Effect of gap detection threshold on consistency of speech in children with speech sound disorder.
Kids whose speech errors come and go have poorer auditory gap detection—screen it.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested gap detection in children with speech sound disorder.
They asked: can kids hear tiny silent gaps between sounds?
Kids with inconsistent speech errors needed longer gaps to notice them.
What they found
Children whose speech errors come and go had poorer gap detection.
Typical kids and kids with stable errors did better on the task.
The result links auditory timing to speech inconsistency.
How this fits with other research
Poelmans et al. (2011) saw slow-rate sound problems in dyslexia.
Nittrouer et al. (2018) found speech-in-noise issues in dyslexia too.
These studies overlap: all show auditory gaps hurt clinical groups.
Yet Sayyahi et al. (2017) is the first to tie gap detection to speech that wavers day-to-day.
Why it matters
Add a 5-minute gap detection test to your speech eval.
If the child needs long gaps to hear the break, expect flip-flopping speech errors.
Target auditory timing before you drill speech sounds.
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Run a quick gap detection probe: present two-tone pairs with 10 ms vs 40 ms gaps and note the shortest gap the child detects reliably.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The present study examined the relationship between gap detection threshold and speech error consistency in children with speech sound disorder. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: The participants were children five to six years of age who were categorized into three groups of typical speech, consistent speech disorder (CSD) and inconsistent speech disorder (ISD).The phonetic gap detection threshold test was used for this study, which is a valid test comprised six syllables with inter-stimulus intervals between 20-300ms. The participants were asked to listen to the recorded stimuli three times and indicate whether they heard one or two sounds. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: There was no significant difference between the typical and CSD groups (p=0.55), but there were significant differences in performance between the ISD and CSD groups and the ISD and typical groups (p=0.00). The ISD group discriminated between speech sounds at a higher threshold. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Children with inconsistent speech errors could not distinguish speech sounds during time-limited phonetic discrimination. It is suggested that inconsistency in speech is a representation of inconsistency in auditory perception, which causes by high gap detection threshold.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.12.004