Auditory temporal processing of preschool-age children with typical development and phonological disorder

Auditory temporal processing and speech perception was measured for three children with phonological disorders and three age-matched children with typical development. Results showed that temporal processing, especially in gap detection, was significantly worse for phonologically disordered children than typical developing children. For an identification experiment of voiced-voiceless stops (/b/ vs. /p/) with varied voice onset time (VOT), children with phonological disorders had marked difficulty to use the VOT cue to discriminate voiced-voiceless stops and did not show categorical perception, while their peers with typical development showed categorical perception obviously by using the cue of VOT. These results suggest that phonologically disordered children have significant deficit or delayed development in auditory temporal processing compared to their typically developing peers, resulting in their worse performance in speech perception. Such deficits or delayed development in auditory temporal processing may be an important factor contributing to phonological disorders in children.