Speech perception deficits in preschool children with specific subtypes of speech sound disorders

This study investigated speech perception skills in children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). Previous research has reported inconsistent findings regarding perceptual deficits in children with SSDs, prompting further investigation into the nature and extent of these difficulties. The present study focused on subtypes of SSDs in preschool children and evaluated their perception of consonants and lexical tones. Seventy Mandarin-speaking children aged 5;0 – 5;11 participated, including 24 children with developmental SSDs (DEV-SSDs), 22 children with non-developmental SSDs (NONDEV-SSDs), and 24 typically developing peers. Children with NONDEV-SSDs were classified as exhibiting more non-developmental speech errors. Computerized speech discrimination and identification tasks were used to assess consonant and lexical tone discrimination and categorical perception abilities. The results indicated that the DEV-SSDs exhibited speech perception skills comparable to those of their typically developing counterparts. In contrast, the NONDEV-SSDs showed significant deficits in both discrimination and identification tasks, with additional difficulties in categorizing speech sounds, indicating underlying phonological processing challenges. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating speech perception assessment and training into intervention programs for the subgroup of children with SSDs, especially for children with more non-developmental speech errors (NONDEV-SSDs).