Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yu, Madeleine E.
• Cooper, Angela
• Johnson, Elizabeth K.
• Gauthier, Isabel

Titel

Who Speaks "Kid?" How Experience With Children Does (and Does Not) Shape the Intelligibility of Child Speech

Ist Teil von

• Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2023-04, Vol.49 (4), p.441-450

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Psychological Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Child speech deviates from adult speech in predictable ways. Are listeners who routinely interact with children implicitly aware of these systematic deviations, and thereby better at understanding children? Or do idiosyncratic differences in how children pronounce words overwhelm these systematic deviations? In Experiment 1, we use a speech-in-noise transcription task to test who "speaks kid" among four listener groups: undergraduates (n = 48), mothers of young children (n = 48), early childhood educators (n = 48), and speech-language pathologists (SLPs; n = 48). All listeners transcribed speech by typically developing children and adults. In Experiment 2, we use a similar task to test an additional group of mothers (n = 50) on how intelligible they found their own child versus another child. Contrary to previous claims, we find no evidence for an experience-based general child speech intelligibility advantage. However, we do find that mothers understand their own child best. We also observe a general task advantage by SLPs. Our findings demonstrate that routine (and even extensive) exposure to children may not make all children more intelligible, but that it may instead make particular children one has experience with more intelligible. Public Significance StatementThe goal of the study is to determine who (if anyone) "speaks kid." In support of existing evidence, we find that experience with a child makes it easier to understand words produced by that child specifically; however, this frequent experience does not predict a general child speech processing advantage. We did, however, find that speech-language pathologists had a general advantage in understanding words spoken by both adults and children. Our findings clarify existing claims in the literature and provide key insights into the nature of human speech processing in general.