Vowel space area in later childhood and adolescence

Subtitle:effects of age, sex and ease of communication

This studyinvestigatedvowelspacearea(VSA)developmentinchildhoodandadolescenceanditsimpactonthe ability tohyperarticulatevowels.Inexperiment1,96participantsaged914 yearscarriedoutaninteractivetask when communicationwaseasy(nobarrier, NB) anddifficult (thespeechofoneparticipantwas filtered througha vocoder, VOC). Previousrecordingsfrom20adultswereusedasreference.MeasuresofVSA(ERB2), F1and F2 ranges(ERB)andarticulationratewereobtained.Children'sVSAweresignificantly largerthanadults'.From the ageof11,vowelhyperarticulationwasevidentinVOC,butonlybecauseVSAweregraduallyreducingwith age inNB.TheresultssuggestthatwhilstlargeVSAdonotpreventchildrenfromhyperarticulatingvowels,the manner inwhichthisisachievedmaynotbeadult-like.Experiment2wasconductedtoverifythatlargeVSAwere not aby-productofchildrenbeingunabletoseeeachother.Thirteenparticipantscarriedoutthesametaskface- to-face withtheirinterlocutor.Comparisonstomatchedparticipantsfromexperiment1showednodifferencesin VSA, indicatingthattheaudio-onlymodalitydidnotinfluence results.PossiblereasonsforlargerVSAinthe spontaneous speechofchildrenandadolescentsarediscussed.

Publication year:2016

Keywords:A1 Journal article

BOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:3

CSS-citation score:3

Authors:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Accessibility:Open