Poster_Collet et al_SRCLD2011.pdf (547.06 kB)
Improvement of the French voicing categorical perception in children with SLI after phonological auditory training
poster
posted on 2019-11-10, 16:37 authored by Gregory ColletGregory Collet, Willy Serniclaes, Cécile Colin, Jacqueline LeybaertIntroduction: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties to perceive information transmission of all phonetic feature (voicing, place and manner), in particular, voicing (Ziegler et al., 2005; PNAS). This deficit can be explained, at least for French, by a deficit in the “coupling” between universal boundaries (Zobouyan et al, 2010; Actes des JEPAFCP). This perceptive deficit interferes with the development of accurate phonological
representations, which in turn interferes with spoken and written language acquisition. The aim of this research is to determine how auditory training could decrease this deficit in
voicing perception and improve phonological representations.
Methodology: Five SLI children (mean = 8 y.o) were trained to discriminate /də/ and /tə/ syllables centered on the French phonological boundary (located at 0 ms VOT). Training took
part into 18 thirty minutes session over four weeks. During each session, ten blocks of 20 stimuli (10 pairs with the same two stimuli and 10 pairs with two different stimuli) were
presented to the children in a random order. The first blocks were built using stimuli separated by an important acoustical distance: 50 ms (-25 vs +25 msec de VOT). When each child reached 70% of correct response over two blocks, the acoustical distance between the two stimuli decreased (perceptual fading). Categorical perception (using identification and discrimination tasks), phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were evaluated in a
pre-training session but also midway, at the end of the training and one month after the end of the training. A non-training control group of 8 SLI children were also evaluated. Data are currently collected to increase these two groups.
Results: Improvement in categorical perception and steepness of the identification slope were observed after training. However, discrimination peaks improvement were not located across the phonological boundary (0 ms VOT) but across the universal boundaries at -30 and +30 ms VOT. This improvement was only transitional and decrease at the end of training. Moreover, improvement of the categorical perception and the steepness of the identification slope were maintained one month after the end of the training. A specific improvement of the phonological awareness was also observed only for the training group. Results for the control group remained constant throughout all sessions.
Discussion: These promising results showed that, as far as voicing is concerned, auditory training can modify auditory-perceptive performances in children with SLI. With some difficulties at the beginning, children can progressively improve their performance on a task pointing specifically their difficulties with voicing. Their voicing categorical perception improved significantly after training but this improvement was also generalized to their phonological awareness.
