children in the three groups (between-subjects) and to compare performance on consonants that are early acquired or later acquired (within-subject). The dependent variable was percent accuracy calculated across all responses per target sound. There was a significant main effect of target consonant on speech perception performance, F(1, 21) = 16.896, p < .001, r = .67, as identification of /apa/ was significantly better than identification of /aʃa/. There was also a significant main effect of group, F(2, 21) = 10.128, p = .001, r = .57. Post hoc tests were conducted using Hochberg's GT2 pairwise procedure due to unequal sizes of participant groups. Performance of children with SSD + DLD was significantly lower than for children with TD (p = .001, d = 1.57). There was no significant difference between the performance of the children with SSD-only and the children with TD (p = .362, d = 0.71). The difference between the two groups of children with SSD approached but did not reach statistical significance (p = .050, d = 1.04). The Games–Howell test was performed to account for the possibility that population variances could be unequal, and results were consistent with those using the Hochberg procedure. There was no significant interaction effect between target consonant and group, F(2, 21) = 2.780, p = .085, r = .34, as all three groups of participants obtained similarly higher perceptual accuracy scores for target /apa/ than target /aʃa/.

With regard to perceptual accuracy for each consonant, Kruskal–Wallis tests revealed differences between the groups for /apa/, χ2(2) = 10.179, p = .006, and for /aʃa/, χ2(2) = 9.939, p = .007. Mann–Whitney U test pairwise comparisons with a Bonferroni-corrected p value (p = .008) were used to further investigate the differences between specific groups. Children with SSD-only performed similarly to children with TD for /apa/, U = 6.50, z = −0.876, p = .437, whereas the children with SSD + DLD performed significantly poorer than children with TD, U = 2.00, z = −3.277, p < .001. The children with SSD + DLD did not differ significantly from the children with SSD-only for /apa/, U = 6.50, z = −1.868, p = .065. With regard to perception of /aʃa/, children with SSD-only performed less well than children with TD, but this difference did not reach statistical significance, U = 12.00 z = −2.309, p = .024. Children with SSD + DLD obtained significantly lower perceptual accuracy than children with TD for the later-acquired consonant, U = 2.50, z = −3.210, p < .001. The children with SSD + DLD performed less well than children with SSD-only, but this difference did not reach statistical significance, U = 4.00, z = −2.295, p = .026. Figure 1 displays the perceptual accuracy of participants in each group for each target consonant.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Perceptual accuracy for the two target consonants for each group of participants. Each box plot illustrates the median (middle line of the box), mean (×), interquartile range, and individual values (circles). TD = children with typical speech and language skills; SSD-only = children with isolated speech sound disorder; SSD + DLD = children with speech sound disorder and concomitant developmental language disorder.

Discussion

This preliminary study investigated perception of the early-acquired consonant /p/ and later-acquired consonant /ʃ/ in disyllables /aCa/. Participants were 4–5 years old and included six children with SSD-only, six children with SSD + DLD, and 12 children with TD. We found that children with SSD-only performed similarly to children with TD for /apa/, but that children with SSD + DLD performed significantly less well than children with TD. Although the children with SSD + DLD did not perform as well on perception of /apa/ as children with SSD-only, this difference did not reach statistical significance. Furthermore, results indicated that children with SSD-only performed less well than children with TD for perception of /aʃa/, but this difference did not reach statistical significance. Children with SSD + DLD performed significantly less well than children with TD for /aʃa/; they also performed less well than children with SSD-only, but this difference was not statistically significant when using a corrected p value for multiple comparisons. As seen in Figure 1, two children with TD scored at 88.9% for perception of /apa/, the lowest score obtained by children with SSD-only. The same two children are the two participants with TD who also scored at 80% for perception of /aʃa/. Both of these children with TD, however, produced /ʃ/ accurately in all word positions.

We expected the children with SSD-only to perform as well as children with TD with regard to /apa/ based on previous studies that have shown that children with SSD have difficulties only perceiving certain sounds, particularly the sounds they misarticulate (e.g., Rvachew & Grawburg, 2006). Since all of our participants with SSD-only were mispronouncing /ʃ/, we expected these children to perform less well than children with TD on perception of this phoneme. Although the children with SSD-only, as a group, performed less well than children with TD, this difference did not reach statistical significance for the small group sizes of participants in the current study. Nonetheless, the effect size for this comparison is quite large. A larger sample of children with SSD-only may show statistically different performance between these children and children with TD. In addition, although the receptive and expressive vocabulary skills and expressive language skills of the groups of children with SSD-only and children with TD were not significantly different in our participants, on average, the children with TD obtained standard scores that were 10–12 points higher than the children with SSD-only on these three measures. Given the relationships between vocabulary and oral language skills on speech perception abilities (e.g., Rvachew & Grawburg, 2006), this is a limitation of the study. Larger groups of participants, better matched on vocabulary and oral language skills, would allow to better investigate the link between speech perception and production of specific phonemes in these two groups of children.

With regard to the results obtained for the children with SSD + DLD, who performed less well than children with TD even for early acquired /apa/, one possibility is that these children have less detailed underlying phonological representations in general. This would lead them to perform less well than their peers with TD as well as their peers with SSD-only. However, the nature of our task may have contributed to weaker performance by children with DLD. Coady et al. (2007) investigated effects of natural versus synthetic speech and real words versus nonsense syllables on the ability of children ages 8–11 years with DLD or with TD to identify and discriminate speech series categorically. Children with DLD performed best with natural and meaningful speech (edited naturally spoken real words). In the current study, stimuli were natural renditions of nonsense /aCa/ syllables. Despite pairing these nonsense syllables with pictures, we cannot rule out potentially deleterious effects of novel nonword picture labels. Because children with SSD + DLD had greater variability in their response patterns relative to children with SSD-only and children with TD, apparent perceptual difficulties may be caused by deficits not specific to speech perception, such as difficulties with memory or processing capacity deficits (e.g., Coady et al., 2007; Sices et al., 2007). In addition, children with DLD have been found to have word learning deficits (e.g., Alt & Plante, 2006) and lexicons that have less depth and breadth than other children of the same age (e.g., McGregor et al., 2013). Given that our speech perception task had elements of a word-learning task, their performance may have been influenced by their difficulties with encoding words. It should also be noted that our participants with SSD + DLD had stronger vocabulary abilities and higher nonverbal IQ scores than the broader population of children with DLD. Larger groups of participants, inclusion of an additional group of children with DLD with nonverbal IQ standard scores between 70 and 85, and measures of memory and processing capacity may shed light on differences in perceptual abilities of both earlier- and later-developing consonants in these compared with children with SSD-only.

For future studies, in addition to participation by more children, we will focus most heavily upon differences in place of articulation, which are notoriously most difficult for children with SSD. This study only partially addresses place of articulation contrasting /ʃ/ with foils /t, f, s, ʒ/. With a larger group of participants, we can also collect production data in word-initial, medial, and final positions to better characterize relationships between challenges for production and perception of the same phonemes in these three word positions.

In conclusion, these preliminary data indicate that the speech perception skills of children with TD and SSD-only are similar for the medial consonant they produce accurately. Difficulties with speech perception were revealed for some, but not all, children with SSD-only when testing a later-acquired consonant they misarticulate. For children with SSD + DLD tested here, performance was weaker relative to peers with TD and with SSD-only for all tests, both for consonants they produce accurately and for consonants they misarticulate. Positive findings from this preliminary study, as well as design limitations, inform our ongoing efforts to better describe the nature of the speech perception deficits in children with SSD-only and children with SSD + DLD.

Acknowledgments

The work reported in this article was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R21DC016142; PI: F. Brosseau-Lapré). The authors express appreciation to the participating children and their parents, as well as to members of the Purdue Child Phonology Lab for their assistance during the project. In particular, the authors thank Kathryn Bower for transcription, Brittany Miller for illustrations, and Rose Reyling for assistance in programming.

Funding Statement

The work reported in this article was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R21DC016142; PI: F. Brosseau-Lapré).

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