Relationship between temporal processing and phonological awareness in children with speech sound disorders

ABSTRACT

Temporal processing ability contributes to the identification of small phonetic elements that is important for speech perception. Difficulty in these interferes with normal speech perception and phoneme recognition. The present study aimed to assess the temporal and phonological processing abilities in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Temporal processing and phonological skills were evaluated in 32 participants in the age range of 6–10 years, equally divided into two groups. Group I included typically developing children, and Group II included children with SSD. Gap detection test and duration pattern test were used to assess temporal processing abilities, and phonological sensitivity training kit in Kannada (PhoST-K) assessed phonological processing abilities. The results showed that there was a significant difference in temporal and phonological processing between the two groups of children. A significant correlation between gap detection ability and deletion tasks and between duration pattern ability and oddity tasks was obtained. Based on the results, it is recommended to assess the temporal process pertinent to central auditory processing in children with SSD, as a close relationship between temporal processing abilities and phonological awareness exists.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporal processing
• phonological processing
• speech sound disorder

Acknowledgments

The investigators would like to acknowledge the Director, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing. We would like to acknowledge the Head, Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Sciences for permitting us to use the resources from the department for testing. Our heartfelt gratitude also extends to all the participants involved in this study for their kind cooperation.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the submitted article are our own and not an official position of the institution or funder.

Statement of Interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the AIISH Research Fund [SH/CDN/ARF-AUD-4/2017-2018].