Language specific speech perception and the onset of reading

In two studies the relationship between the onset of reading and language specific speech perception, the degree to which native speech perception is superior to non-native speech perception, was investigated. In Experiment 1 with children of 4, 6, and 8 years, language specific speech perception occurred maximally at 6 years and was positively related to reading ability for age and language comprehension level. In Experiment 2, with an expanded range of ages and various stimulus and task changes, the relationship between reading and language specific speech perception still held, and maximal language specific speech perception occurred around the onset of reading instruction for three different sets of speech contrasts, but not for a control set of non-speech contrasts. The results show that language specific speech perception is a linguistic rather than an acoustic phenomenon. Results are discussed in terms of early speech perception abilities, experience with oral communication, cognitive ability, reading bility, alphabetic versus logographic languages, phonics versus whole word reading instruction, and the effect of age versus instruction.