title: Phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI).
abstract: This study investigates phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents and young adults with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We manipulated two acoustic cues, vowel duration and F1 offset frequency, that signal word-final stop consonant voicing ([t] and [d]) in English. Ten individuals with SLI (14.0-21.4 years), 10 age-matched controls (CA; 14.6-21.9 years) and 10 non-matched adult controls (23.3-36.0 years) labelled synthetic CVC non-words in an identification task. The results showed that the adolescents and young adults with SLI were less consistent than controls in the identification of the good category representatives. The group with SLI also assigned less weight to vowel duration than the adult controls. However, no direct relationship between phonetic categorisation, cue weighting and language skills was found. These findings indicate that some individuals with SLI have speech perception deficits but they are not necessarily associated with oral language skills.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College London , UK .
authors.forename: Outi
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tuomainen
authors.forename: Nichola J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Stuart
authors.forename: Heather K J
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: van der Lely
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012016:Reference Values; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Adolescents; Specific Language Impairment (SLI); cue weighting; speech perception