Temporal Changes in Word Revisions by Children and Adults

A study was conducted to investigate the temporal changes that occur when a speaker attempts to revise words for a listener. Specifically, the study was designed to examine whether adults and children modify the timing of vowel and consonant production in response to listener miscomprehension. Four adults and sixteen 5-year-old boys and girls served as subjects. They were asked to repeat words that differed in voicing of initial and final stop consonants (back, pack, cab, cap), and to respond to either specific revision requests focused on initial or final sound segments, or to a general revision request. The speech waveform was used to measure the following: Voice Onset Time, vowel duration, final closure duration, and total word duration. Results revealed that children and adults made segmental changes in duration while preserving total word length in revised speech. The effect was a decrease in vowel duration and an increase in final closure duration for revised responses, regardless of the source of miscomprehension. These durational changes result in an apparent enhancement of the final consonantal portion of the misperceived word. All linguistic distinctions in voicing were maintained in the revised words. There were no major differences between adults and children in the type of revision responses produced.