ERIC Number: EJ1406889
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: EISSN-1558-9102
Relating Acoustic Measures to Listener Ratings of Children's Productions of Word-Initial /[Voiced Alveolar Approximant]/ and /w/
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v66 n9 p3413-3427 2023
Purpose: The /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ productions of young children acquiring American English are highly variable and often inaccurate, with [w] as the most common substitution error. One acoustic indicator of the goodness of children's /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ productions is the difference between the frequency of the second formant (F2) and the third formant (F3), with a smaller F3-F2 difference being associated with a perceptually more adultlike /[voiced alveolar approximant]/. This study analyzed the effectiveness of automatically extracted F3-F2 differences in characterizing young children's productions of /[voiced alveolar approximant]/-/w/ in comparison with manually coded measurements. Method: Automated F3-F2 differences were extracted from productions of a variety of different /[voiced alveolar approximant]/- and /w/-initial words spoken by 3- to 4-year-old monolingual preschoolers (N = 117; 2,278 tokens in total). These automated measures were compared to ratings of the phoneme goodness of children's productions as rated by untrained adult listeners (n = 132) on a visual analog scale, as well as to narrow transcriptions of the production into four categories: [[voiced alveolar approximant]], [w], and two intermediate categories. Results: Data visualizations show a weak relationship between automated F3-F2 differences with listener ratings and narrow transcriptions. Mixed-effects models suggest the automated F3-F2 difference only modestly predicts listener ratings (R2 = 0.37) and narrow transcriptions (R2 = 0.32). Conclusion: The weak relationship between automated F3-F2 difference and both listener ratings and narrow transcriptions suggests that these automated acoustic measures are of questionable reliability and utility in assessing preschool children's mastery of the /[voiced alveolar approximant]/-/w/ contrast.
Descriptors: Acoustics, Listening, Articulation (Speech), Preschool Children, Phonemes, Speech Communication, Measurement, Auditory Perception
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: slhr@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (NIH) (DHHS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01DC02932