Infants born after fetal growth restriction (FGR)--an obstetric condition defined as the failure to achieve the genetic growth potential--are prone to neurodevelopmental delays, with language being one of the major affected areas. Yet, while verbal comprehension and expressive language impairments have been observed in FGR infants, children and…

This investigation explored the voice onset time (VOT) values of word-initial bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ as realized by Arabic-speaking male and female Saudi ESL learners. It sought to identify the differences, if any, between these two groups with regard to this acoustic measure (i.e., VOT). The VOT measurements were then compared with those of…

This paper addresses how input variability in the adult phonological system is mastered in the output of young children in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, involving variability between labio-palatalized consonants and front rounded vowels. The high-frequency variant involves a complex consonant which is expected to be mastered late, while…

Purpose: Consonant repetitions within words are a well-attested speech error pattern in children's early speech acquisition. We investigated the role of intervening vowel context in understanding speech forms containing consonant repetitions in early words. Intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and…

The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best, 1995) claims listeners directly perceive articulatory gestures of the vocal tract rather than acoustic/auditory signals. Accordingly, the articulatory similarities and discrepancies between native and non-native sounds determine the perceptual assimilation patterns of non-native sounds. This study…

This article investigates the production of the emphatic consonants /?, ?, ?/ by typically developing Jordanian children. Sixty typically developing monolingual Ammani Arabic-speaking children (30 boys and 30 girls) with ages ranging from 2 to 7;11 years were recruited in a production experiment. In the experiment, they were asked to produce 18…

This study investigates the effects of native language experience and phonetic properties on the discrimination of labial-velar versus labial and velar contrasts, as well as voicing contrasts in labials, velars, and labial-velars. Research indicates that phonological perceptions are influenced by native language experience and the specific…

In speech perception tasks with ambiguous bottom-up information, lexical processes have been shown to influence listener responses, such as in phoneme categorization tasks (Ganong, 1980). Proponents of interactive theories of speech perception and spoken word recognition assert this influence is a top-down feedback mechanism that can affect…

While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were…

Recent work has shown significant sublexical effects of long-term memory in nonword repetition (NWR) using a dichotomous consonant age of acquisition (CAoA) variable (Moore, 2018; Moore, Fiez, and Tompkins, 2017). Performance consistently decreased when stimuli comprised consonants acquired later versus earlier in speech development. To address…

Covert contrast is the statistically reliable distinction between target language phonemes produced in the process of language acquisition that is nevertheless not perceived by a native speaker of that language. This paper examines the acquisition of contrasts in four Najdi Arabic fricatives, /s/, /[voiceless palato-alveolar fricative]/,…

Common descriptions of articulatory requirements for production of the alveolar trill /r/ mainly focus on describing the configuration of the anterior portions of the tongue, while in contrast, the more posterior parts receive limited attention. Understanding how the posterior portions of the tongue move is vital for understanding speech motor…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to synthesize the methodological variability in the speech perception literature for school-age children with residual speech sound disorder (RSSD), with the primary intention of using the existing knowledge to inform clinical decisions and optimize treatment outcomes for children. Method: Ten electronic…

Language has a rhythmic structure, but little is known about the mechanisms that underlie how it is planned. Traditional models of language production assume that metrical and segmental planning occur independently and in parallel (Roelofs & Meyer, 1998). We test this claim in three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants completed an…

Recent findings have revealed that very preterm neonates already show the typical brain responses to place of articulation changes in stop consonants, but data on their sensitivity to other types of phonetic changes remain scarce. Here, we examined the impact of 7-8 weeks of extra-uterine life on the automatic processing of syllables in 20 healthy…