The relationship between speech perception, speech production, and vocabulary abilities in children : insights from by-group and continuous analyses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship betwspeech perception, speech production, and vocabulary abilities in children wand without speech sound disorders (SSDs), analyzing the data both by grand continuously. 

Method: Sixty-one Australian English–speaking children aged 48–69 monthparticipated in this study. Children’s speech production abilities ranged alothe continuum from SSDs through to typical speech. Their vocabulary abilitranged along the continuum from typical to above average (“lexically precious”). Children completed routine speech and language assessments in adtion to an experimental Australian English lexical and phonetic judgment task. 

Results: When analyzing data by group, there was no significant differenbetween the speech perception ability of children with SSDs and that of dren without SSDs. Children with above-average vocabularies had significantbetter speech perception ability than children with average vocabularies. Whanalyzing data continuously, speech production and vocabulary were both sinificant positive predictors of variance in speech perception ability, both indivually in simple linear regression and when combined in multiple linear regrsion. There was also a significant positive correlation between perception aproduction of two of the four target phonemes tested (i.e., /k/ and /ʃ/) amchildren in the SSD group. 

Conclusions: Results from this study provide further insight into the comprelationship between speech perception, speech production, and vocabularabilities in children. While there is a clinical and important need for categodistinctions between SSDs and typically developing speech, findings furthhighlight the value of investigating speech production and vocabulary abiliticontinuously and categorically. By capturing the heterogeneity among childrenspeech production and vocabulary abilities, we can advance our understandiof SSDs in children. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.22229674.