Abstract

The purpose of this study was to measure the speech perception of children with speech sound disorders and compare it to that of adults and typically developing children. A secondary purpose was to determine if an adaptive-tracking tool, the Wide Range Acoustic Accuracy Scale (WRAAS) equalized task demands across participants independent of perceptual ability. The participants included 31 adults, 15 typically developing children, and 15 children with speech sound disorders. Children with speech sound disorders all had difficulty producing /r/ correctly. Each participant completed perceptual testing discriminating differences in three syllable contrast pairs: /bɑ/-/wɑ/, /dɑ/-/gɑ/, and /rɑ/-/wɑ/. Results indicated that children with speech sound disorders had significantly poorer perception than the adults for /bɑ/-/wɑ/ and /dɑ/-/gɑ/ and significantly poorer perception than their typically developing peers for the /rɑ/-/wɑ/ contrast. Adults and typically developing children did not differ in their perception of any contrast. Results also indicated that WRAAS equalized the number of trials across all participants irrespective of perceptual ability. We discuss clinical implications of these results and how WRAAS may be used in future research and in clinical work to efficiently and effectively determine perceptual abilities of children with speech sound disorders.

Degree

MS

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2021-06-16

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd11747

Keywords

speech therapy, speech perception, speech impairment

Language

english

Included in

Education Commons

Share

COinS