A right-ear effect for auditory feedback control of children's newly acquired phonemes.
To determine the relative importance of binaural, right-ear, and left-ear auditory feedback control on the correct production of newly acquired articulatory patterns in children, 40 children exhibiting misarticulations were tested under four experimental conditions. The children were individually administered a shortened version of the Deep Test of Articulation (McDonald, 1964) under (1) a no-masking condition, followed in a counterbalanced order by readministration of the Deep Test under conditions of (2) binaural masking, (3) monaural right-ear masking, and (4) monaural left-ear masking. Correct articulatory production by the children was significantly reduced under binaural and monaural right-ear masking. There was, however, no significant reduction in the children's correct production under the condition of monaural left-ear masking. The results extend previous findings of right-ear superiority for children's auditory processing of externally produced stimuli to the closed-loop auditory feedback control of children's own speech production.
D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests