Speech Perception in Children with and Without Speech Sound Disorders Who Articulate /ɹ/ as [w]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the speech perception skills for one sound contrast neutralized in 4- to 6-year-olds with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) and 3- to 5-year-olds with Typical Development (TD), all of whom produce /ɹ/ and /w/ as [w]. Using a Looking-While-Listening (LWL) paradigm, participants’ looking patterns to correctly produced (CP) and mispronounced (MP) trials were analyzed. Results showed that children with SSD demonstrated above chance looking to the target for MP experimental trials but not for CP trials. In contrast, the younger children with TD demonstrated above chance looking to the target for CP experimental trials but not MP trials. These results suggest that children with SSD do not have the same phonological representations as their younger peers with TD who produce the same speech error, suggesting a clear difference between the groups based on diagnosis. Additionally, children with SSD showed above chance performance and no difference in looking for CP and MP foil trials. This performance pattern is distinct from that seen in monodialectal children, but is similar to that seen in multidialectal children. Thus, I argue that this difference may be explained by the fact that their own idiolect (/ɹ/ and /w/ produced as [w]) coupled with the majority dialect (/ɹ/ produced as [ɹ]) results in a multidialectal input