Comparing acoustic cues in the perception and production of /s/ and /蕛/ for 2- to 5-year-olds and adults
Advisor: Christina Bjorndahl聽
Majors: Linguistics and Psychology
Abstract
This study aims to compare how children and adults use acoustic cues to distinguish between the fricative sounds 鈥渟鈥� and 鈥渟h鈥� while listening and speaking. Prior literature suggests that child listeners discriminate based on acoustic characteristics of the transition from the fricative into the following vowel, whereas adults rely on cues that are contained solely within the fricative.Throughout early childhood, children come to rely less on these transitional cues, instead focusing on the cues used by adults. Studies have extensively shown this pattern for the perceptual contrast between 鈥渟鈥� and 鈥渟h鈥� (in IPA, /s/ and /鈭�/), but it has never been directly compared with the acoustic cues used during fricative production. To investigate this link, children and adults will be asked to label stimuli with artificially manipulated cues during the fricatives and vowel transitions as one of two words that differ only by their initial sound (e.g, 鈥淪ue鈥� or 鈥渟hoe鈥�). Participants will also complete a repetition task to provide speech samples for acoustic analysis. Based on prior research related to /s/-/鈭�/ production in two- to five-year-olds, I hypothesize that there will be a misalignment between the cues used for perception and production, with children beginning to use more adult-like cues earlier for production than for perception.
Bio
My name is Riley, and I am majoring in Linguistics and Psychology. In the future, I hope to work as a pediatric speech-language pathologist, so this work combines my interests in phonetics and developmental psychology. Outside of academics, I participate in Dancers鈥� Symposium, and I love to read in my spare time.