Malleability of the French voicing perception after auditory training in young children

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of an auditory identification training on the categorical perception of a/də/-/tə/ voicing continuum in healthy French speaking 6-year-old children. The training consisted of fourteen thirty minutes identification sessions (fading procedure) with feedback designed to emphasize the temporal cue (Voice Onset Time - V.O.T.) to be trained. For 10 children, training was focused on the French phonological boundary (0 ms V.O.T.) and for ten other children, training was focused on a universal boundary (-30 ms V.O.T.). Ten other control children did not receive any training. Pre- and post-training assessments were performed through identification and discrimination tasks aimed at evaluating categorical perception along the entire V.O.T. continuum.

Whereas no significant change was observed in the control group, boundary precision (across the French phonological boundary) increased in the 0 ms VOT training group. Data are currently collected for the -30 ms VOT training group.

These results showed that categorical perception of voicing may be improved in healthy children after quite a few training sessions.