Acoustic Characteristics of Stimuli, Back-Vowel Context, and Front-Vowel Context (Munson et al., 2012)

Purpose This study examined whether experienced speech-language pathologists (SLPs) differ from inexperienced people in their perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech.Method Twenty-one experienced SLPs and 21 inexperienced listeners participated in a series of tasks in which they used a visual–analog scale (VAS) to rate children’s natural productions of target /s/–/θ/, /t/–/k/, and /d/–/ɡ/ in word-initial position. Listeners rated the perceived distance between individual productions and ideal productions.Results The experienced listeners' ratings differed from the inexperienced listeners' ratings in four ways: They had higher intrarater reliability, showed less bias toward a more frequent sound, and were more closely related to the acoustic characteristics of the children’s speech. In addition, the experienced listeners' responses were related to a different set of predictor variables.Conclusion Results suggest that experience working as an SLP leads to better perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech. Limitations and future research are discussed.

本研究旨在探讨经验丰富的言语-语言病理学家（SLP）与缺乏经验者在对儿童语音细节的感知上是否存在差异。研究方法中，二十一位经验丰富的SLP和二十一位缺乏经验的听者参与了一系列任务，在这些任务中，他们使用视觉模拟评分法（VAS）对儿童在词首位置自然发出的目标音/s/–/θ/、/t/–/k/和/d/–/ɡ/进行评分。听者对单个发音与理想发音之间的感知距离进行评分。结果显示，经验丰富的听者的评分在四个方面与缺乏经验的听者的评分存在差异：他们具有较高的评分者内部一致性，表现出对更常见声音的偏见较少，并且与儿童语音的声学特征更为紧密相关。此外，经验丰富的听者的反应与一组不同的预测变量相关。结论表明，作为SLP的工作经验有助于提高对儿童语音细节的感知。本研究的局限性和未来研究方向亦进行了讨论。