The effect of segmental order on fricative labeling by children and adults

Abstract

We examined whether children modify their perceptual weighting strategies for speech on the basis of the order of segments within a syllable, as adults do. To this end, fricative-vowel (FV) and vowel-fricative (VF) syllables were constructed with synthetic noises from an /(Latin small letter esh)/-to-/s/ continuum combined with natural /a/ and /u/ portions with transitions appropriate for a preceding or a following /(Latin small letter esh)/ or /s/. Stimuli were played in their original order to adults and children (ages of 7 and 5 years) in Experiment 1 and in reversed order in Experiment 2. The results for adults and, to a lesser extent, those for 7-year-olds replicated earlier results showing that adults assign different perceptual weights to acoustic properties, depending on segmental order. In contrast, results for 5-year-olds suggested that these listeners applied the same strategies during fricative labeling, regardless of segmental order. Thus, the flexibility to modify perceptual weighting strategies for speech according to segmental order apparently emerges with experience.